FastWebFormula 4 Review With James Schramko & Ezra Firestone

Podcast: Download (Duration: 46:31 — 42.7MB)

Listen in as James and his two special guests discuss the highlights of the recently concluded FastWebFormula 4 event.

James Reynolds, James Schramko and Ezra Firestone

Topics discussed:

00:50 – I’ve got two special people with me
02:15 – SilverCircle members’ workshop
06:02 – The Leverage Session
08:51 – Content Creation
12:54 – Ezra Firestone takes the stage
15:30 – The first live TAG podcast
18:00 – The importance of podcasting
21:15 – Bringing the community together
25:01 – The Simplify Module
26:54 – Conversions with Clay Collins
29:10 – One of James’ favorite sessions
37:51 – The final session: Action
43:43 – Where is the next event happening?

LetJames guide you towards your own business success

Quotables:

“…the 4% of things that you’re doing are getting that 64% of results” – James Schramko – Click To Tweet
“…different people prefer to consume media in different formats” – Ezra Firestone – Click To Tweet
“Stop being a consumer, start creating and the results will be great” – James Reynolds – Click To Tweet

Download the PDF transcription

Transcription:

James Schramko here. Welcome to a very special episode of SuperFastBusiness. This one is the FastWebFormula 4 debrief and it’s being conducted in a somewhat unofficial environment. I’m actually sitting at home using a portable recorder on my coffee table and right beside me, in real life, I actually have Ezra Firestone.

Ezra: Flanked. By Ezra Firestone.

James: Flanked. I’m flanked. And Ezra from New York who participated as an expert speaker at FastWebFormula 4 on the topic of e-commerce and we’ll come to that in just a moment but I also have another special guest from overseas, we have James Reynolds from Dubai.

J. Reynolds: Sitting on the right flank. See, Ezra’s to the left, I’m to the right.

James: So I’m flanked. (laughs) Now we all have a tea here so if you hear Ezra slurping, he’s got the hot tea.

Ezra: Chamomile.

James: It’s not actually.

Ezra: This is chamomile.

James: No, it’s just normal black English tea.

Ezra: Oh man… I guess you’re right.

James: Well, since I made it, I’m pretty certain. If you hear a clink in the glass, that’s because Reynolds and I have opted for the long island tea which apparently, famously, has no actual tea in it, did you know that?

Ezra: I didn’t.

James: No. See, we’re already into it. We’re actually… this is the day after the event and we have in front of us the event run sheet and we thought it’d be a good idea just to talk about what happened on each day and just get some basic reflections. What do you think guys?

J. Reynolds: Sounds good. Let’s do it.

James: Alright. So, in fact, just before FastWebFormula 4, there was a pre-event and that was just a small group workshop for SilverCircle members and at that one we had 20 of the 30 members flew in from all around the world and all around Australia and Tasmania to the event. You guys aren’t laughing but it’s funny for Australians. Tasmania is part of Australia but it’s sometimes referred to that little island off the south coast of Australia.

Ezra: I could go back and laugh if you want to say it again.

J. Reynolds: I’m sure the listeners are laughing.

James: Yeah, people from all around Australia and also from Tasmania.

James: And what we talked about there was… How would you describe that day? It was quite a bit unusual format compared to your average Mastermind format. The average Mastermind format is you’re sitting around a table and each person has a turn and they say what their problem is and everyone else solves it. In this case, we did a different format. So, what did we do and how do you think it went?

J. Reynolds: We did a P.E.Q. session, which I still don’t quite know what the P.E.Q. stands for but it was all, 20 of us in the room, we dig in deep on you know big sort of problems and really get everyone’s involvement in on that one issue and then drilling it down to kind of some really strong action items that people take away.

Ezra: I thought one of the cool things about that was you get 20 people’s viewpoints on one topic and a lot of people have overlapping solutions to problems. And then what we did was we took the 20 or so answers that came out of it and we boiled it down to the top three.

James: How did we boil it down though? This is… this is where it’s different than the round the table everyone suggesting their answers because typically, the problem with that is that the most persuasive or influential person is going to get their point across well.

But in this case, everyone’s answers are individually written down privately to them and then shared and you put everyone’s answers up until there’s no more people left. And once you have all the answers, then we score them. We vote…

Ezra: That’s right.

James: …which answers have the most points.

Ezra: And each answer is anonymous at that point. That’s cool.

