065 laura betterly using organizational structure and proven tactics to grow your business by EntrepreneursRadioShow

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

EPISODE #65: LAURA BETTERLY In this episode, Travis had an informative and interesting talk with successful business owner, speaker, and entrepreneur Laura Betterly. Laura has been in the internet business for more than a decade now and has created successful businesses such as Mobile Local Fusion and Yada Yada Marketing. Her vision and perseverance in business have gained her success and popularity, gaining thousands of followers and students subscribed to her marketing course. Travis and Laura have touched on various aspects on the business such as SEO and on how to make your business more profitable in today’s competitive market. One of Laura’s tips includes choosing a niche where your business can grow and gain reputation as well as not just gaining clients but also refusing those that are not fit to do business with you. She also shared valuable insight on how to optimize your website by using smart SEO utilizing various tools such as Google Hangout and Facebook in order to attract customers and tips on how to make your business more visible and relevant to your target market. Entrepreneurs will surely gain a lot of information from this episode that is applicable and practical to their business.

Laura Betterly – Using organizational structure and proven tactics to grow your business Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 65 of the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, a production of the Rockstar Entrepreneur Network. It's just me and you today and our wonderful guest. My good friend and co-host Sandra is still travelling for business. Now our guest today is Laura Betterly. Laura is really well known for putting together a program called Mobile Local Fusion. It's a marketing course designed to teach the basics of local and mobile marketing. It was published by the marketing powerhouse and guru Ryan Deiss. To date, Laura has over 10,000 students. Now, I want to pre-warn you that we go much deeper than just mobile marketing. Laura is literally brilliant on many levels. She's been in business for almost 30 years and a lot of the schools that she has that we talk about, as you'll hear, comes from growing in building her own businesses. And so, now before we get started I want to remind you to be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can because I've got a question for you, and I'd like to share a little inspiration with you. Now, however I want to start this show off before I introduce you to the guest. I want to start the show off with a challenge for you. We've set-up a recording service on our website where you can click a button and

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

leave a recorded question. If you'll just look on the right side of the screen you'll see a little microphone and it says, "Leave a message". I want you to send us some of your toughest challenges that you're facing in business today. And if your question gets selected, we'll answer them on the air for you so that we can help you get things moving again. I've talked about this before in the past, what you'll find is if you're struggling with an issue, there's a good chance that there's many others struggling with that issue to. And by answering your questions or by airing your challenges to the public and getting them answered, you're really helping others. So I want to encourage you to be bold and share some of those struggles with us and we'll advise you on what to do. This is something I do on a regular basis and just another way we'd like add value to you for listening to the show. Now also while you're there at Rockstar Entrepreneur Network, I have a favor to ask you. We're on a mission to get 250 comments on iTunes, so if you enjoy these free podcast that we create for you and you feel they bring value to you and your business, we'd really appreciate it if you'd go to RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com and click on the iTunes icon and then what it'll do, it will take you to the iTunes tab basically. And then you'll see a little button there that you'll have to open up the actual iTunes, you can click on the little clip art there, and just click on the section that says ratings and review. I'm making this sound more confusing that it really is. Anyways, click on the ratings and reviews, give us a rating and tell us what you think about the show. We'd really appreciate here, some of the most recent comments that we got, we got, let's see. I skipped over this one last time by Susie Aryan, she said subtly-packed podcast, five star. Let's see. Vida Taylors, says some amazing information, five stars also. So every rating matters, iTunes looks at that and ranks you within the library, and if you just take a minute to do that, that would help us reach and instruct more great entrepreneurs just like yourself. So anyways, now that we've got that out of the way, heck, let's move on. Let me go ahead and transition to my wonderful conversation with Laura Betterly. So welcome to the show Laura. Laura: Well, thanks for having me, this is a lot of fun, I appreciate you thinking of me. Travis: Yes, I'm excited to have you here. Hey, before we get into, one of things we like to do, before we get in to what you teach and how you got to where you at, do you mind giving us the background, kind of the story, I mean, were you always a success, or were you an overnight success, or, what brought you to where you're at today? Laura: No, I mean, it's kind of funny because I actually started out as a guitar player in punk bands, and played clubs like C.T. Davis and The Mudd Club in the late 70's, early 80's and I guess I'm dating myself. But, you know, I didn't like starving. So there were plenty of people who did a very great job of being starving artists, and guys like The Ramones, and Blondie, and all those guys. But, I didn't hit, well, from a niche standpoint I did well, but I think it was a little early for a girl lead guitar player, I got a

