Alex Jeffreys Interview – How He Made Half A Million Dollars Last Year Online

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Interviews     More posts about: Affiliate Marketing, Product Creation

Today I am with Alex Jeffreys , who I met back at Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar in Washington back in February.

Alex along with with James Schramko sat down in Starbucks on the last day I was there and did this amazing “Brain Dump” that really has turned my online business around.

So today it is indeed a great pleasure to do this Interview with Alex – this guy is 100% genuine and one of the nicest people you can ever meet in the world of Internet Marketing – Thank you Alex for your help and Inspiration.

Note: This interview is quite long and you can listen to it completely in the Podcast – the version below is abbreviated – you see when Alex starts talking and I start talking we both get excited and we end up discussing every more stuff than we originally planed

Warning: Some references to Alcohol and the effect of drinking alcohol in the company of Internet Marketing Gurus

I look forward to your comments

Enjoy

[audio:https://www.incomediary.com/rec_ajimports_19_May_2009_15_24_22.mp3]

Hi Alex — You started online the very first time, like most people, with eBay back in about 2004. You started importing from China and then finally you got into information marketing in 2006 when you went to a seminar. Do you want to explain to us how you got into this whole thing? And what you’re doing right now?

Yeah. I’ll just very quickly tell you what happened in the beginning. A friend of mine came to me and said to me, “You’ve got your head switched on. I’ve found this little idea on the Internet and I think you should have a go at it.” That was in February, 2004. Since that day I didn’t know how to turn on a computer then. Since that day I’ve been on the computer almost daily, working at this million dollar plan.

Now back then I was a newbie, I didn’t know what the heck was going on. But quickly I started to grasp eBay, and then from marketing on eBay I actually found a little niche in the motorbike industry. I started to import motorbikes from China, and actually sell them on eBay before they actually arrived in country.

So I’d have containers on the sea coming across, and I’d sell them on eBay to preorder. As soon as the container would land I’d give all the motorbikes away and make a nice chunk of change.

So that turned into a six figure business very quickly, actually. The one problem was, I could not keep up with the demand. It was literally I had two cups of coffee at all times, my head was about to explode. Me and my girlfriend at the time, fiancee now, wife to be in a couple of week’s time all’s we did was speak about business, and it was not healthy at all.

So I said, “We need to get out of this.” I loved the marketing side of doing everything. I loved marketing the motorbikes, I loved marketing with eBay. One of the only people I trusted on the Internet at the time, his name was Tim Knox, he actually had this marketing seminar coming up. It was in Alabama in the USA.

I’m from Wales in the UK. So when I tell people, “Hey, I’m going to be flying to Alabama” people would laugh at me, thinking, “What the hell’s he need to go over there for? What an idiot.” And so forth.

But I went to this marketing seminar and really the one thing that I took away from it that was really important, was that if you can make money, then you can make money, but if you can teach people how to make money, then you can make 10 times the money.

That was the turning point for me. I know how to make money with eBay, if I can now start to teach people to do that, I can make 10 times the money. So that took me onto the new level of actually working on the Internet and trying to market on the Internet to teach eBay tactics.

So that’s kind of how I made the transition. That really started in 2006.

Great Stuff Alex — You were telling me earlier that you did half a million from the Internet last year, and you’re going to do well over a million this year. So hopefully you’re going to share with us and explain a bit how you’re going to do that. The first thing I wanted to touch on, you’ve recently launched a coaching program, which you did a third of a million dollars from?

Alex: Yeah. Previous to this, Michael, like I was saying to you back in February even, I’ve got no experience of being a business coach. I didn’t go to school. I went to school, but I wasn’t the brightest cookie. I was always the one having the report sent home saying his academic skills are very poor, you need to help him. And I was kept back at school. People never really believed in me, but I always knew that I could do it. What I’m saying is that I took action. It’s such a cliché these days: take action, take action. But I built my business and my brand and my business is Marketing With You. That’s what my business is called. So the slogan to my business is:
Marketingwithyou.com, we’re marketing with you, not to you

So very early on what I learnt was that a lot of the gurus market to people. They’re marketing to people. And because we’re making a transition into Web 2.0, very slowly moving into like this Web 3.0 kind of thing, I learnt that people it’s like social. People don’t want to be marketed to; they want to be marketed with, on that kind of level.

So that’s what I built my business on, marketing with people. And because I was in good communications with people, the people said to me, “How can you help us further?” And slowly I’ve become in demand of becoming a business coach on a very small scale.