James: Well by the time that they’re all up. It’s not about… oh this was Ezra’s idea or this was James Reynold’s idea. It was like… that’s just the idea. You see the deal is, a lot of people have come up with the same answer but if it’s already on the board you just don’t add it again. So now, it might be Ezra and James and someone else’s idea.

They all have the same idea, but it’s up on the board and then the idea has to fight for itself against all other ideas. And the goal is actually to rub off all the other ideas except for the top three.

So for a really well-framed question, you can end up with three solid answers and the whole thinking is that, if we focus more of our energy on just the best answers, we’ll get a better result than trying to implement every answer because as you know, we try and have too many things to do and we do a lot of them poorly but if we only have one or two things, or maybe three things to do, then it’s actually much easier to slice through those.

Ezra: Yeah and I think that goes along really well with the theme of the SilverCircle group itself which is focusing on getting one thing done each week. And what’s interesting about that is you wouldn’t expect to be more effective doing less things but in my experience you turn out to be significantly more effective than doing less things better.

James: Yeah. So, that was an interesting day. It was really good for people to meet each other and we finished up, we had a nice dinner opposite the Opera House and then we rolled into the first day at FastWebFormula 4. We had around 125 people come and we kicked it off with a session on leverage. That was my topic. I wanted to have a reflection on what was going on in my business over the last 18 months.

Things like OwnTheRacecourse, the way that SuperFastBusiness started from scratch pretty much and became a solid website for my business. But also other leverage points that I found have been like the few things that I focus on but I do lots of it and I just stop doing a lot of things and I think that people felt the sense of relief that knowing that they can actually get compound effect from doing less things but just doing the right things. Where there any highlights for you in the leverage session?

J. Reynolds: Leverage. What have we’ve covered… we’ve covered a few good bits for me which actually come up in the previous day was really acknowledging who your best customers are by working much more with them so we talked about lead scoring which was a strong one.

Really identifying based on you know, value of sales, you know, how often people order. Identify those top customers and just working with them and kind of ignoring or giving less attention to the rest. That was a big one for me.

Ezra: I thought the Top 4% concept was an interesting one.

James: Yeah, so if you take the Pareto Principle, we know the 20% of things we’re doing are getting 80% of the results. Well, if you move that a little bit further down the scale, the 4% of things that you’re doing are getting that 64% of the results. So just a few things getting the majority of your results. For most people, if you took all the things that you’re doing poorly or that you never even getting to, you could safely just cross them off.

And it’s actually not going to change anything at all. And one of the statistics I shared was how the bottom 40% of my customers were generating me a massive 2% of my gross revenue. Just 2%. And that lead me to a huge shift in the way that I sell my products and it created a much simpler model.

I far have less products and services in my product lineup now and much more clarity about how I’m serving those products, like the recurring aspect of it versus single products, and also who I’m serving those products to. And that clarity in thinking resulted in the products page on SuperFastBusiness.com.

If you have a look at that products page, that is an exact reflection of what the change to my business has been and how it’s been such a good change. So then we went into another session that I ran called Create. This one was really driving you in the point that most people are consuming and taking stuff in and not doing enough creating.

And I think we’re in a content creation environment where creating something, even like this audio, it just involves one audio recorder and us to create this.

But it’s something we can leverage, we can record this, publish it for other people, thousands of people can listen to it and get tips and ideas that we’re talking about and at some point in the recording, someone might think, “Hey you know what that sounded like a cool conference.

I’d love to come to the next conference!” And if that would be the result then that would be a payoff for creating that content. So did you like the content creation session?

Ezra: Yes (laughs)

James: Awww that’s a tough…

Ezra: Well no, tell you what, it’s one of the consistent conversations that we’ve been having for six months now. That creating content that is relevant to the topics and conversations that your community is interested in and then syndicating that content so that you can see it… so that they can see it, is a very effective strategy for engaging your group of people and then making them offers.

I’ve implemented that in every one of my businesses. Not even my content businesses, my physical product businesses and you know I’m a big believer in this.

James: Well I think you’d be a massive believer like a day or so in the launch of your product at the moment which you and I have been talking about quite some time and sharing ideas on how to structure the content, how to record it, how to make it effective for the person doing. I think we even created a bonus piece of content for it.

Ezra: We did. We did.

James: So now you’re getting the payoff. You literally getting thousands of people buying something from you. So you get a payoff for actually creating something.

Ezra: Yeah. I think it is the most highly leveraged use… I have decided that is the most highly leveraged use of my time. Creating content.

James: And you’re now an expert. And James you were telling me recently about your results from doing the OwnTheRacecourse in your business.

