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Tyrone: Welcome to another Internet Business Podcast on the Business Lifestyle Podcast
channel with Tyrone Shum here. Today I've got a special guest and his name is David
Jennys and he's from Melbourne. So hi David, I just want to welcome you on the call today.
David's going to be sharing a little bit more about what he does and I actually stumbled
across David through FaceBook. Is that right David?
David: Yeah, yeah we started off little bit through there and thought we connect.
Tyrone: Yeah, so it's a real honor to be able to have you on the call today. I wanted to
share with my audience today what you currently do and how you also live the kind of business
lifestyle that a lot of entrepreneurs out there on the Internet do. Maybe just give
a little background for people who don't know who you are, what you do and where you live
and yeah, how long have you been in this game for too?
David: Yes, so I'm based down here in Melbourne, Melbourne Australia and I've been marketing
online I'd say for the better part of 10 or 11 years now. First I've got interested in
way back when I first got interested in stock market and a friend of mine at school was
telling me how much money he was making and just like a problem gang blog. Then, he'd
said trade, they win or they'll tell you when they're losing money.
Tyrone: No way...
David: I thought wow! This is too good to be true. When I finished school, I decided
rather than going in University against the better advice of my friends and family, they
said you know, you should go to University and get what it takes to get really far and
I thought no, I'm going to take out $5,000 loan and go to weekend share trading course
to see if I can become a super trader over the course of a weekend. But, I very quickly
realized that it takes a little bit more than that to get the stock market down and mastered
for one. You have to have a little bit of a trading flow and extra capital behind you
unless you go with no money, you can't really trade what it is that you don't have. So,
once that happened, I realized I need to build up a little bit of extra cash. I'm very interested
in stock market that I identified a little bit of a natial exposure, there was a charting
package that a whole lot of people were using that they don't fully understand how to use
this charting package. It's called metastock. The particular trading community or group
that I was a part of, a lot of them really just badly use it. So I joined up with another
guy and we created a homestudy course for. This was back in 2001 and we wrote this course
and it did really well within our community but we realize you can have a perfect product
but if people don't know it exists, it's not really worth anything. So we have this product
sold well in immediate group but beyond that, we needed to get the word out. That's when
we got interested in a lot of old-school direct mail and I got interested in some of the legends
-- Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, some people here in Australia, type of those guys. Pretty
much down the path of learning how to write long form sales copy, copy that converts and
then that really I supposed just evolved over online then I thought I still got this Internet
opportunity to get that nasty jam. So we registered a domain name and our first name I got interested
to use online was kind of called Kennedy behind side sale. That particular program was all
about generating fantastic content and value that pre-sells your product. We've put off
a lot of material out there and that actually ends up being good for SEO reasons as well
but it calls out of the pre-sell and took all of that and started marketing the products
online. That's how it kind of evolved into the Internet Marketing and I think when I
first got interested in Internet Marketing especially in the stock market niche, we're
very much on the cutting edge when we're coming out like when we're doing VEO for about 4
years ago now online, for promoting different products and services that we offered, also
the way that we're bringing the direct mail and long form sales copy that were converting
really well back then. When we brought that online in the stock market niche, we were
doing extremely well. We've picked a very tight niche and quickly positioned ourselves
as the experts and then from there, we just started to build up a product line. You know
we've built up quite large database of clients and just continue to run seminars, workshops,
record them and turn them into info products. That business sort of bubbled along on the
side and then we went a little bit entrepreneurial and different things popped up along the way.
I think another big sort of one of my big client defense I supposed was copycopying
a gentleman called Paul Hartunian indeed, he sold the Brooklyn Bridge in the U.S. and
he wrote press releases and got some magnificent and we did something similar here in Melbourne
Australia where there we're doing some renovations on the MCG and Australia's known to be extremely
sporting like we're a sporting nation.
Tyrone: Exactly.
David: So we're doing renovations and I pretty much just copycatted his idea and got a lot
of scattered culprit and wood and run a press release saying you know, Melbourne man sells
the MCG for $2495. To cut the long story short, got a lot of media coverage and with all the
skills that I've picked up with the direct mail and online, funneled a lot of traffic
online to the website that we've put up and obviously it converted and sold some things
but there have been other bits and pieces that we've worked on. There are rock-n-roll
clothing music store, unique selling MCDC T-shirts, and it's like rock items and those
type of things. Very much as an entrepreneur, we tried to set that store up as a franchise
so we got all the franchise documentation done. Actually a little while ago, we opened
our first franchise in Melbourne CBD down here. Yeah, it's been bubbling along and just
recently I supposed because we've had some really good success online especially in the
stock market niche which I'd say a very high peak, any of those make money niches are very
competitive, we started to find a lot of people who were asking how it was that we're doing,
what it was that we were doing. Because we were passionate in the market, I love stock
market but I also love marketing. I find it very creative and it's a great outlet for
me. And so, when we have people coming to us, they kind of evolved and it kind of became
obvious with enough people asking, we thought what if we set up a search engine optimization
camp. Just recently, at the start of this year, we launched Melbourne SEO services where
we're taking what we're applying in the high peak competitive niches and then applying
it to localized local business doing things like you know, Dentist Melbourne, ISO Consulting
Melbourne. These parts of phrases and terms that we can very quickly dominate very quick
results for our clients and getting some fantastic feedback for that as well. Really shooting
my focus a little bit from the stock market. I still very much run the stock market business
and that's how I generate a lot of my primary income, got a good following of my clients,
and introducing different products to them during product launches and that types of
thing. That's in a nutshell.