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

lot rejection, and like, "Oh, you're a girl!" when I would answer ads and whatnot. And I grew up in a very... My dad's the guy who developed instant replay and I grew up in a high-tech environment. And for me, it was kind of like, "Yeah, I'm not doing this starving thing". So I went ahead and went full circle and got an accounting degree and actually worked on numbers, taxes, and ran like a retail group and whole bunch of different businesses throughout the 80's. And the late 80's I saw a very big opportunity when computers came out because people were doing their accounting, everybody uses QuickBooks now. There was a day before there was QuickBooks, and people actually did all this work on this green sheets of paper called ledgers. Travis: Right. Laura: And they had to write in ink, and if they made a mistake they had to use Wite-out and calculators, and what I did was this I found, and I went in and I used the computerized businesses. I would take them from paper businesses to being totally and completely computerized. And that was, it was capitalizing on the trend of the moment, now it's not a very interesting business but back then it was and I would sell the software as an authorized reseller and I would make some profit on that and then I would do the actual transition and then I'll do training. So we did pretty well with that, and then in 1992, after I had my first baby I sold that and moved to Florida and took some years off because I wanted to do the whole, be a parent thing. And kind of was able to kind of ride off of that until the late 90's, and then it was mp3, and that was if you remember Napster was a big deal and mp3.com. And my partners and I at the time came up with this idea at my kitchen table. What we realized is that we could develop a dual mp3 player for DJ's that it would be the bomb, nobody else had done that. You had little mp3 players for your computer and what not but to be able to mix two songs together in a meaningful sort of way was pretty amazing. And that's what we did, we start a company called PC DJ, I toured the world with rock stars, it was during the first .com boom. It did really, really well. There was surely an issue when marketing money and money went wave of the game. But I founded that, I was the first president, I got guys like Ice-T, and Nile Rogers who produced everybody from Madonna to the B-52 on the board, we did a lot of fun stuff but I'm not hugely corporate and it was definitely one of those, you start something and then it takes on a life of its own that's bigger than what you expected. And so I left, and I was bought out and the company still exists and it's awesome, but when I realized what actually was profitable out of PC DJ was not selling software, it was actually the mailing list. And because it had a million people who were early adapters liked mixed tapes, liked certain types of clothes, etc. and so on. So at that point I was in the middle of a divorce and I didn't want to take on a job, or have a job that took me out of the house. So I wanted to keep the same lifestyle for my children, but I want to do it from home and what I did was I leveraged two people I knew that had very, very good mailing list and broker to trade and ended up with one of the largest databases in the country, and that was before the Can Spam Act. In fact I ended up speaking in front of the Federal Trading Commission back then that helped draft Can-Spam Act but I... Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Travis: Was this early 2000? Laura: Yeah, this is like 2001, 2002-ish Travis: Right, okay. Laura: And so, from there I, you know I started to exclusively do commercial email and not the stuff you see, like Viagra and all the crappy stuff... Travis: All the spam stuff? Laura: Yeah, we were trying to find like really cool, we were really trying to find some cool offers and what not that we could really get something out of. For example, I remember I had a software product that was like a LoJack for your laptop. So if you're laptop was stolen, the next time somebody opened it up and logged in to the internet you could get their location. And so we had some cool stuff like that, but interestingly enough email is an evil word to a lot of people especially back then and it was really, you know, the internet universe was not interested in commercial email, although it has... You can apply it now but back then I got attacked for saying what I did. Travis: Yeah, it was before its time, you were before its time. Laura: Yeah, I mean, on slash dot, went ahead and attacked me and somebody shot a gun through the window once, I mean, we're like crazy stuff. And at that point we realized as profitable as it was, because of technology and what not, it wasn't going to be a long-term solution because you'd have blocking and filtering. Actually we found people who would intentionally opt in just so they could complain. Really unethical, you know what I mean. So we saw the writing on the wall and we took our agency in a different direction because in early 2002 Google had one that had and released its AdWords product and everybody says "pay for clicks, are you crazy?" Well, we took a gamble on that actually my business partner was one of the first herd of people to get through the Google AdWord certification. So we started driving traffic with AdWords, and that's taken us to today. We have quite a few more product lines and that company which was called In Touch Media Group actually, we had reverse merged into a public shell and we took it public. But again, I'm a little bit left to center so I'm not corporate, so I left and started Yada Yada Marketing in '08, actually late '07 and we've done really, really well. We've added more product lines, we're a lot more niche-oriented and we’ve just doing some crazy stuff with Facebook ads and conversions. And I was lucky enough to get the attention of Ryan Deiss who's an amazing marketer, and he's published several of my products so I actually teach others this stuff too. So I've got more than one career now, interestingly enough. Travis: Right.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Laura: So there you go. And I worked with him, and I don't know if you've hear of Frank Kern, he's a client of mine, and Troy Smith, and a lot of the big internet marketer's. We're kind of their back-end for a lot of this stuff that they try to do or they get information from us, so it's kind of cool. Travis: Yeah, I've trained with Frank Kern. Laura: Yeah. Travis: You know what's interesting is you've shifted back and forth from extreme right brain type jobs to extreme left brain type jobs, which is very uncommon but it's also the balance that you need to run a successful business. And a lot of people, I don't think realize that you and I were talking about, before we started the show, that you liked to start things, you like to create, and I do too. And that's the right brain in us, right? We're constantly thinking of creative things, and then the left-brain is the one that brings the systems and all that other stuff in there. Laura: Right. Well, what I try to do is I try to start stuff and then I try to at least put in a system that can be duplicated by others. And so like for example, like with this Facebook ads product that we were releasing from the agency standpoint, it was a solution to my problem, right. All of a sudden I was like, "I can't spend $4 a click on AdWords for my own stuff. So, let me see what I can figure out, and I poked around and made some stuff, and really got the Facebook Adstuff to work really well. So then, what I did was just, I did it for myself and then realized I could sell it to others, so I have few clients that I do this for. But meanwhile, what I'm doing is as I'm developing the product line I have Camtasia open on my computer all the time. And as I'm doing a function I will record it or use a program like ScreenSteps, A, B, C, D, that allows you to do a PDF with images on stuff. And then that goes into my own membership area that my outsourcers and my partners, and the people that work for this so that they can then kind of understand where I'm coming from on stuff. And then somebody else can handle that, you know. Travis: Interesting. Laura: I mean, look, there's the start guys like you and I who have ideas. If you can't make somebody else understand or duplicate what you're doing, it's kind of pointless because there's only one me, there's only one you, there's only so much time. Time is our commodity, it's not even money, it's time. So if you only have 24 hours in a day and you have these many functions to do, the only way to expand is to get somebody else to understand what you're doing and have them do it. No, they don't always do it right, no, they don't always as well as you would do it but it's the only way you're going to grow and expand. Travis: Yeah, I backed in to systems in my own business out of frustration because I didn't want to do it myself.