J. Reynolds: Yeah. I mean it’s just been, it’s been fantastic. You know you can take a little time to gain traction and you got to keep doing it consistently. But after a while, that payoff will be huge and you just find yourself popping up in people’s environments all the time.

I mean the conversation I have now with people that come to me and said, “I just see you everywhere!” and that’s the result of the consistent content I’ve been putting up and it’s converting people from interested parties into sales because they’re beginning to trust me more and yeah, the payoff’s been fantastic. So, yeah, stop being a consumer, start creating and the results will be great.

James: And just a regular content schedule. I mean we laid out the formula in this particular module and if you want to get a taste for it, at least opt-in for OwnTheRacecourse from the SuperFastBusiness website. There’s opt-ins on the side by there or the yellow thing that slides up. They lead to the first course that I put out about this.

Ezra: I think that a really nice little nugget from that session was the storytelling. The one sentence about storytelling.

James: Ah yes. Incorporating stories. I actually shared…

Ezra: Who did what and when..

James: Yeah and I shared stories about the stories I’ve been using how they came about and the results I got from it. Now if you’re listening to this and you want to get access to these recordings, you will be able to get them inside the SuperFastBusiness.com membership. You just go to SuperFastBusiness.com and join up.

I’ll be putting the recordings in that membership when I get the recordings and we’ll be formatting them and making them look nice. So, next up, we had a nice lunch. I buy lunch for people at these events.

J. Reynolds: Lunch was good.

James: Yeah, good networking. Then Ezra took the floor and he had 90 minutes of non-stop, and by non-stop, I mean, did you actually breathe?

Ezra: I did. I took some breathes in there.

James: Took some breathes and he delivered stunning and compelling session on e-commerce and the sort of thing he’s been up to and it was totally aligned with the course he’s putting out called Brown Box Formula and we have a link to that on the ThinkActGet.com podcasts that we do on our products page. You could check that out.

Now, Brown Box Formula’s out. Ezra is now the authority in the e-commerce space and we’re lucky enough Ezra to share with us the session. And how did you think the session went for you?

Ezra: I thought it went really well. I mean I really enjoyed listening to myself talk so I of course thought it went well but I did get positive feedback on it from the group and you know one of the things that… you’ve… we’ve been talking about, you and I for a while is when you are presenting information, it’s good to have attention on whether or not the people you are presenting it to can consume it.

And one of the mistakes that I’ve made in the past is having too much content in my presentation. So much so that it’s hard for people to walk away and remember those concepts because I’m speaking so fast so this time I try to slow it down a little bit and I think I could even slow it down more.

James: Relatively speaking, you’re quite a fast-paced presenter and the people who are in e-commerce, who came to the event came up to me afterwards and said, “That ticked the big box for me.” So I think it was a success based on that.

J. Reynolds: I think even… I mean you positioned Ezra going in as being great for people that do e-commerce and for those that are perhaps selling services to e-commerce.

But there was so much in there that was fantastic in terms of general conversions, strategies and trust factors that people could take away from your presentation apply it to whatever business they’re in even if they’re just in services or an offline business. That was some really good stuff there, so I enjoyed it. (Laughs)

James: And that’s why I scheduled that topic because you can’t hide from it. Normal retail stores are suffering and it’s going to be a part of it and in my own customer base, e-commerce stores are fantastic service business customers. So we had afternoon tea and I don’t think I could have prepared for what happened next.

It was definitely a world first, I think, but Ezra and I did a podcast on a ThinkActGet podcast show. We had some brand new T-shirts that a customer had sent us. A fan had made some shirts.

Ezra: Beautiful beautiful shirts.

James: New logo.

Ezra: Yeah, new logo.

James: So then we wore those and we podcasted for 90 minute straight. Now after the big e-commerce presentation, then afternoon tea, Ezra’s voice was starting to wane. He was getting a little bit queasy so we got him some tea. He kept sipping that tea for about 82 minutes?

All: (Laugh)

James: Eight minutes to go, Ezra announces that he really needs to go to the bathroom and he just hopped out of his chair and disappeared off the stage. It’s just fantastic. It’s one of those magic moments.

Ezra: You know we had closed. We moved to the Q & A section.

James: We did. We actually played that… the audio to confirm that we moved to the Q & A and Ezra’s heard on tape saying, so are we finished the show now and just into questions? Right I got to pee.

All: (Laugh)

James: Yeah but that would have been enough but it was even better when Ezra came back and he started answering a lady’s question but he didn’t know what the question was so he just answered it anyway.

