Two of the biggest problems that I get questions about all the time are:
1. How to create my own product?
2. I do not have a list I want to know how to built one.
Each of these problems on their own are huge, and together they seem impossible to overcome. When I got started looking for an opportunity to make money online I felt like everyone else was so much smarter than I, and that everything I seemed to read or hear about eluded me and made me feel so unsure of myself. I had no idea where to start. I wanted to build a list and then my goal was to create a product that I could sell to that list. But I did not have a list and more importantly, I desperately wanted to know how to built one.
Fast forward to today. I have a list of over 10,000 double optin subscribers and customers who know, like, and trust me. That’s just one list. I have several smaller lists in between but this one list is from my very first information product that I produced. I have intentionally taken you from past to present to show you that I have indeed created a highly reponsive optin list and I have also produced my own successful information product. So I definitely qualify to share this information with you.
Let’s go back to the beginning here shall we? You must remember that I had no list. No product. No prior experience…Nothing. I used to work as a security guard for crying out loud…NO skills necessary. Just Kidding in case any security guards are reading this. 
But seriously, I had no special skills or training in my life that I could fall back on to help make this work. I had to learn everything from scratch and even worse is I was out of a job and barely had any savings. I needed money fast!
So let’s recap, I needed a list and I needed a product in order to get some cash to save my butt. And in case you don’t know me yet, I am married to an awesome woman ( Missy ) for almost what…almost 10 years now ( Wow ) and together we now have 5 kids ( Yeah, FIVE! ) 3 Girls and 2 Boys. Don’t worry…We’re done! So needless to say I was in a VERY difficult spot and coming home to my wife to say I quit my job was the HARDEST thing I have ever done.
Once the worry and anger wore off a little and I recuperated from my injuries ( thanks hun 
) I forced myself to learn everything I could find about list building but it was easier said than done. Even after I read what I thought to be good relevant information about list building I was still stuck. I might as well have not even read the information in the first place because my inner thoughts were crushing me. You know…The inner voices that tell you that you “Can’t” do something. It’s rediculous. I couldn’t just listen to them, I have a family that I need to take care of.
I bring this up because it’s so relevant. I can’t tell you how many emails I get, or questions that I answer that sounds just like how I felt when I was working hard to get started. You feel frustrated. Angry. Terrified. Excited. All at the same time sometimes and it can drive you mad. You must fix that inner dialog, you can’t ignore it or shut it off, it’s there for a reason. BUT, you can make it work for you and not against you. Here is a tip…Everytime your inner voice starts to say you “Can’t” do something, the second you hear it coming you replace it with “I will learn to do” and you fill in the blank as you go. By doing this little exercise you will turn that negative around into a goal and objective and instead of it being something that is holding you back, it’s now a goal that you are actively working on and will master. Each obstacle you encounter like this, you should repeat that process over and over and you’ll be amazed at how well that actually works.
Alright. So far we still have no list and no product but you already know that I have overcome those objections when I flash forwarded to present so you may be asking yourself “What Changed”? And looking back it almost seems like it happened so quickly but it didn’t. Things only began moving fast for me when I finally discovered the one course that really changed my life. This is not a sales pitch by any means but it’s necessary to tell you that it wasn’t until I discovered Mike Filsaime that my life changed.
I’m so bad with dates ( ask my wife ) so please forgive me here but a few years ago or so I found Mike Filsaime, I don’t remember how but it may have been inside the Warrior Forum to which I’ve been a member of for years now. But Mike ( back then ) was not the Mike you know today, but was definitely on his way to the success that he deserves! Mike came out with a home study course called Buttefly Marketing and I remember all the hype and buzz it got but really didn’t know how to take it since I was fairly new to this whole idea of internet marketing so I just sat back and watched.
I was fascinated by his success and was surprised to find out that Mike Filsaime was a car salesman before learning and picking up internet marketing. This began to sound off every alarm in my head telling me to pay very close attention to what ever Mike has to say. I didn’t buy buttefly marketing right when it came out…in fact, I couldn’t even afford it. I’m almost embarrased to admit this but I contacted Mike personally by email one day and I remember telling him how much I appreciated everthing he’s done for me personally even though he’d never personally helped me other than his forum posts and things that I found online from him. I didn’t even think I’d ever receive an email back from him, I didn’t expect to but I decided to send an email anyway on the off chance that he would see my email and wanted to reply back to me.