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Laura: Yeah. Travis: And so I thought, "How can I get this off my hands and have them produce a similar result to me where they don't...", because I let years go by of them asking me the same questions over, and over, and over. And it drove me crazy. Laura: Oh, God. Travis: Because I felt like you've asked me this question 50 times over the last 2 years, why are you not getting it. And you know, employees think different and I just wouldn't had a place in my own level of maturity as a businessman to really understand that they're not invested in this. So, unless I give them a system that says, "Do A, B, C, D", then they're going to come back and ask me. Laura: Yeah, it's really funny because you don't want to give an employee type a decision point because they can't really make a decision. But I'm going to tell you something else and this is actually kind of funny. Not a funny situation but kind of a funny result. Back in 2008, I got very sick, in fact, I got so sick that I ended up needing 6 surgeries and I had to remove myself from the office totally and completely even during my combo lessons because I had to rest throughout the day. And up until that point I would be in the office everyday and people would ask me questions all day long. And I wouldn't get particularly a lot done because I was the guy answering the questions all day long. Travis: Right. Laura: Well, funny enough, just through necessity, I ended up not being in the office, and I have never gone back Travis, because you know what I found? That if I wasn't there... Travis: They don't ask it. Laura: They don't ask the question and they figure it out without me. And like I said, it wasn't intentional but I removed myself from the party so to speak. Travis: No, I've done the same thing, I actually, office and, I'm getting an echo from you back on the... All of a sudden... Laura: Oh sorry. Travis: What are you doing over there? Laura: I didn't do anything different. Travis: Are you holding your head wrong?

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Laura: No, I don't know, I think it's Microsoft because I've got this high-end blue mic that I use for almost anything. And the only time that there's issues is... Skype was great until Microsoft bought it. We had this conversation before we started, it's... Travis: Yeah, so one of the things... What was the path that I was... Yeah, I moved my office away from everybody so I office completely by myself and so that I'm able to think by myself, I'm able to do the shows, I have a private studio, everything so that exactly what you're talking about. It becomes a way of social communication for people to come hangout, or ask you questions, or whatever they're doing. And they don't get their job done, and that sounds a little hardcore but I like to focus and get lost kind of deep, on a deep level as to what I'm doing in business and then map it out, I've got a white board and then, all of these things that allow me to go down a path without being interrupted and I can only really do that when I'm completely secluded. The same thing is true for you? Laura: Yeah, absolutely, and even in my home office I get interruptions, and there's two things that I did that have helped me a lot. One is I have something called an interruption log, and it's actually taped to my desk. And the log says the person, the date and time, the description of the interruption, and then a check mark if it was valid or urgent, and when I start feeling scattered, I look at this log and I usually will see a pattern of individuals or the type of traffic that's hitting me, because a lot of people manage things by emergency, "Oh, there's an emergency here, we have to run and put out this fire, run and put out that fire." But if you're managing by emergency or other people's urgencies, you're not actually forwarding the purpose of what you're trying to do. Travis: Right. Laura: So that was the first 'Aha' that I had on it and the second was this app that I put on my computer called Rescue Time, and Rescue Time is really interesting. It logs where you go on the internet, and if you happen--I don't know about you Travis but you know, if I'm having a hard time with something, I might end up spending a little too much time on Facebook or Amazon.com. Travis: Right. Laura: And try to balance off of my own work. And in the day Rescue Time helps you classify the type of work you're doing, how much time your spending on email, how much time you're spending on this, how much time you're spending on that, and if you're away from the computer it'll pop-up and say, "What were you doing? Were you on a break, were you on a phone call, blah, blah, blah, blah." And at the end of the week, even on a daily basis, it gives you an efficiency rating, like how efficient were you, how many hours did you put that in, And then it also charts you against every other Rescue Time individual, now I'm kind of crazy so my efficiency rates like 86% and I put in like 80 or 90 hours a week, most guys don't do that. But nonetheless, I can see from week to week, when I'm less productive, between news and the interruption log, and rescue time, I can then see where I went wrong and make

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

changes, and there's something about the fact that I know that Rescue Time resides as a client on my desktop, I'm less likely to shop. I'm a chick, I like shoes, I like this, I like that. The next thing you know, I'm white house black market and I'm spent $400, bought a whole bunch of new clothes and I didn't get my work done, so, and it's funny as an entrepreneur you think. Everybody goes, you know, a lot of people are forced in their production because they have a boss to be accountable to. When you don't have a boss to be accountable to, you have to have way more discipline. Yes, I'm accountable clients but I get stepped on very quickly, so I know play this game with myself on my efficiency and if I can keep my efficiency up, then I bonus myself with my Amazon.com time or my shopping, or getting out of the house and going to the mall, whatever it is, a special dinner. And that's kind of how I force myself to be productive when I don't want to be productive, because a lot of people think, "Oh, people like you always work and always feel good about it." Not true, there are days where I want to kick myself in the, I just can't move and I have to put myself in a position where I can actually get stuff done. Travis: Right. Well, you know what I like about that is it exposes to you because I think one of the common things that entrepreneurs have in common is we have an ability to spot patterns, and so that's why most successful entrepreneurs can even retract in my own mind and recount a series of things that have happened and then see the pattern that's happening with that. And so, what you're talking about, it's easy when you're the boss to squander your time, and so it just brings it right in front of you to where it's really not even debatable. You know whether you're knocking it out of the park as far as effectiveness or not. Laura: Right. Travis: Now there's another caveat, as a business owner, one of the reasons why I become an entrepreneur is that I don't like being told what to do, do you? Laura: Yeah, I always said I'm an entrepreneur because I'm unemployable. For that reason I like doing things my way. And don't get me wrong, I take suggestions and I listen, but if I feel like today is not the day that I'm doing certain things and I want to go out and sit by the pool, that's what I'm going to do. Travis: Yeah, that's my point. Laura: Or, my travel schedule, but that doesn't mean that at 3 o'clock in the morning when I have a burst of energy I'm not also working. But it doesn't lend itself to being--I'm kind of an out-of-the-box kind of person. And so, if I had to guarantee that I was going to be dress, showered, and at a place by 9 am every day, probably not going to happen. Although it's very funny, I'm usually sitting, I'm working at my computer by 7 am. Travis: But you're there on your own terms?