But what I did was I leveraged this, and I got these people to actually say on a public blog which was my own blog “Hey, Alex, I want you to be my personal coach because….” And that then set the shift to, I could say to the rest of the market, “Look, I’m in demand of being a business coach. Look at these people begging me to be their business coach.”

And then when I actually opened up the coaching program, it just went haywire. We had like 650 people sign up in a matter of six days.

That generated like a third of million dollars. Which was a very low entry cost for the coaching, but what actually happened then was I actually have become a bloody good business coach. Because I just literally got off my ass and said, I’ve got to do this. I give extreme value. I want to do as much as possible to these people. I’ve opened up you can go to mycoachingstudents.com and you can actually see the level of success that my students are getting. So now that I actually did something, I actually took action. And again, it’s such a clich, but now I’m in high demand for a coaching program, which we could sell a million dollar coaching program in four weeks.

But let me just say something here, Michael, that I’ve got notes I’m actually writing my next report. The reason most people fail and we all say, “Take action. Take action.” But the reason most people fail is because they over educate and there’s information overload. They’ve got to know the different between education and implementation.

It’s the implementation part this is the real underlying problem of the market. They’re educated so much, they’re information overload, and they don’t know how to implement things. And also, they don’t know where to start the implementation.

So when I actually picked up on that in the coaching program, that’s why it becomes so successful, because I actually pinpointed on that area and actually focused and actually implemented things for my students. Educating them as they were implementing. So they’re implementing things as they are being educated.

It was a pretty cool way that we took them.

Excellent Alex — What did you do before you got on eBay? What was your career?

Alex: I was doing a lot of stuff in construction, like plastering, damp proofing. Like building work with houses. Just everyday mucky stuff, bogging, dirty. Making a wage that was average at the time. To know it’s like you make that in a day and not even flinch. It’s like, “Oh, I just made that.” Your dinner somewhere, you just make that kind of money. Again, it’s just that mind shift, isn’t it? You change that mind shift, you believe you can do it, and all of the sudden it just starts to come true. As long as you have a proven plan and you’re following proven people.

So you’ve been mentioning comfort zones and procrastination. I was once actually told that procrastination is the biggest killer of success. What would you suggest that people should do to get over procrastination?

It’s funny what you say there, it’s the same thing as there’s a saying, “Most people are so scared of dying that they don’t live.” They don’t get to live because they’re so scared of dying.

And it’s exactly the same thing. Let’s just go back to the coaching program. Do you know how scared I was to open a coaching program? Literally, I expected to open up a very small coaching program and sell about $20, 000 worth of seats, just to get my toes into the coaching realm, just to do it. But it exploded. And of course when those sales are flying through the door, there’s not way you’re going to close it. All these people are throwing money at me, are you going to stop it? We hit like $100, 000 in a day. It was unreal.

Of course I put myself under a lot of pressure to take these coaching students to the next level, but again, the proof is in the pudding. We’ve got all the success stories now. But that’s just lined me up now for the next coaching program.

So, yeah. And I hate just saying the words, “Take action.” But what I did was I got a coach with a proven record, and that coach told me who his coach was. I moved to his coach. My first coach is Michael Filsaime, and then my second coach was Rich Schefren. And of course Rich’s coach is Jay Abraham, so very soon hopefully I’ll be meeting Jay and studying from his as well.

OK Alex, You’ve learned all this stuff, you’ve taken action, and you’re now having a great time. You told me that recently you were away for three weeks and you only logged in for about an hour to do some work. How did that come about, you’re being able to your thing like that?

First of all, I was actually away at conference. And I met your dad, Michael. I first of all met Michael and his father back in February in Washington. And I went to another conference a few weeks back, which was in San Diego, and Michael’s dad was there. And we had a chat and everything, going to it as well, which was phenomenal, the things you do in your own business. Congratulations.

But what I did, I was going to San Diego and Michael Filsaime told me a couple of years ago when we were in London, I asked him, “Where is the most beautiful place you would want to live?” Because Michael Filsaime travels the world consistently. And he told me San Diego. Well, I had this conference there and I thought I’d take my family and we’ll spend a few weeks out there. Of course, live the California lifestyle. So we did the conference and then got a nice place by the beach. And literally, I just took the four hour work week principles….

I go on vacation last year I think like eight times. This year has just been nonstop, actually. We have a home. But normally I travel with my laptop, and I’m on my laptop going through emails, my support staff, blah, blah, blah.