Ezra: I think it was a relevant answer.

James: To you it was. No it was great. It was really good… it was one of those moments. When I spoke to people after that, they said they really enjoyed watching our chemistry and seeing how our show is actually recorded. Did you enjoy it?

Ezra: I did and I think if we’re talking, you know, taking a step back the content creation side of things, that episode 21 of ThinkActGet, which will actually be live by the time you’re listening to this episode, would be an episode worth listening to if you’re interested in the process behind creating long form content which is what a podcast is.

James: Is it?

Ezra: I think so, yeah.

James: I do short podcasts.

Ezra: Well it’s still long for a content when you take a look at the fact that most content created in our community is three to five minute, video type content.

James: Ok. But when I take the audio from that video and put it on my site as a podcast…

Ezra: Oh I see. Well I consider pod… I don’t consider that a real podcast.

James: I would change the definition to show, maybe, if it’s a show sometimes they’re going to be longer but yeah, I know what you mean. Dedicated… it’s a dedicated show, a podcast show. You also do podcasts, too, James.

It’s a really common thing within our small group because I’ve been a real advocate of this since I got introduced to it by another podcaster and it’s been… You know, we’re actually gone survey where my best customers came from. So many of them have come from the podcast because it’s a great way to differentiate. How’s the podcasting been going for you?

J. Reynolds: Fantastic. It’s been… It’s been great. I think what’s so good about is it is as I said, it can be a long form piece of content and it’s probably one of the only opportunities you get to be in someone’s ear but it’s almost in a one to one fashion for 60 minutes.

In your case even 90 minutes when you did the session the other day and that’s unique you know. You build up trust with people, they get to know you and yeah I’ve had some really good payoffs. Ezra’s been a guest in my podcast.

Ezra: I like you podcast. I listen to your podcast and I like your artwork. You just have an epic, your content is really really good. I want to point out that in the SilverCircle day, before FastWebFormula 4 started, you asked, “Who here found out about me on the podcast?” and almost every person raised their hand.

James: There were two thirds… that’s a lot, yeah. And these are, more than a thousand dollars a month customers so I also record our podcast after the SilverCircle day with a couple of our members. Most SilverCircle members are podcasting and at the least being guest at other people’s because it is such a great traffic technique. So that was a lot of fun and I’m going to look forward to watching a video of that as well just for extra medium.

On the side note there, when I put the course out, it comes with videos but also we transcribe it and we strip out the audio because a lot of people like to consume the entire event in audio format or they like to read it. In fact this might sound crazy but I like to read the transcripts of my previous events. I find that that’s the fast and easy way for me to remember what was discussed by just reading the word for word transcript.

Ezra: You know, It’s interesting when you have a look at the world that we’re in today and how different people prefer to consume media in different formats and it’s so easy to cater to each different format because you only need one piece of content to have a video, to have an audio, to have text, to have image. It all comes from one piece of content.

J. Reynolds: Well that’s what you guys pretty did the other day, right? I mean that’s what it was, everything right there up on stage. You got the video, you got the audio out of it and I guess that’s transcribed as well so.

James: It will be. Someone’s transcribing this call and I always sympathize with them, thinking every time I actually say a word, they’re going to have to transcribe that too, like this one and that one and the next one. OK. We then had dinner and it doesn’t sound very remarkable but it was a great dinner. One of the keys to this event was to bring together the community. I mean when you have 125 people seated 10 to a table.

It’s like 12 tables? And it was so noisy. I asked the DJ, you know, could you put some music on? And the DJ said, it is on. And the voice, the conversations were overpowering the music in the background because people were just so connected to each other, deep in conversation. And it went from 7 till almost 12 actually.

Ezra: It was just such a high touch event and that’s one of the lessons that I took away as someone who puts on events and gather people together.

James: As someone who’s sitting there on a FastWebFormula 4 hoody.

Ezra: In a FastWeb… exactly. That… the details really do matter. You know, you really took care of everyone and made sure that the tablecloths were nice and the menu was beautiful. Everything was just so… all… you paid so much attention to the details that everyone felt so well taken care of. Who wouldn’t want to have the experience again?

James: You know you said the magic word there… again. No kidding. It’s the experience. We’re in the experience economy so I want people to have an experience. I give them clothing. I feed them. We entertain them and we give them good content. We did have a comedian there and you made it hard for him Ezra because half his jokes were about you and you had a little sleep after such a huge day and jet lag and everything else.