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Laura: Exactly. So it's kind of freeing in that respect, and again I'm accountable to my clients, I'm accountable to my students, and my reputation is extremely important to me. So I'm less likely to blow things off for a very long time because I do have responsibilities. The thing about having your own business, you get the benefit of when things go right, the big paychecks. What a lot of guys don't realize, if you're an entrepreneur, you're also the guy that's paying everybody else and not taking a paycheck if you made a bad decision. Travis: Yeah, you get paid last. Laura: Right. Travis: Yeah, I'm with you. So, I'm completely tracking everything that you're saying because it's the same mentality for me so sometimes I'm working, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night. And so, putting me into a box, I figured out early on as a young man and by the age of 24 I realized that I couldn't work for anybody, that I needed to be out on my own, doing my own thing. Laura: Yeah, I think it's very empowering, and you got to remember, I grew up in an environment where my father was an entrepreneur, so it never occurred to me not to be that way, interestingly enough. I think with my kids too, sometimes my sons will be like, "Oh, we'll just put a website up and sell it." And I don't think that every kid has that opportunity because I remember, even with my dad being an entrepreneur would say to me, "Well, you want to have an education so you have something to fall back on if and when this doesn't work." And I never subscribed quite the same way he did. It's a necessity thing. I think that when I got sick I lived because of my kids, because I wouldn't leave them, and I think as an entrepreneur, I did well financially for the most part because if I didn't do that, what would my kids have to eat? They have to be in school, they have to be, you know. Travis: Right. Laura: So that necessity made a huge difference in my life. Travis: Right. So, now this show is unscripted and I like to just let things unfold organically, however it unfolds. Now you teach a lot of different things. Laura: Yeah. Travis: What path could we go down today in this conversation that would bring the most value to other entrepreneurs that are listening to the show. What are some of the things that you teach that you feel like we should cover today? Laura: Look, I teach a lot of stuff about marketing and search engines, right, because at the end of the day, if you're not showing up in the search engines and you're not getting enough traffic to your

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websites, you might as well not even be in business, because you have to have that. And if you're a brick and mortar business, you want to be optimized for locals so that when somebody goes on their cell phone and they're looking for dry cleaner, you want you as the dry cleaner to show up. So that's a lot of the stuff, I teach strategy and tactics for search engine stuff. But I also teach others to run agencies. And that's a little bit different because one of the things that's in common with that and every single business that runs is that you have to have an organizational structure. You have to have roles and responsibilities for those in your organization and it might be an organization of one or it could be an organization of a hundred so that production actually occurs and things happen and that you can see where the bottlenecks are. But I think the most important thing I teach, my guys, and this is kind of an interesting, and that is, a lot of people will go ahead because they're kind of in a position where they need money, they will go ahead and take customers on that frankly they shouldn't. And that actually cost them way more money in the long run than saying no. And what I mean is, is that if you've ever met anybody or tried to work with somebody who is extremely negative, always complain, was kind of a big to me and was never happy no matter what you did. Travis: Yes. Laura: What happens is if you have people like that in your life, what happens is that you end up trying to overcompensate, and you'll never, ever win, and then you neglect everything else, and it becomes a dwindling spiral. And that's about 20% of the people out there, so like 2 out of 10 guys are probably you don't want as customers. And you know what I do? I give them their money back and I fire them. And it's so empowering. Sometimes people don't realize you don't have to have that customer, that customer doesn't deserve you and there are X amount, a million other customers that will deserve you and you need to just tell them to go find someone else. And not in a nasty way, you don't want to do it so that you start a firefight, but I think that people get stuck in that I have to have this thing right now, and they compromise what really is the right thing to do. So, you know what, eat hamburger tonight because tomorrow the big client or the big customer that will appreciate you and not tear you into emotional shreds will be there because just by virtue of getting rid of the bad guy, the good guy show up. I don't know, I can't explain it because it's not quantifiable with a chart. I'm just saying I've seen this over and over again, and I found this to be true, since the 90's I've been doing this, since last century. So... Travis: I'm with you. I've been in business for 23 years and I agree with you, and so I've given a lot of thought to this and in business. I've reflected on it and I've been there, I've been where you're talking about and I made a move out of that, and I deal with a large number of business owners. And what I've come to see is they've done a poor job of constantly marketing and positioning their business and their services, or their product. And so they're living hand to mouth, so to speak, and so they're not in the position to be choosy with the prospects, with the clients, and that is where, that's the on-ramp to the problem that you're talking about, whereas if they would've been more proactive. Not enough people Copyright ÂŠ 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Radio Show