This time, I just did not turn on my laptop. When I did turn it on, I’d have emails from my support staff five days old, screaming to me, like, “Please get back to us. We need to get information back to these people, and we feel bad because we’re not supporting them.”

And I was looking at them, thinking to myself, “OK. There’s a problem here.” But it’s very small problem. The question wasn’t a major question or anything. It was just a simple question. But I was like, “Bugger it. Let’s not even turn the laptop on and let’s just see if we can live that lifestyle.”

And then when get back to the office, work out what really went wrong that’s major and try to fix that so next time I go away I can just turn the laptop off. I came back and there was nothing major, a couple of questions.

So what I’ve done is now I put a project manager in place. So I’ve actually taken me out of the business, I put a project manager in place in the business. Now he’s running everything and he comes back to me.

I just think that reading “The FourHour Workweek,” changed my life. I think I read it in 2006 or 2007. I was away in Thailand when I read it. I think if I didn’t read that, my life would be totally different. Because I was working so hard towards something….

Michael, we all want millions in the bank. But do we need millions in the bank? No.

I’ve traveled all over the world this year, and I’ve spent less than $100, 000. Can I make that $100, 000 again? Of course. I can open a coaching program in a couple of weeks and we’ll make multiple hundreds of thousands. So I’m going to have a lot of money in the bank, plus I’m never going to be able to spend that much money. So it’s being able to realize that and just a lot of time off. You can do that, again, on a smaller level. Read “The Four Hour Workweek,” understand the philosophy of it, and just try and live by it in your own way, how you feel comfortable.

So you’ve mentioning you’ve been going to all these seminars. And you shared with me earlier your top tip for when you go to seminars, where all the networking is done, where all the business happens. Do you want to share that with us?

Yeah, of course. It’s a funny thing, we laugh about it every time we’re sipping a Corona or whatever we’re drinking at the bar. But the most important part of my business is actually networking with people. That’s how me and Michael met each other. We met at a seminar, and I actually went over to him and introduced myself to him, and tried to build that relationship. That’s what I like to do, go out there and meet people and see how I can help people. And I want to definitely come back on the point of positioning and stuff, Michael. If you can remember, just helping people and how to get started. Because maybe a lot of people on this call are trying to get started.

I’m going to write it down. Let me just write this down.

So what I did is go to the seminars, and we mingle and everyone goes in a seminar room. Normally, let me be honest with you, I never go in the seminar rooms to listen to the speakers talking. What I like to do is network in the corridors and stuff and just see who’s hanging around. They’re normally the cool cats. They’re normally the people that don’t need to be in the room.

That’s the truth. But what I like to do is to get the gurus drunk, kind of thing. Get them drunk. I spoke about that in “Guru’s Dream,” that’s like the biggest secret, I think, of mine. But that’s where the business happens, at the networking. The biggest business is actually drinking alcohol and hanging out at the bar.

It’s kind of funny, the most important part of my business is actually drinking alcohol and hanging out at a bar. That’s pretty cool. That’s a pretty cool business to be in. But that’s where business happens.

Michael: Brilliant. So that’s actually brilliant. And I completely agree. Because although I can’t go to a bar myself, I always feel a bit left out when we’re in America. But just for example last week when I was at Continuity Summit and Ryan went up on the stage right at the beginning and it’s like I’m sure we’ll see you at the bar and everyone’s going to be networking there. And it’s for everyone, everyone’s at the bar doing all the business.

Alex: Yeah, well, when I was in San Diego it was a Frank Kern’s event. So you’ve got Frank Kern, his cousin Trey, you got John Reese, Ed Dale, Jeff Walker, Ryan Deiss. You’ve got a number of successful people and somebody come up and said how do you actually network with these people? What’s the best way to do a joint venture? And then John Reese was talking up all these things, well you should promote their products and you should really try and help these gurus before you ask for something from them. I was at the back of the room. I just shouted out, “Get them drunk!” I screamed it out. All those guys looked at me, kind of thing.

But the fact of it is, that night I went out clubbing with John Reese, Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime. There was a ton, Yanik Silver was there. We were all in this like the bar it was, basically. I think we had the Black Eyed Peas DJ playing there that night. And we were all just drinking. We drunk until like four or five o’clock in the morning.

I got some great business deals from that effect. From that actual bar, sitting down with those people. That’s where business happens is the truth of the matter. It’s where people feel more at ease.