I don’t know how long it took him to reply honestly but he DID reply personally. I was able to make arrangements to buy his course and Mike and I followed through with the deal and it was the best damn deal I’ve ever got in my lifetime. Honestly. I remember the day the package came and I immediately tore into it and devoured everything he had to say, I went into the private forums and began to interact with other butterflies and this is where things changed for me.
I know this is a long post and I certainly didn’t intend it to be, but looking back so far I believe it’s necessary to tell you as much of my own story in hopes that you find one element that you can identify with and recognize that there is hope and you will succeed if you do not give up hope. I’m going to tie this all together very quickly I promise. So once I began interacting with the other members and absorbed the whole butterfly marketing concept, I was able to start to help those who had their own questions and problems and learn even more than I had before.
I ended up PM’ing ( Personal Messaging ) a guy on the forum, I don’t remember what it was all about now but it wasn’t anything about business. Maybe it was just saying hello to a new person. Could have been. But that person turned out to be someone that helped me put all the pieces together very quickly and that is Bob ( The Teacher ) Jenkins . We began to share messages back and forth for a while and during those messages we began to build a friendship from it. Bob messages me one day and says that he’s got a project that he’d like to see created and produced and asked me if I was interested. Sure…I said. So he told me about an idea to create a set of video tutorials that would take a user step by step through the process of managing their websites using only CPanel.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with CPanel, it’s a web interface that is used to manage your online websites. Now I had some knowledge on CPanel, I didn’t think I was an expert by any means but looking back now I realize that it isn’t the point. There is always someone just starting out and knows even less than you do so in their eyes…You ARE the expert!
Alright, back to the story…
So Bob knows I was ‘fresh’ out of the Buttefly Marketing University and was eager to put my new found skills to the test but I honestly believed I was NOT ready…Not by a long shot. Remember earilier that I wasn still trying to figure out list building and then I dove into the Butterfly Marketing Course? Well you wouldn’t know if now but I was about to be thrown head first into the deep end of the pool and it was either swim with the fishes or be eaten by the sharks. Nice right?
Over the course of the next month or so Bob and I had multiple telephone calls back and forth to each other, we did conferences and shared desktops and regularly updated each other on our progress. Bob made these killer mind maps that really helped me stay focused on my work ( I get distracted pretty easily ) because I have kids still at home. But one thing that pushed me to make this all work was the accountability that I had. Not just to myself and my wife, but to Bob as well. Keep in mind I’m pretty much broke at this point and I’m putting all the chips on the table hoping to break the dealer.
It took me about a month…maybe less, but I created over 15 step by step video tutorials that did exactly that. There were things in between all this that put all the rest of the pieces to the puzzle together but this is exactly what I did to create my very first product. Now, there was things like niche research, topic selection, setting up a membership site and taking payments etc. but pretty much it was easier with the system that Bob and I worked on together to complete it.
We launched that product around June or July of 2007 and because of the Butterfly Marketing Script ( Membership Site Platform ) I was able to build a list and also launch my very first product all in one step. The membership site software I use has a built in support for collecting names and email addresses and more from the customer before they even buy so it’s a very good list building tool too. You can offer a free report or gift on the front end and collect your visitors information before sending them through your sales funnel.
Ok, so let’s wrap it up because I’d LOVE for you to share your thoughts and experiences with me too. To this day we have over 13,000 members and have paid tens of thousands alone in affiliate commissions and of those, 10,000 or so have double opted into my list and I can market to them over and over again. This experience has changed my life and I want to share this with you too. I want you to have a product creation breakthrough like I have and I’ve got something big in the works but for now, share your thoughts and comments here with me. If you have specific questions, I’d love to hear them and I will try to answer some of them here. If I don’t get to your question, it’s not ignored I promise you, I will keep track of your reponse and will give you more killer content soon!
Chris