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

put time and effort into the marketing or the positioning of their business, and that causes the problem. When you have plenty of clients coming in, then you set a higher standard for them to qualify, to reach before you provide them service. And even still, I think I just pulled one of these... I got excited here and pulled one of these cables out. You got me worked up here Laura. And so, even when you try to qualify those people, you won't catch them all. Laura: No you won't. Travis: You know, or disqualify, there's a level of disqualification, and just like you said, just be straightforward with them, and when you operate with integrity and candor, you can say, "Mrs. Johnson, I don't feel like we're a good match here and I want you to get the best, I want you to get what you're looking for. And so rather than me getting in your way of getting that and us causing--this turning into a negative situation for either one of us. Let me refund you your money and I'll try to send you in the right direction." Laura: Right, I'm totally with you. And you know, it's very funny because you talk about marketing and positioning, and that brings me to another point which is really--a guy gives birth to an idea and he thinks his idea is great, and the truth of the matter is it's great to him, but it might not be great to the masses or it might not be communicated well enough so that the masses know it's needed or it's the next great thing. And I found in the last, especially since the internet, not so much before the internet because back then you had a lot more offline and marketing departments that did a lot more research. Now, it's so easy to throw up a website and this and the other that these critical steps of doing some market research is missed over and over and over and over again. And one of the things that we pride ourselves in doing is when we are taking on a project for ourselves or for our clients is we go out and we find all the competitors. We find out where are they advertising, we find out why do they have these common elements, we find out what are their differences, we find--I'm a big follower of Trout and Ries, and they're not together anymore but in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing and book called the Position: The Battle for your Mind, and they're old books, and you can get them on Amazon for like 12 bucks. And it gives you your blueprint, the stuff that you got to figure out so that you can rise to the top in your marketplace. Because sometimes when you do the research, you realize, "You know what, this was a great idea but it doesn't have enough legs to create a million dollar business with. Travis: Right. Laura: And you know, it kind of stinks when you have somebody who has their heart in something and you go, "You know what, I don't see the market", or better yet, you're in such a competitive market that the clicks are $20 a click and your biggest competitor has been around for 22 years, your website's never going to rise above that. You might want to niche that down into something else that you can win. Travis: Right, yeah, great point.

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Laura: You know? Travis: Excellent point. So let's go down the path. You talked about you didn't say the words but from what you said, I took SEO, right? Laura: Yeah. Travis: And so, SEO, I've generated millions in credible, many, many, many, millions of revenue from SEO, and I don't even know that I know what SEO is anymore Laura. Laura: Well, you know what, SEO, Search Engine Optimization for those of you who don't understand what that is, and that is those things that you do that makes your website show up when somebody does a search query. Now, there are some evil, notorious people out there who had gained the system over time and because of that Google and really, I got to tell you people say Bing or Yahoo. I got to tell you they have so little market share that if, you know, "Great, show up on Bing or Yahoo but Google's really where it's at. And so Google's had to put in a lot of rules and regulations that have made-because basically, they want... When somebody searches, you got to realize, you as a business owner Google doesn't care about. What Google cares about, and it's an advertising company, what it really, and you think it's a search engine but it's an advertising company. And what they want is when somebody types in a search query that the top search query said the top things that come up are the exact things that that individual's looking for. Travis: Right. Laura: And so it's all about what they say is "user experience". Now, to be able to make the user experience that is what in Google's eyes a good user experience is not necessarily the same thing as what's great for the business owner as far as being able to capture their identity or being able to maximize that visit. Because we used to able to throw up what's known as a squeeze page and we would have the compelling content behind it and will give it to you for free in exchange for your email address. Well, you can try it on some things but that's not considered a good user experience. Now, if you're paying for the clicks by buying Google AdWords, that makes it worse because you're paying a higher rate as the business owner, you're giving away whatever information it is for free, and to have the quality that Google wants, it means that you're going to actually get less sales out of it. Well, I'm sorry that kind of stinks in my opinion. But unfortunately, they're going to land hundred-pound gorilla and they are the ones who are making the rules. So, it's like you can play any game if you know the rules of the game. When you were a kid, did you ever a play a game with one of your friends, and then they said, "No, that's not it, I changed the rule." Travis: Yeah, right.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Laura: And you be like, "Well, how the hell am I going to win or how can I play if everytime I start to win you change the rules?" Travis: Exactly. Laura: Well, that's what Google does. You figure it out, you start to win, and they go, "Uh uh... We're changing the rules today." Boom, everything changes. But, nonetheless, it's a game, you got to play if you want to show up. Look, traffic is traffic. I found that I can do extremely well using Facebook to drive traffic, okay. It's not the same as search, so like when somebody is searching in Google, and they say, "I want blue widgets", at that moment they are interested in blue widgets and they are very qualified if you have the best blue widgets going at the best prize, right, because you're channeling their existing interest at that moment. On Facebook, you might find a lot of people who really pro blue widgets but they're hanging out with their friends, so you got to interrupt them and hit them over the head and get them to look at your blue widgets. So you're not going to have as high click through rate, there's a lot of things you won’t have, but with the price per click being that much cheaper than what it is in Google, and so many people spending so much time on Facebook, it is worth the time and the effort to segment down that way. But it's a different type of advertising and whatnot, so you got to look at that. And really, at the end of the day, the world became very, very flat with the internet. So, you have, from a business owner's perspective, there's huge, huge opportunity for a national market or an international market, or even a local market that didn't exist before. Travis: Right. Laura: But that also brings about higher competition and higher competition brings about the need for better technology so that you can then go ahead and be better than what your competitors are. So it's kind of a round circle and sometimes it feels like a little bit like a rat on a wheel, but when you get it right and the traffic's coming in, and people are calling, and the phone's ringing, and fax and orders over, it's awesome. Travis: Right. Well, you know what I found Laura is, so SEO is not as important as it used to be and I guess that could probably vary with the industry. And then what I have noticed is the lead sources have fragmented into 30 or 40 different types of sources rather than back when you and I first started in business, there was 3 to 5 different sources that most people used on a regular basis, right. Laura: Yeah. Travis: So what do you think about that analysis? Laura: Well, yes and no. I think SEO is always important because the first three spots on Google get almost 80% of all the traffic on those queries, and if you look at what you'd pay for click, I mean, it could