But there were some very very funny gags there, we have Joel Ozborn and he’s tremendously generous. He went well over his, the amount of time that I booked him for and had some crack at jokes. Do you remember any of them that stood out for you James?

J. Reynolds: Well I remember he was tremendously bendy. He managed to get his whole body through a tennis racket at one stage. You missed that Ezra. I don’t know how he did it but somehow he went through the tennis racket and came out the other side. Yeah I know it was good stuff because it had the crowd in fits of laughter and it was a great end to the day. Great conversations followed by great laughs. A real good fitting way to finish Day 1.

James: I like how he, you know the story of Steve Owen, the missing mouse right? My friend Steve O who’s quite often on these podcasts. There’s always a bit of a joke that he may or may not have borrowed one of my mouse years ago, an actual computer mouse. Well I got him back by nominating him as the volunteer. That sounds weird, volunteer.

He went over to Steve O and said, if anyone would like to volunteer, just put your hand up. He was like saying it in Steve’s face quite where he understood that he was the volunteer.

He had Steve up there on the stage and he blindfolded him and he then got lighter fluid and squirted it all around Steve O and all over Steve O’s trousers and then asked the audience if he could borrow a lighter, which someone happily gave him, and he bent over to ignite the lighter fluid and then stopped and looked up and said, seriously, no one’s going to stop me?

All: (Laugh)

James: And then he said, “You guys are terrible. This is unbelievable. I’m about to set fire to this man…” and Steve O was in a blindfold so he didn’t know what was going on. Now, it was obviously water, not lighter fluid. And there was nothing bad happening but it was such a great visual gag. Alright so the next morning, we dug into a topic called “Simplify” and the point of that was to really drum home this idea that we can do this.

We got to stop trying to do so much. Do a lot less and I thought, one of the cool things was actually to ask you to come up, James, because you do the business model way, you’re dealing with customers, providing them really really good solutions. And the way that you do your business is simple and so many people struggle with it.

I’m not going to cover the details of how that works here but anyone watching the recordings of this would see how elegantly simple it is and I mentioned you probably got a lot of people coming to you afterwards, saying I get it, I get it now.

Ezra: That whole simplified module was perfectly in line just with the sentiment of the two days. The amount of conversations that I had. I’m just like, you don’t need to be doing that, you can make it much more simpler than you’re trying to make it. I think people try and justify the effort by making it actually harder themselves and it’s just not necessary.

James: If they do that even before they have a single customer and the way you do business allows you to serve your customers better by being so focused in making sure your customer is happy and that’s why it so aligned with how I think it should be done.

And I’ve been really really focused on exactly the same thing the way I on my piece of that puzzle is to make sure that my customers are very very happy as well and everything works really well. Did you enjoy that module?

Ezra: I missed it. Right, yeah I see.

James: There you go. It’s so simple, you don’t even have to do it. Well that’s why we recorded it buddy. Yeah I’ll be watching. You really did need to sleep you know.

Ezra: Yeah, I was wrecked.

James: So anyway, we then went to conversions with Clay Collins and he had a popular, popular presentation there because he sees a lot, he knows a lot about this. He’s been on SuperFastBusiness many times and he did say he was actually surprised how many people in the community are so switched on already.

They’re using LeadPages, they are getting good conversions and he even had some of our audiences come up and share some of their best conversion techniques and how they got some test results with very, very high percentage conversions. I think the way how Clay is so direct and raw was really appreciated. What do you think of that session?

Ezra: I just think Clay is a genius. I love Clay, he’s a good guy, he’s hilarious and he’s unfiltered and he has his attention on that subject. He is simple. He’s paying attention to that he does it really well and about half of the things he said, I’ve already implemented so I was really happy about that session.

James: Yeah and some of the test results that I had and some of templates I’ve given him, he implemented that for everybody and the whole system which was fantastic.

J.Reynolds: I think what’s great about Clay is that he has access to so much information, right? I mean, you know, people that are using LeadPages. To know what Clay is presenting is bang on the money and actually really what’s working right now and that’s fantastic. Simple stuff in many cases but really big wins. Again looking at 4% just a few things applied can make a massive difference to the business.

Ezra: Yeah and I don’t think that there’s anyway to get ‘cause what he has is access to platform level conversion data. Not just one business but templates across that whole platform, every industry and it’s pretty amazing, the data we can get.

James: It’s always massive, high-volume customers ask him if he can build stuff that they’re doing into the template and make it easy for them and then everyone gets to share that, and he asks for commission of course which is great. So then after the conversions one, we had one of our favorite sessions because we had three different people coming out, three different topics.