So for those who can’t get to a seminar and are not old enough to go to the bar, the big thing right now is Twitter. And you’re dominating Twitter at the moment, so do you want to share with us what you’re doing on Twitter and how my readers can do it too?

Yeah. Well I like to help my readers as much as possible. So I always put out things to my readers and say how can I help you? What’s the number one thing that’s stopping you in your business right now? Or what’s the number one thing that’s stopping you? And basically this month I have hundreds, well I’m sorry, it was last month. I had hundreds of people reply on my blog saying that they needed traffic. Now, I get a few thousand people a month to my blog, to my different sites, but I’m very lazy when it comes to driving traffic myself. I really am. I’ve got affiliates doing it for me. Pretty much I’m positioned now and it’s pretty cool. So I’m thinking to myself, like how the heck can I help these people?

So what I did was I actually thought I need to start a new traffic system and record it from start to finish as a newbie going through it. So I went to Twitter and I started using the system, and I actually teach this in tweetingwithyou.com . It’s a free Twitter product that I put together. It’s like six videos I put together and it shows start to finish me as a newbie first of all driving five people away from Twitter a day.

Then as soon as I started to learn the system, I was driving 50 people a day from Twitter. Then as soon as I got to grips with it, I can drive a thousand people a day away from Twitter to any website that I want. So that’s pretty cool and then I just recorded all that as a newbie.

And remember, this is marketing with you, so through the whole videos I’m saying I’m not a guru at this, and I’m not an expert. I’m just learning this with you. I’m a couple of steps ahead of you. So you can actually literally hang on to my tailcoat and follow me. And that’s what people want. They want somebody in between a guru and a newbie.

They want that person that can guide them and that’s how I like to play it out. So that’s how people can learn Twitter. Twitter traffic I talk about the whole psychology behind my Twitter system. The main thing is, Michael, this is the wording I got this from Perry Bechler, was don’t pimp your shit on Twitter. This is social media; you don’t want to be trying to sell on Twitter. You want to build relationships that move on to a business deal off of Twitter.

Like on Twitter, this is my bio. I like to brand me on Twitter, not my business, not marketingwithyou.com, it’s me. So this is my bio, if I can remember it. I love my fam, I love to jam, as I’m rocking the Internet marketing world, because I’m bad to the bone, so to speak. Marketingwithyou.com. It starts when people say, “Whoa, I love your bio.” And it just gets people to wonder like who is this guy? It’s called auto, what’s it called? Tweet later. So it’s like tweetlater.com. So this little service where you can program so when somebody follows you on Twitter, you can send them a Tweet back, a direct message. Most people say thanks for following me, here’s my website link, go to it. And to me I feel as if that’s spamming.

I have hundreds of these a day when I’m following so many people back and forth, hundreds a day. So this is my tweet that I send out automatically, why did the chicken cross the social media road? And then the answer is, to tweet of course. So what this does is people think, “Ha ha, this little joker.” But I didn’t know if it was going to be funny or not, but the response to that joke is so huge that people like it, reply back to me. It opens up dialogue that you can start saying to people, “If you want help with Twitter, here’s my free videos.” Then those people are more inclined to take action upon what you’re giving to them.

Jeff Johnson’s, I don’t know, most probably could be like the best super affiliate in our industry and I’ve met Jeff a few times. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to Jeff about business, but we’ve built up a great friendship through alcohol. Funny enough through alcohol. We get drunk together and me and him have a good drink every time we’ve met. And we obviously speak about some sort of business, but I don’t really, I’m not pimping my stuff to him. If he speaks about too much business I try and change the conversation. But we’re building great relationships. Of course if at some time there’s another party somewhere else in the world and all the big, big names are there, Jeff Johnson’s got access. Do you think he’s going to say, Alex, come on, get in? Because I’m a fun guy to be with, you know?

It’s those relationships. And is that sneaky? Well, you could call it stealth mode. But whatever, we all know what we’re doing. We’re building relationships for business purposes. I like people to ask me about me, not push myself on them. I like to ask them about them. People like to talk about themselves.

Let me just give you a really cool tip. I want to go back to helping people to success at the newbie level. And I know you’ve got some questions, but let me just tell you this. When I was in, actually it ties in to this. When I was in Florida back in July 2007, I went to Rich Schefren’s seminar over there. After the seminar funny enough we all went to the bar. So a lot of the people at the seminar went to a local pub, or a local bar, in the U.S.A. About 20 of us walked in there. Straight away, I went to the bar, and I bought everybody in the group a drink. I literally bought the first round of drinks. Then I went and played some pool. We were shooting pool, and I won a couple of games. So I’m on the pool table for a short while.