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a month depending on your industry. In fact it's an asset to the company because even if you have a lousy product and you have a great site that's well SEO-ed and that traffic is worth a certain amount, you could actually sell the website and make some money with it. But the one thing that exist now that never exist before, and that is social proof and social interaction, and that actually is a very big ranking factor that wasn't the case before. And you have user-generated content in the way of reviews and whatnot. So now more than ever before in the existence of technology, you not only have to have be okay with SEO and have your lead generation sources and whatnot, but you can't mess around and create reputation problems for yourself because it'll come up right away and there's nothing that will kill a business in 10 minutes or less than a bunch of bad reviews. And it's funny because, I was telling you about that VHS to digital thing and I sent it back and I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon and I always write reviews. And they said, "Well, what happened?", I said, "Read my review." I very pin-pointedly put what was wrong with the program and whatnot. And I would imagine if everybody sat back and thought about it, when you go to buy something now you look at the reviews, you look at what your friends thought about it, you look at those kind of recommendations. In fact, my son, God bless his soul, he just bought a new car for $2,200 and now needs a $2,000 transmission. And we found a guy that would do the transmission for about a thousand dollars, but when I researched him a little bit better we had some very bad reviews plus some complaints at the BBB. So we're actually going to spend $1,750 for the transmission, but this guy was recommended by three people we know, he's got a brilliant, A+ rating with the BBB and all the reviews on him were good. So it was worth it for me to spend almost twice as much because of that. Travis: To eliminate the guesswork. Laura: Yeah. And it's an interesting thing because I went for quality over price, and I bet you a lot of people would do that. Travis: Well, that's the ideal customer that we were talking about is the most ideal customer is willing to pay the additional money to remove the element of risk that they're going to be taking advantage of. Laura: Yup. Travis: Alright. So what are the top five things that people need to know--let's go down the SEO path and what I meant by, I don't know what SEO is anymore, is you keyed in on it. It's changed so much from what it used to be to what it is now. Laura: That's true. Travis: What are the top five things that people need to know that they can do, actionable items, to improve their site and increase their rankings?

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Laura: Well, it's all about usability, right. So, when somebody lands on your site you wanted to not only be aesthetic but it to answer questions. So good content and this is like not outsourced content to the Philippines, I hate to say, is really the most important thing. You have onsite factors--Google will look at, if somebody goes to your site and leaves on an immediate basis, they consider that like a minus because it didn't answer the question. If somebody goes to your site and scrolls down the page, that means there's some interest. So if you have a really cool picture on the page that only shows half and they have to scroll down to see the joke or whatever it is, that'll actually increase engagement, and increasing engagement will then have Google say, "Oh, well people like this." If you have a long article to actually go ahead and use a table of contents, very old school where they have to go to a second page to continue reading, that's also looked at favorably. The other thing that you should have is make sure that you don't do things that used to be very standard, like keyword stuffing where you use that same keyword over and over in your content. You have to vary all that stuff. So you have to write with the person who is reading it, with them in mind, but you also have to write it in a way so that the search engines can see what it's about so you can show up on stuff. Travis: Yeah, so people used to with your blue widget example, people used to keyword stuff by saying, "When shopping for blue widgets, you need to find that the best blue widgets, because blue widgets are blue..." You know, that's keyword stuffing. Laura: Exactly, that's correct. Travis: So avoid that because... Laura: Yeah, it's bad. Travis:That's not how you talk with a human being, right. Laura: That's correct. Now the other thing is that social signals are really important. So you need to add Facebook's open graph and Google+ to all your pages, so people when they like it, they can hit plus or like. And that's a social signal that Google will see. Now look, there's certain industries where it's not going to work. And you got to keep that in mind based on what you're doing. If you're a doctor and you're dealing with sexually transmitted diseases, you're not going to get a lot of pluses, or shares, or likes on your article about gonorrhea, it's just... Travis: Right. Laura: So keep that in mind. I had a guy who did USB drives, it's like people don't get excited over USB drives, I'm sorry. Travis: Right.

