Liane Carmi

So…I went to Ryan Lee’s Continuity Summit.  Despite my wife’s complaints that I’ve been traveling too much lately, I got in the car and drove the whole…2 1/2  hours to Stamford, CT.

Now, Donna (my wife) had a couple of other issues she was worried about (other than me being away when she’s actually home).  So when she called me on the first day of the event, she said something along the lines of…

“I don’t want you getting into yet another thing when you haven’t even finished working on X.”
Translation: “you’d better not lose focus!”

And I couldn’t agree with her more.

See, if you’ve been to enough events, you’ve probably experienced something similar.  It seems like every single speaker tries to pull you in a different direction, sell you something else.  One says you’ve got to be doing video and need her product to learn social media the right way.  Another says that without his course you’ll never get your website up…sound familiar?

You come out of those events not knowing which way is up.  You even start to question yourself…”Have I been doing it wrong this whole time??”  Sometimes, you lose sight of what you were actually trying to accomplish in the first place, and you get scattered.  Or worse, you come out with 4 expensive products you probably didn’t need in the first place, and there’s no time left to study the materials, much less put them into action!

Then, there’s the blatant competition amongst participants.  Either a bunch of people who want to talk you into joining their business opportunity, or a bunch of people in your opportunity who are doing their best to keep secrets to themselves.

See, the problem with these events is that most people there are there because they’re looking for a way to “make money online.”

But Ryan Lee’s event was pleasantly different.

Sure…there were the speakers who came on stage with the intention of selling.  And many used pressure tactics (“…only for the next 10 minutes, then the price goes up…”).  But the difference was that they gave REAL content.  The juicy stuff you can take home and work with.  AND…

Get this.

The entire 1000+ person crowd was most interested in something like this:

(drumroll, please….)

1. “how can we work together?”
2. “what can I do to help you move your business forward?”

…and at a deeper level:

3. “how can I take my passion and turn it into a profitable online business while helping others?”

And that’s why, for the first time in the history of me attending live events, rather than coming out with products I didn’t need, or a feeling of failure, I came out empowered.  I came out with new clients.  New skills to use.  I came out with incredible ideas that I have already started putting into use (and that aren’t taking me away from my focus).  And I came out with potential JV partners, and new friends in the industry.  A new understanding of what it means to run an online business.

I learned from people like Yanik Silver and Tim Paulson how to charge more for my products and services.  I learned how to take one information product and turn it into at least 6 or 7 other info products (thanks, Jerry Clark).  And I learned all about the psychology of sales pages, and how to increase conversions (thanks to Chris Haddad).  With the training of Ryan Lee himself, I came out with a 24-hour blueprint to creating a continuity site (it’s easier than you think!).  Finally, I actually learned 4 new powerful traffic tactics.  Yep, ME, the traffic queen.  Tactics from Chris Farrell I had never heard of before.  (Now THAT is unheard of!).

And I actually found increased focus, thanks to Ryan Lee’s “idea joggers.”  These were a group of coaches who sat in the back of the room and spent time with as many people as they could helping them get a clearer picture of what they were passionate about…and how they could turn those passions into a business.

(A special thanks to Jillian, even though she did call me a “plastic face.”)

By the way, I especially enjoyed the 1-hour “speed networking,” even though I did just about lose my voice towards the end.  I would recommend making 300-or-so copies of your “calling card” rather than the 1,000 I made, though.

(Here’s the one I used)

About Me

So…would I recommend Ryan Lee’s Continuity Summit next year?  You betcha.  I’ll be there, notebook and pen in hand.

And until then?  Howie Schwartz’s Sustainable Traffic Workshop is coming up next week.  I’m looking forward to hanging out with the other project managers, and especially to presenting.

We’ll be talking about Mobile Marketing (which is quite possibly the hottest thing for local businesses right now), and about many other money-making marketing tactics.

I hope to see you there

But if not…check back here for an update.

It’s been forever since I last updated my blog, so I figured I’d put something high quality here. I get a lot of requests for “how to focus,” “how to concentrate” and “how to get things done,” so I recorded this presentation that teaches you how to reach your goals. It’s a little long, but worth every minute.

I originally presented this (with slightly different slides, and more business focused) at Howie Schwartz’ last workshop (before his sabbatical). I’ll update shortly with workshop pictures, videos (including one of Howie as a pimp), etc…but for now, here’s this modified version of my presentation. This should work for you no matter what your goals are. Please leave your comments below!

This one time, when I was just starting to use Hubpages as a medium for marketing, I noticed that they have an area to request hubs. People who want answers to a burning question ask it in that area, and then people like you and me see the question and have the option of writing a web page (hub) to answer it.

I decided to try it out, and created a hub answering someone’s question:

How do you improve focus and concentration?

I sat down in my hallway, of all places, stared at my webcam (this is when I was still fresh at doing videos as well), and started to talk. As a yoga teacher, I’ve had plenty of experiences helping people focus and concentrate. If you’ve ever had “one of those days,” then you know how hard it is sometimes to just stop thinking about things and move forward – to let things go. But this is something I do regularly for myself – and something that I help others do as well.

So anyway, as time went on, I continued to focus on things that I thought were important to build my business. I continued creating hubs on hubpages, continued recording videos…

But the thing is, I kept getting more and more comments and views on my concentration & focus video. In fact, I’ve had more views on it and more comments than any other video I’ve ever placed online. Even videos I’ve embedded on squeeze pages and sent PayPerClick to.

Today, I went back to the video to respond to some comments. And I saw that the video has over 2000 views. No promotion – just people’s natural searches for some help.

And I thought, “you big dummy.”

So here’s a lesson for the rest of you, now that I’ve gotten mine: if you get a good response to something you do, and it’s something you enjoy, you should probably keep doing it.

Anyway, I thought I’d celebrate 2000 views by making the video available to even more people.  Here it is: how to improve your concentration and focus:

.

.