What started happening this is the cool part, and I didn’t understand it. But listen, people started coming to me, saying, “Hey, Alex! What do you want to drink?”

I’m like, “Yes, I’ll have another Corona.”

Then other people would be coming up to me with drinks because when they would go and buy their drink, they would just buy me a Corona. They saw what I was drinking, and they brought me one. Now all these latecomers were actually coming into the bar. I had all these people around me. Everyone’s buying me drinks. Everyone’s coming up to me. They were shouting to me, “What do you want to drink?”

Literally, I was double fisted with drinks all the time. I had a row of drinks on the side. People weren’t just buying me one drink back. Every time they went back to the bar, they were buying me more drinks. The people were buying me three drinks to my one drink.

Other people were saying, “Who the hell is this guy? Who’s Alex?” Then people were actually coming to stand around me, because they wanted to be around me. They didn’t know what was going on.

What you need to remember is at this time, I didn’t have a name in the market. Rich Schefren didn’t know who I was. It wasn’t that I had that connection with Rich then like I do now. Literally, I was a newcomer.

This had me thinking. When I left, I was like, “Wow! This is so powerful.” So I use that principle in my business stuff. If you can help people this is the thing. If you write an ebook, for instance, you write something. You help people.

Let’s use an ebook for an example. If I write an ebook, and then I give that ebook away for free, you don’t just give it to one person, so it’s not like you have to give a beer to each person. You give that one ebook one to many and what happens is because you use the Internet as leverage and you’ve got such a wide market, that ebook goes out to tens of thousands of people or whatever. As long as there’s enough value in that ebook, it doesn’t matter.

You’re not trying to sell in that ebook. What you’re doing is introducing buyin in that ebook. So you’re not pimping your shit in there. It’s not the oldschool way of adding affiliate links and all this kind of thing. What you’re doing is just adding so much value in that ebook that everybody’s like, “Wow. This guy is bloody cool.”

So what happens is you’ll get a certain percentage of people that want to be reciprocal, and they’re going to be reciprocal in a way that they want to get your next ebook or your next product.

What you do is, you’re not selling in the ebook. What you’re actually doing is you’re introducing buyin. You’re introducing the bar to them where they can buy you a drink back kind of thing. So what happens is you’re just introducing that buyin scenario to them. This is what I did with Guru’s Dream. I wrote the ebook. There were no affiliate links in it. There was nothing in there, apart from at the end. I let people know that I will be opening a coaching program shortly. It just sold out like crazy, because people wanted to be reciprocal, get more for me, and actually give me money for my time.

Michael: I completely agree with that as well, because I run my free ecourse on Income Diary. I actually have not just one, but multiple people quite regularly email me and say, “Wow, this is brilliant. Do you have a product I can buy, or do you want to tell me to buy an affiliate product so you can make a commission?” They just want to reward you for helping them out.

Alex: What we’ve just said there, seriously, was the thing that changed my business. It was the thing that took me from making nothing to actually making $2, 000 a month, to understand the process of making $2, 000 a month in this information marketing business, to making $5, 000 a month, to actually making $10, 000 a month, to making $20, 000 a month, to actually then blowing up the business to a half a million dollar a year business last year, and now bringing in a team to build it into a sevenfig business. What we just said then is so powerful. I think it’s the main key to that education implementation thing, you know?

So we’ve mentioned the whole Internet lifestyle you’ve got, and the fact that it gives you choices and freedom, but what exactly is the big Internet lifestyle to you?

The big Internet lifestyle? That’s a good question. Not having a boss. Sitting here in my khaki pants, my Tshirt, no socks on. A messy office. My lunch on the side of me. Literally rolling out of bed at two o’clock to speak to my project manager before getting on this call. Not having to get up. I go and play poker a couple of times a week. It’ll be like three a.m. by the time we’re wrapping up the last game. They’re like, “Man, I’ve got to start work at five.”

I’m like, “Bugger that! I’m sleeping in until I roll out of bed.”

Literally, I’ve never had an alarm clock in the last few years. It just comes down to very small things. Like yesterday, I took my son swimming. I did a lot what day was yesterday? Monday afternoon, I went swimming with my son. I came home and just went over to some friend’s house.

Of course, I do work very hard. It’s not that the Internet lifestyle gives it gives me the choice to whether I want to work or not. Mostly, that’s the answer to it, Michael. It gives me the choice to if I want to work or not. I love working. I love my business. I’m in love with my business not in the wrong way. I enjoy helping people because I understand that if I help people, they want to pay me.