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Laura: Vasectomy reversals, that's another one that's hard to get a lot of pluses on. But... Travis: So when using those elements, they've got to be share-able type things that people can get excited about. Laura: Yeah, exactly. Travis: Just because you put a thumbs-up type thing there, doesn't mean the people are going to do it even if it's great content, if it's not share-able type stuff. So that's the commonsense factor, right. Laura: Right. Travis: Okay. Laura: Now, you also want to have, I think every site needs to have a blog and there should be relevant information posted with the ability for others to comment on it, because that shows freshness and it shows interaction. Now I usually put Facebook comments and Wordpress comments on my blog, and when I'm done with an article or video that I think is relevant, I don't only just put it on my website, I also put in on my Facebook page and elicit for comments and whatnot. My Google+ page, I also will add it in an email newsletter so it gets interaction. That stuff, that interaction, and that extra traffic also helps fuel your search engine optimization. There's things on the back-end too, you have title tags. When you look at search results, there's stuff that's written underneath it, right. It says the name of your company and something on the top and then there's a description. That's all done on the WebPages. I use Wordpress so you can easily do that, but that's your little preview window, in Google how it looks, you want to make sure that you have that written well too so that elicits somebody to come over and whatnot. Sometimes Google put your page on page one and see if people click on it and what happens. And if they don't, then they bounce you to another page. So that description's kind of an important thing. Travis: Yeah, exactly, it encourages people to make the first step. Laura: That's correct. And that's just a lot of little stuff but at the end of the day, the day of just selling people's stuff is over. People are interested in value and what's in it for them. Guess what, they don't care who I am, they don't care who you are Travis, no offense, do you know? Travis: Right, I agree with you. Laura: They want to know what's in it for me and what are you going to do to help me. Travis: Right.

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Laura: So when you're writing whatever you're writing or you're presenting whatever you are presenting, you need to make sure that you're presenting something that's a value to someone else, not some just crazy pitch. Travis: Right, great point. And so do you feel like--is there some common things that you see people get wrong on a regular basis, that sounds like one of them. They're more interested in talking about themselves rather than the solution or how they help people. Laura: Yeah, look, a lot of people will go ahead and it's funny because they'll talk about features and not benefits. And features are great but benefits are what going to make somebody--is going to put them in a position where they want to know more information. You've got to put yourself in the position of your ideal consumer and feel their pain, and be able to let them know in a way that you do feel that and what the solutions are and in a lot of cases you have to give them enough information so that they know that you're credible and an authority, because that's the other thing. And we were talking about this before, I had some press early on, that makes me an authority to some degree more so than somebody who doesn't. So in the absence of that, your voice is what's going to help develop your authority. So you can build your authority by predicting things correctly, helping people out, giving good information, even press releasing, helping on a food drive for the people at thanksgiving, whatever that is. And it can't be disingenuine. So I'm not saying go do that so people will like you if--more and more of these days as we talked before is that the days of taking advantage of customers and not adding value are over. Travis: Right, which is a good thing. Laura: Yeah, I agree. But there's certain people who are going to have to take a deep, hard look at themselves and how they operate in life, and they're going to have to make some pretty big changes for themselves, and I think that's a good thing, as painful as it is. I don't think that people who--and you talked about this, the people that don't have integrity or whatnot, they used to be that they could win. You ever watch American Greed? Travis: Yeah. Laura: On CNBC World, it's like all these guy who have taken advantaged and hood would people by playing the system, and the funny part of it is all these guys are smart enough to actually play the game in the right way and … Travis: Yeah, exactly. Laura: I think it's more work to do the wrong thing over time than it is do it right, but, it is what it is.

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Travis: I agree with you. One thing that I wanted to add, you made a great point about features and benefits, and so if we took your blue widgets example. So a feature is the blue widgets are powder coated in a beautiful, bright blue, so that's a feature, and maybe a benefit is they make you taller and better looking. Laura: That's correct. Yeah, and the benefit, is really, it's like, "by using this, this is what it's going to do for you." Travis: Yeah. Laura: I'm building a plug-in right now for Google hangouts, right. And a feature is that you can host it on your own website, but the benefit is you can go ahead and then actually have, be able to opt somebody in and actually build your email list with it, as opposed to just sending them directly to Google. Travis: Oh, very cool. Laura: Yeah, just to give you an idea of the difference. Travis: I like it. Listen, we're getting short on time here so, you and I could go on, and on, and on I can tell. Laura: Exactly. Travis: Which is a good thing. Hey, so are you ready to transition to the lightning round? Laura: Sure. Travis: Do you have your seat belt on? Laura: Yes. Travis: Buckle it really quick. Laura: Yeah, I can do this. Travis: Okay. Laura: I'm holding on to my desk. Travis: Because I don't want you to fall out of your chair Laura. Laura: No, not at all.

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Travis: Okay, alright. Okay, so what book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why. Laura: I think I mentioned them earlier The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Trout and Ries. Travis: Okay, great. Laura: And because it put me in a position where I could understand the very basic concepts of marketing and almost a cartoon-y fashion, it took like 20 minutes. Every time I would put in 20 minutes of reading it, I had epiphanies on, and I've done a lot of courses and a lot of studying since then, but that really gave me a very, very good solid background knowing where to go with what I was trying to do. Travis: Excellent. I had a suspicion that you were going to say that again, but I just wanted to give you the chance. Laura: Yeah. Travis: So, what's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? Laura: I'm in love with Google Hangouts. Travis: Yeah, why? Laura: I was a go to webinar and a go to meeting person for a very long time. And I found that it's a little antiquated, it was a little rough to run. When you will record something it was very hard to reencode to get online, and then there was a limit. So their largest program was $500 a month, and it has a limit of a thousand people. Well, someone like me can sometimes get two or three thousand people together. Travis: Nice. Laura: And not always, sometimes it's less but I didn't like the limiting factor and the fact that it was $499 a month, plus the fact that it made it so difficult to replay it. And I discovered Google Hangouts and I was like, "Oh my gosh, there's apps for it, it's way more professional, there's so much more you can do with it, and when you're done with your hangout, it actually puts it on YouTube and you can actually end up showing up in the search results on YouTube if you do certain things right. So it had so many other side benefits. Not only was it better looking, was that easier to render, you could do it on your own site. Travis: It's free also, right.