And it was really good to do after lunch on the last day because we got some unexpected stuff. First up was Ryan Spangler. Ryan is a video production expert. I’ve interviewed him on the show as well and he is instrumental in helping me get my videos looking better.

He came up and talked to us about how he is using video. He’s also another SilverCircle member and he’s had tremendous success using videos to do things where he used to do it manually, like replacing actual calls to customers while making a video instead. And he likes making videos and he’s good at it so it’s a natural fit.

He also showed us exactly what equipment we can buy for just around the $2,000 mark. We can end up with some pretty good gear that is well above the standard stuff that most marketers are putting out, if they are even doing video, and not far off the studio level stuff that you would have to pay a lot more for.

You get right close to that mark using some good gear. So, I really enjoyed Ryan’s presentation. He totally got the brief, it was a stunning quality and the audience really appreciated it too. Did you get something from it?

J. Reynolds: Yup. I got sense from it and it was interesting to see that, you know, the whole audience got a lot from it because later in the day there was actual videos submitted which had been submitted prior to Ryan’s presentation and so many of the crowd were going “Well, that’s not following that tip and it’s not following that tip,” so they’d obviously picked up the information which was great.

It was a classic “How to get started” and anyone who’s not doing video would have moved very quickly from, you know, producing probably quite poor or average videos to really good high quality stuff from that presentation.

Ezra: I missed Ryan’s presentation as well and I want to point out why because I’m going to go back and watch it because I follow Ryan’s blog and he is a genius. You know one of the things about these live events is there’s such a good opportunity for networking and for doing business deals.

So, I’ve got a crew of people here in Australia now that I’m friends with and that are interested in what I do and one of them offered to take me to lunch. It was really nice, we talked all about his physical product business and we’re going to end up doing his, you know, I’m going to get business out of that and that wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t been down here for this event.

James: Yeah, going to live events is crucial and it’s something that I plan for and fund.
I mean, both of you guys are from another country, so, but you don’t seem to have a Dubai accent, James.

J.Reynolds: No. Well, I’m not Australian, clearly. Though many people think I am, funny
enough, when I bump into people in Dubai where I actually live now. But no, I’m English,that’s who I am but living and residing in Dubai right now.

James: Yeah, going to live events is all about… in fact, that’s how I met you, since
travelling to Dubai.

J.Reynolds: Yeah, three and a half years ago now.

James: Yup and…

Ezra: Where did we first connect? Like really connect was at a bar and I don’t even
drink. (Laughs)

James: 2000 yeah, in San Francisco. So, it is imperative to travel if you
want to notch your business up. Now, the Ryan lessons went… fit really well into the next one which was Allan Irvine and Allan came and talked to us about acting. He actually fielded questions from people about what they’re scared of or being on camera.

He gave some terrific recommendations about eye lines. He actually revealed to the audience what I do that saw few people do with my videos that allow my videos to pull it off versus when people look insincere or shifty. He actually highlighted the difference. He gave some techniques for overcoming nerves.

And one piece of advice that I thought he gave out that was really honest and that is that it does take time to build confidence on camera and you just… the more time that you have on camera, the more comfortable you become with the camera. So, I won’t tell you what the thing that I do is, you’ll have to watch the video for that one.

But I thought that after that, again, when the other videos were played, people would have been able to contrast their performance with what he had taught us and if you took the audience after those presentations and asked them to make those videos again, I think they’d be even better. But here’s the thing, out of 125, we had I think around 25…

J.Reynolds: There were, I mean I was surprised by the number there was a lot of video
submissions.

James: …a lot of video submissions and there were at least half of them were of a
better standard than you normally see out there in the marketplace and I think it’s because our community is very video- and content creation-savvy compared to the average bear.

Ezra: I mean half of them were epic, really nice, well done, well thought out, high production value videos.

James: We’ll come to that section but yeah, that will be a fun discussion (Laughs).
Kyle got on then and talked about selling services to local businesses, Internet and traffic services and he taught as much as he would teach in an entire course over weeks in 30 minutes.

And when it boils down to it, it’s way way easier than people think and I’m going to be recommending anyone interested in this, just spend 30 minutes to watch Kyle’s video about how to get this services business. He gave us the top four things you need to do.

J. Reynolds: Yup.

James: It was four things and they were simple things and I actually regurgitated that information today on the telephone to somebody who was having a mental blockage around how they’re going to be going about doing this and I just gave him the shortcut version and they totally clicked with it. They got it. It is a simple business model.