This is the saying I go by, “Don’t chase money. Let money chase me.” If I can go out and give so much value that people are chasing me to pay me, like you’re experiencing yourself, and my experience from day one.

So I’m actually writing part two to Guru’s Dream. People can get as a free book. Go to
GurusDream.com. I’m writing the part two to it right now, which is called Newbie’s Nightmare.

Newbie’s Nightmare, I want to just give so much value in that report that people are begging me to pay me money to join my coaching program. But I’m not going to be selling my coaching program in the report. I’m just going to introduce a buyin scenario to them. Then it’s up to them to do it.

Of course, we’re going to do some psychological things, like subconscious messages and stuff. But that’s all down to marketing, you know?

So, yes. I love it. I really enjoy learning, and of course I really enjoy implementing, because I like seeing the PayPal account just explode.

What is your single biggest reason for your success, do you reckon, then?

Alex: This is really cool, and I’m glad you asked me this question. You just threw that on me, and I didn’t know you were going to say that question. It is acting a newbie, OK? When I used to go to seminars, people used to act the big guru. Even though they were newbies, they would say, “Oh, I’ve got this project going on, and I’ve got this going on.” They were acting as if they were really successful. Now, to me, I couldn’t see through it because I was a newbie with them. But if they started speaking to the gurus, the gurus would very quickly see that these guys were full of crap. They’d be like, “Oh my God. Another one of these fakeittiltheymakeit people.”

My mum used to say to me, “Alex, fake it til you make it.”

I was like, “No way will I ever do that. It’s like, no chance.”

So this is how I believe I’ve become so successful. When I was a newbie, I acted a newbie, and I asked for help. I would go to the people at the bars, and I would ask for help. I would buy a beer for Mike Filsaime, for instance.

This is what we did. There were like 20 people around him in this seminar, before he was my mentor. I stayed away from him for a couple of hours. I just went through the crowd, and I was like, “Mike, do you want a beer?”

He’s like, “Yes, I’d love a Bud.”

So I got him a bottle of Bud. I lifted it in the air, and I showed him my ID in my hand, and I went and sat down. He said, “I’m going to go and speak to this guy.”

We sat down and had a beer. I was like, “Dude! How the heck can I have a PayPal account like yours?” I went on. I was rambling like a big kid. It was just the point of I asked for help, and I acted. This is where I’m at. I was truthful. I think that’s the best way to be, and then just to take action on what these bigger people tell you.

So you have to go to seminars. If you can’t go to seminars, you definitely need a mentor. I don’t know if you’ve got mentors or not, Michael. I know your father must have been a great mentor, but obviously you must look up to other people as well.

I needed coaches. I needed people to make sure that I was taking action and then kick my ass if I wasn’t.

Michael: Exactly. If you can’t get to them, there is Skype right now. You can have a conference call. You can have a webcam. You’ve got to get someone pushing you to do better. That’s really important.

Alex: Yes, of course. If you can’t hold yourself accountable to people this is what happened. In January 2008, I put on my blog that I planned to generate a quarter of a million dollars in 2008. Now I didn’t have a clue how I was going to do that. Previously, in 2007, I’d only made $115, 000. So how was I going to double my business in a year? I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I held myself accountable. By the end of 2008, I generated over half a million dollars. So I quadrupled my business. In January of 2009, I put on my blog I’m going to make a million dollars this year. I was like, how the hell am I going to make a million dollars this year? I don’t know. But I held myself accountable to tens of thousands of people, and we’ll see what the results are. Hopefully we’ll do two million dollars, if it goes off anything like last year’s calculations.

But you want to hold yourself accountable to people. That’s what keeps pushing me forward. I know that I’ve put out there that I’m going to go for this figure. It’s not just me. Because it’s scary to think, I’ve got to build a milliondollar business this year.

I was on the call I was speaking to Rich Schefren last night. I told him that I’m scared. I don’t think that I’m scared of failure more than I’m scared of success. I think that I’m scared of success more than failure. We had a very good conversation over this. But, on all levels, it’s scary. The growth of anybody it’s got to be scary to build a million dollar business, whatever complications come in, because you don’t know the unknown. You’ve got to expect the unexpected.

Just bloody get out there and do something that’s proven. Follow what Michael’s doing. Listen. The group of people that Michael was with, whom I met in Washington in February your friends who are all on your blog, all those fellow young entrepreneurs, are geniuses. I was basically blown away by your crowd of people.