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Laura: Yeah, it was just like, This is a piece of technology. And Google doesn't always get it right as you know. Google+ is a great, beautiful wasteland, it's great technology, nobody's there. Some of the tech guys are there but I mean it's like, "Hello, anyone home?" I'll make a post on Google+, I'll get maybe over a couple of weeks, a couple of pluses and maybe a comment. I do the same thing on Facebook and I have a hundred plus likes and pages of comments. So it doesn't have the same adoption rate but Google's big play is trying to make Google+ something--and I don't know if they're going to pull it off or not but they made all the local searches through there and whatnot but Hangouts, that's pretty freaking' cool technology, I got to say. Travis: Cool, excellent, thank you for that. What famous quote would best summarize your belief or attitude in business? Laura: Well you know, I don't know who made the quote but I've heard it many times. And it says, "If you want something done you give it to busy person." Travis: There's a similar quote that made me laugh a long time ago, and I think a comedian had asked, it goes, "Why are all of the unemployed people's yards, why do they look terrible? The people that have the most time on their hands, why is their yard look terrible?" Laura: Yeah. Travis: It's just a mindset, so I agree with you. Laura: Yeah, and it is kind of funny but it's true, that absolutely is the case and that in conjunction with, and again, I don't know where this concept came from other than I know that if you dedicate yourself and you stay positive on your path despite everything, you will succeed. It's when you stop, when you're not the kind of person who can push through to the other end through the adversity, those are the guys that fail. I'm sure you, just as I have had failures or things that didn't work, but we didn't stop. And that's the thing, it's like, if I'm going to go from this side of town to the other side of town and I'm going down US 19 which is a road by here, if there is a car accident I'm going to hang a ride on Nebraska and I'll make a left and I'm going to go down Belcher, I'm not going to just sit on US 19 or make a U-turn and go home. It's really the same thing with business. Not everything you're going to do is going to hit it out of the park, everything's going to be perfect. But if you keep the right mindset and you keep pushing, there's no choice other than success at whatever point that is. And sometimes you got to pay your dues man, you know what I mean? Travis: You're exactly correct. My biggest success were failures at first. Laura: Oh gosh, yeah. Well, you know sometimes success is just making all those mistakes and eliminating everything that doesn't work and what's left does.

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Travis: Right. Agreed 1,000%. How do people connect with you Laura? Laura: Oh, my website is LauraBetterly.com, and if you want to find my fan page on Facebook, it's facebook.com/laurabetterly live. I'm really accessible on my website, you can either opt in to my newsletter, or send me direct message, I, not like a lot of other guys, I answer all my communication myself. I know there's these guys that are like 4-hour workweek guys and they outsource this out and the other, I believe in our industry that there isn't enough interaction. So even if takes me to late at night or a few days, anyone who has spent the time and wants my help or wants to say something, I will always acknowledge them. Travis: Excellent. Well, you've been a wonderful guest, there's so much to talk about that we could do a couple more episodes Laura. Laura: Well, there you go; you know how to find me. Travis: Yeah, we're going to have to get together and do it again, maybe a few months down the road. Laura: Awesome. Travis: Listen, I want to thank you for taking the time out, enjoyed it. Can you hangout a couple more minutes? Laura: Sure. Travis: Excellent. So listen guys, I want to remind you that you can find all the links to Laura's website to the books, to the resources that we mentioned in the show in the show notes. We've created a new website that we're going live with called RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com, so it's RockstarEntrepreneurNetwork.com. Also, while you're there send us a voice message with any challenge or the problem you're having with your business. Think about it from the perspective of what's keeping you from growing and finding that next level of success that will allow you to reach your true potential and make a difference. I mean, are you struggling with marketing, staffing, sales, profits, it really doesn't matter, any aspect of business. Just click on the send us a voice message and give us your name, your business type and then what the problem is and we'll start answering your questions at the end of the show. It's basically like a voice message system just on the website. So there's a little tab right on the right side of the screen. You just click on it and give us the details. Also, while you're there, enter your name and we'll send you the 2013 Business Owner's Guide to a Profitable Million Dollar Business, which is a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what you need to know to grow your business that no one's talking about. In the guide, we'll cover the five skills that will determine the success of your business over the next 18 months, the six most common misconceptions that I see,

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

that are costing most businesses and absolute fortune in this economy. And lots more great information for taking your business to that next level. Today I want to close the show by reminding you that no matter where you are as an entrepreneur or what size your business is, you're an inspiration to those around you to go after their dreams to. So I want to encourage you to keep it up. Our quote for today comes from the brilliant Dennis Wheatley and Laura, do you want to read the quote? Laura: Oh God, do I have it here? Travis: No. Laura: Oh, you were just playing with me? I messed up. Travis: I put you on a state of panic there. My co-host isn't with us today. Laura: You can Skype it to me and I can read it. Or you can have fun and not edit this out. Travis: Yeah, I'm not going to edit it out, I like to let everything unfold just the way it unfolds. Alright, so the quote reads, "Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future and live only in the moment of time over what you have control, which is now." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now, to your incredible success--do you want to say goodbye Laura? Laura: Bye guys, thanks so much for listening, it was a blast.

End of Interview

Travis: Yes. Take care, we will, I guess see you in the next episode, although I don't see you, but take care.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

How We Can Help You We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That’s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost. Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever! We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within your business. This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons are. As the 'Business Owner' it’s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you’re in the middle of a daily management. And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial. This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-man army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same.

Travis Lane Jenkins Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show “Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

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