I mean, I’m sitting here looking at your mug there Ezra, which is an “I Love SEOPartner” mug and that at some point, that domain name I picked up for $500 on a GoDaddy auction. So, I’ve taken a $500domain, turned it into an entire seven figure business and now it’s got its own mugs and T-shirts but the whole thing is when I started, it was such a simple idea.

I just find someone who needs more traffic to their website and then I supply it, and you know it’s such a simple idea. And if you can leverage it up, then it can be a big idea.

Ezra: You know, in the case of local consulting and often times you don’t actually have to be the one who is fulfilling on what it takes to create that result.

James: I think of Mercedes-Benz cars to give you a good metaphor for that. It doesn’t have Mercedes Benz tires and it doesn’t have a Mercedes Benz battery because there are people out there who’d do those things well and are scalable, consistent, reliable, they do their own research and development and they’re good at it and they’ve been doing it for a long time, so it will be silly for Mercedes to try and vertically integrate the entire.

They just focus on the bits they’re really good at which is traditionally things such as the engine. Mercedes Benz had the first combustion engine vehicle in the world and they still make their engine for most of their cars, so the engine is going to be a Mercedes Benz, the gearbox is a Mercedes but in a lot of other cars it’s not. There’s gearbox suppliers who give gearboxes to the car manufacturers to mate up with the engine.

But, the little peripheral stuff, it’s not worth getting into it. You’re not just going to go and make a battery business to make the batteries for the remote control, you’re going to go to Eveready or Duracell or whatever.

So, figure out which parts of your business you should be doing and which parts you should not be doing and I think that was a great distinction from the event with the 4% power curve concept, with what Kyle said, with what I said, with what you said, James, it was just a recurring theme. You could probably stop doing a lot of stuff and have a better business for it.

And then, we went into another session which was called “Action” and this was the final session of the day. And my goal with this, the thing that I had planned about four months ago before the event was that I wanted to help people get value from the event so I gave them an exercise to prioritize all their actions and to come up with at least one thing that they’re going to do with the top few.

And when I say few I really do mean few, maybe half a dozen things that will dramatically change their business. And I actually, hand-on-heart believe that a participant of FastWebFormula 4 who was paying attention and turned up to all of the modules (laughs) will, I’m looking at Ezra there.

Ezra: As you got no hope.

James: Folks, if you go to events, sit in on the sessions if it’s a good event. If it’s a crap event, sure. And, make people take you to dinner afterwards. Now, if you… if someone went to that event and they’re paying attention and they’ve identified their top actions, they will get a significant lift in their business, so as I’m going to be looking for success stories from this particular event.

One of the most fun things we did, we had a competition. I gave away a bottle of $700 Grange Hermitage, it’s a famous Australian wine. And to win it…

Ezra: Or priceless, also.

James: Well, no, it’s $700 and something dollars.

Ezra: Yeah yeah, and there was a priceless ThinkActGet limited edition shirt.

James: Oh yeah, yeah. There was, it was a shirt. It was priceless.

Ezra: I think so. That’s right.

James: Well, it was the only one left after Ezra put the rest in his bag (laughs). I’ve been ratting your bag here while you’re staying at my place.

Ezra: Well only two, I only got two.

J. Reynolds: Got two.

James: I got… three (laughs).

J. Reynolds: For that, that you got three.

James: The priceless three but only because I don’t know what size I am. The size I think I am everyone says I’m not.

Ezra: James thinks he’s an XL but he’s an easy L.

James: Yeah, so this, you know, I’m so confused by it at the moment. I’ve got, I’m holding one of each.

Ezra: But you did wear an L on the last day and you looked fantastic.

James: Did I? When I look back at the video if I look chubby, then I’ll be…(laughs) I’ll come looking for you. Someone told me the FastWebFormula 4 hoodies look like we’re an army of Smurfs, it’s like the Smurf blue.

Ezra: I like, I quite like the color.

J. Reynolds: I like the color. The blue is a happy vibrant color. It’s full of energy.

James: Well, this time I actually had a friend of mine over when I had to send my order. Like literally sitting here in the same seat and I said “Oh gee! I’ve got to send off my hoodie order” (laughs) I didn’t say “Oh gee!” it was something else, and he happens to be a fashion designer and I said “Michael, what color should this be?” and he goes “Well, what were they before?” and I went and showed him the last three and then he said “Alright, this one,” then he picked the ones we’ve got.

Ezra: And it’s a bold statement.