So it’s exciting times, I think. People should definitely be following you and asking you for help, Michael. Asking you for help, and of course you’ll be there to help them each step of the way. You don’t have to get it perfect; just get it going.

If you could go back in time and start all over again, what would you do different to make more money online?

What would I do different? I’m sure you’ll laugh when I say this but I would have built a continuity program.

I think if I would have realized, I would have built like a membership. The word “continuity” can scare people. Like a membership’s where there’s a monthly, recurring payment system in place. That would definitely be the one thing that I would do, because that’s just gold there. It could be like a $10 a month product, if need be. Like I’ve got friends who are making multiple thousands not tens of thousands but just multiple thousands a month from a $10 product that they sell. It just generates a couple of thousands a month. That couple of thousand could be a mortgage on a mansion, if you like, as well as doing other things.

Michael: You set it, and then you forget it. A lot of the time with continuity programs I mean everyone, and even if you’ve got an ebook, and you’re about to launch it, you can make a lot more money if you turned it into a recurring revenue stream.

Alex: Absolutely. So my whole business model is we’ve just done marketing with Alex 1.0. We’re actually going into marketing with Alex 2.0 right now with my next coaching program. Then, after that, we’re going into marketing with Alex 3.0, where we’re changing the whole business model to continuity. It’s all about bringing people in, leads, giving them an offer, and getting them into a monthly revenue. We’re going to build we don’t know the figures, but it’s going to be a very profitable business. Yes, continuity, I think, would be the thing that I would have changed.

What do you like least about the Internet?

The hype. It’s just the hype. I can say that, but then something else has just hit me actually using a bloody computer. I am no good at computers. I am the world’s worst at using one of these machines. I select the funniest thing about it. I just wreck them. All the time, I wreck these computers. I’m just not good at them. So computers first, then hype. It’s a hype driven market. I think it could be changed. It could definitely be changed, but does the market want to change? The market wants to buy the hype. It’s all about supply and demand, so it’s a very hard question, really. But I hate the hype on that. I’ve been sucked into it too many times and lost too much money. I built my business into a hype machine a year or two back, which I’m trying to change it from that now.

What do you like best about the Internet?

Money, money, money! Money. Just the money. Man, you want to have a life. As I say, opening up your PayPal account when you woke up and see how much money you made. But it isn’t kind of like that, because I’m consistent in my business in not being consistent. Literally, I’ve got no major consistency in my business, but I can make very high fluctuations in cash at any time that I want. So it’s just when you see that coming in, and it just goes, “Ching! Ching! Ching!” You see all those sales come in, and it’s just life changing. So the money, man.

If the Internet had not existed, what do you think you would be doing right now?

Packing up a load of bricks and taking them to somebody to put a load of cement on them and start building a wall. A load of crap, seriously. But the funny thing is that I’m actually building we’ve got a plot of land right next to my house well, actually we’ve got a halfbuilt house where the builders are actually working for me. They keep saying to me, “What the hell do you do?” Because they’re in my house, and I’m in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon. They’re making a cup of coffee, so I walk down like, “Grrrr!”

They’re like, “You’re going to work at all?”

I’m like, “Yes, I’ll be working.”

What I like to do is I like to work at night, where my family goes to bed my young son and my fiance. So I like to spend some time with them then go to bed. I like to work through the night, where there’s no distractions.

So where would I be? I’d be on some building site somewhere, mostly covered in rain, because of this ugly UK weather that we live in.

Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

There’s a lot of people that I look up to. If you look around my office at all the different education packages I’ve got and so forth. All the seminars I’ve been to and stuff. But the one person that I modeled was Mike Filsaime. Basically I met this guy and he showed me his PayPal account. It was fully loaded. I’m talking just stupid figures. Then he showed me a web account of his mailing list and we sat there having a beer together, funny enough. And as we sat there I was like dude, how the hell can I copy this? And he said his whole multimillion dollar business is built around his mailing list. Is built around his building a mailing list and then making money from that mailing list. Through building relationships and then making money from them. And I was like, I need to copy that.

So for the last couple of years I’ve been following Mike Filsaime. He has changed his business an awful lot now. Which again I’m going to be following in “Marketing With Alex 3.0.” So I would say Mike Filsaime is the guy that I followed. You can find him at twitter.com/mikefilsaime. Or his blog is marketingdotcom.com.