James: It’s bold, well we had red ones before. That was bold.

Ezra: Yeah that’s bold.

James: But it’s still pretty bold.

Ezra: It is.

James: Here is my main question as a promoter. Is it a keeper or a thrower?

Ezra: No, this is a keeper and I slept in this last night. (laughs) So, there you go.

J. Reynolds: Well,I’ll be wearing mine when I turn up the air-conditioning really high in Dubai (laughs). I’ll have my hoodie on and my hands in my pockets.

James: Why do you have to chuckle you’re seen in there with three or four (laughs) tops on. It’s a little bit cool here in Sydney compared to Dubai.

J. Reynolds: It’s a few, it’s a few degrees lighter at the moment, yeah.

James: So anyway, we’ve reviewed the competition winners. As Ezra said, there’s a lot of video submissions and the criteria was top tip, keep it under a minute. And as Clay Collins and Ezra were the judges, I asked them to come up and to watch them. And I don’t know if you can get two more different people than Clay Collins and Ezra Firestone.

Ezra is very relaxed and chilled. Clay is quite intense and analytical. So, to have those two judging it, we’ve got some really really interesting responses for the positive or the “neh” and they actually… When you decided the winner, was it strong for both of you?

Ezra: It was immediate and we both knew right away.

James: Someone managed to appeal to both of you. So Luke won it, our good friend Luke and hopefully he enjoys that bottle of Grange but he won it through merit which is one of the tips I gave at the event. Reward good achievement.

You know reward the behavior you want. I think we got so many entries because I’ve had competitions before and people can see that there are rewards for making it. I think you have submitted something once before.

J. Reynolds: Yes, I did last time I came to you, I think 18 months ago.

James: There are rewards and there are rewards in business for going out there and just doing something. So I feel satisfied for putting on an event. It is a fair bit of effort, there’s a lot of expense. We’re basically helping the hotel survive and all their staff and the staging crew and the video crew, the catering and I mean we create a lot of jobs for something like this and we’re funding the economy but I think that the participant is the winner.

They’ve come to the event, they’ve gotten great information and they’ll got to be able to do something about that. If you’re listening to this and you didn’t come to the event, then hop in to SuperFastBusiness.com as we load up the modules, you’ll be able to watch the event and implement the same stuff that we taught.

I just want to thank both of you guys for sitting in. We could have been doing something else, we could have been watching a very funny Adam Sandler video.

Ezra: Who you don’t like by the way, right?

James: No, no no. I don’t mind him.

Ezra: Jim Carrey is who you don’t like?

James: I’m not a big fan of Jim Carrey.

Ezra: Yeah, that’s who it is.

James: What about you?

Ezra: Jim Carrey? I like Jim Carrey.

James: Right. But you’re starting to like some things over here. You like New York and now you think Manly is pretty cool.

Ezra: Well I tell you, I had no idea how amazing it is here.

James: So it’s the middle of winter and you’re surfing today.

Ezra: I know.

J. Reynolds: And the vegetables are better apparently? Is that right?

Ezra: I can’t even talk. I’m so excited.

James: I was explaining to Ezra that the food produce is good in Australia, even in our normal, local supermarket, with our food quality standards and good produce, you’re going to get pretty good stuff.

Ezra: I mean I love New York City, it will always have a place in my heart. I’m a Newyorker, I love it and also this is really nice. It’s a nice change of pace. It’s got a big city and a beach, 15 minutes apart. You just don’t find that anywhere.

James: Yes, I think my next event could quite likely be in Sydney and very likely be something like Manly.

J. Reynolds: Well, I’d come back for that. You can count me in.

James: You’ve been to Manly every time we come over here.

Ezra: Yeah, I love it, it’s a great place. I mean Sydney as a whole is fantastic but Manly itself is a great location.

James: Right. So listener, we’re going to wrap it up. Head over to SuperFastBusiness.com and join the membership, watch the videos, learn, I’ll be in there and answering questions. Ezra is a member and are you a member James?

J. Reynolds: Maybe I should be.

Ezra: I’d like to say this every time we’re talking about SuperFastBusiness, because it’s one thing to promote yourself, it’s another thing to have someone tell people that you are good and endorse you. I think that SuperFastBusiness is by far the most well-priced and highest leveraged and best forum in the world of marketing and online marketing that you could be a part of today.

I mean the caliber of people that are in that forum and the barrier of entry to get access to those people and the conversations that are happening in there is just incredible.

James: Yeah, well, there you go. Thanks guys.

J.Reynolds: Awesome.

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