Then of course, he put me onto his mentor who is Rich Schefren. And now Rich is my business coach and pretty much one cool guy. So I look up to him. But I don’t try to model Rich, because Rich is way out of my league. Like seriously, that guy is like, he bends my brain every time I speak with him. It’s just that much knowledge.

He actually changes the way that I think. When somebody can do that to you, it actually hurts your brain. But so I would say them two are the guys that I really look up to. I love them. I tell them every time, I love them. Because they’ve changed my life.

Michael: Just to add to that, I think 95% of the hundreds of people I’ve interviewed, they’ve all said when asked the question what would you do? And they’d say build a list from day one. It’s really important.

Alex: Yeah, I mean, of course. This is the thing, like I built a list and my list for the last almost a year has been very stagnant. I haven’t grown it at all for the last year. It’s been very stale, let’s say, in growth. But what I’ve been doing is I’ve been learning relationship marketing with that list. I’ve been learning how to email market, how to relationship build for the people on the list. How to really make money from a list. So I built a list, that’s one thing. Making money from a list is another thing. So when I learned that, I built the relationships with these people. Now I understand list building and email marketing, now I’m deadly. Now I’m going to go off and build my whole business model.

Like I said “Marketing With Alex 3.0” is we’re going to have one squeeze page. We’re going to forget about all my other sites. We’re going to have one squeeze page and we’re going to drive as much traffic to there as possible, build a list, and then follow up with those prospects and turn them into customers and clients. And build a serious business. So I understand the formula now.

You’ve been talking about your very small amount for how much you work. How many hours do you actually work daily?

It depends. It depends. A good few, I would say. Some days I don’t work at all. Some days I can work eight hours. But then again, it depends. It really depends Michael. I’ve got no set agenda right now on my work. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to come to work for weeks if I don’t want to. Like I said, I’ve got the support people in place. I’ve got my project manager doing all the day to day tasks. All I need to work on is forward moving tasks like writing a new report, creating an event around that report. But it’s the buzz around it, so that a lot of people come and download it, read it, go through the whole process of man this guy’s giving me so much value. Then introduce buying to them. Then offer them an offer they cannot refuse. A certain percent is going to give me a load of cash.

So I would say I can work eight hours a day, three days a week. So let’s just say two to three hours a day, seven days a week.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

That was a very long winded answer for you, wasn’t it? What’s the best bit of advice I’ve ever been given? There’s too much. If you can make money, then you can make ten times the money, like I said at the very beginning. So anybody that knows how to make money right now in any certain industry, can you teach that to people? Because they are going to be willing to buy it from you. But instead of trying to sell it to them, offer them help. Then once you’ve offered them help, they’re going to be very thankful to you. Then introduce to them the selling opportunity. That’s just one.

I mean, yeah, list building is the number one of course. List building, build your list. That’s the number one thing Michael. I could give you a thousand different things.

Give things away for free, and then people will want to pay you money.

Alex, thanks very much for the interview. I know you’ve got lots of things going on. Do you want to share with us any personal or business future plans or goals?

Get back into the gym. As soon as I get off this call I’m going to the gym. I really want to get fit again. The truth of it Michael is that I’m learning how to build a multiple million dollar business right here, right now. For people to say this is just easy I work two hours a day or something, that’s pretty much a crock because I know all the big, big guys, they work. They own big corporations again now. So I’m trying not to get to that level, but I want to build a multimillion dollar business where I have to just come in and do a couple of hours a day. It’s taken me a lot of time sitting here at the computer which I’m very crap at. Like I told you. So, yeah, it does take time to get there. But I’ve got the end goal; I know the four hour work week philosophy. I don’t want to work myself to death. I want to just have a nice lifestyle, which I do live.

So yeah, one of my goals is get back to the gym. So exactly after this call I’m in the gym for the first time this week. I only went once last week. So really that’s my life goal. And of course, maybe travel a little less, Michael. It’s just jet lag constantly. I’m just forever being jet lagged.

This is a crazy experience right now. But people say you’re living the life. To me they say we’re living the life, so it’s pretty nice to know things are happening for me. It is nice. Because I’m a forward thinking person, so I’m always thinking forward. So sometimes you have to sit back and reflect on the past and then you just say wow. Sometimes you’re like bloody hell, you know?

Thank you Alex — You are one REAL GUY — I think a few of my readers will be surprised with some of your answers — but you know, I like to “mix it up a bit”

Plenty of variety and Daily Inspiration for Entrepreneurs – that is my Goal here at IncomeDiary.com