Tyrone: That's pretty cool. It's quite interesting taking the path going down to say to University
path then going down to get a job and you went down to entrepreneurial path to start
up your own business to do share trading or show people on how to do share trading then
you've evolved into other businesses. How do you think your lifestyle's changed in that
side and what kind of things have you done because of the businesses that you've created
there that's allowed you to have more time off, more time with the family, do traveling...what
things have you done with that?
David: Yeah, I think when I talk about the 4-Hour Work Week and that type of thing, I
think that's probably about one or two people who actually really unleashed that dream like
Yaro Starak as one of the people who I know who does really embodying and embraced that.
Whereas I think for me, what I got other things like the 4-Hour Work Week and the way that
I structure the time that I work, it's more about working efficiencies. So making sure
that what I am doing, I'm getting the highest leverage from the time that I'm putting it
in. As much as I know a lot of people really paint this very succeeding picture of the
Internet dream and lifestyle, you know sitting on the beaches, cashing your Clickbank cheques
and not having to do any work, I think who's really successful in any endeavor is putting
hell a lot of work. I mean you look at Frank Kern, he really does position himself as the
ultimate slacker. I mean they came out with a course called the Underachiever.
Tyrone: Exactly.
David: And, having some spoken to quite a few people, they all say that when he's focused
and when he's working on a project, he works extremely hard. For me, what building these
businesses meant for me is there's a certain level of freedom and the way I structure my
business. When I first started out, you know I didn't have a project manager on who handled
a lot of my projects. I was directly dealing with a lot of our assistants, my time was
spent just delegating tasks. I wouldn't actually get any work done really, because what I was
doing was just delegating all of these tasks. The next evolution for me was to be able to
get someone to plug in and be the congruent between me and the assistants where I let
them know right here the projects that we're working on. Then they handled through the
execution and management of those assistants. So once that happened, that kind of freed
me up and I think probably in the last few years, I've probably than a lot of traveling
than I've ever done. I'm trying to travel good 3 and 4 times each year to everywhere
from the States. Then, I want to have a month long trip coming out. It took a long time
to build to that point like I'm taking the longest breaks for me which I'm having 4 weeks
off next month and we're going over to Italy but while that's happening, having built everything
up, that'll take over. When we're here on the ground, I work extremely hard. I do work
5 days a week, probably 2 of the day would be from 9 til 6, then the 3 days of the week
would be from 9 til 10, they're big long days. As I get towards the end of the day, I become
less sufficient but usually the way I structure my day, I'll make sure that I'm working on
the most important highest priority stuff early within the day and then when I get to
the latter part of the day, it's about answering emails, jumping on Twitter and engaging with
people in the social media space. So as much as like I was saying people paint that picture,
I work very hard and it's something I think I'll continue to do whether it's just the
way that I operate. I enjoy getting in there and being a part of it. I do like to disconnect
and just trying to disconnect during that period but when I come back, I'll be back
into work again.
Tyrone: That's good man. I think it's exactly what it is and what you've said is honest
and truthful thing because I think a lot of people have that misconception about Internet
business people or Internet entrepreneurs living that kind of lifestyle, the 4-Hour
Work Week. It's how people do and it depends to how they want to structure it. But I think
at the end of the day, if you do is your passion, it doesn't really become work.
David: Yeah.
Tyrone: It's more or less something that you enjoy doing to get you going because if you
just sat around doing nothing and travel all the time, there'll be certain point in your
life that you go like, "I'm bored. I have to travel and packing out of my suitcase and
living with your suitcase for a while is a little bit difficult as well." So yeah, what
you say is going to provide some challenges in your life for doing these kinds of stuff.
You should have built difference in your life to live and furthermore, we're still young
so there's still a lot for us in there wanting to pursue and be entrepreneurs too. You mentioned
also about the virtual assistants. Are there virtual assistants that you hire or are they
local virtual assistants that you're working with?
David: I know again, this comes back to the idea of people painting this picture and you
look at someone like Eben Pagan and he's really positioned himself to creating this massive
business, this $30M plus business that works for virtual employees solely. For me, it doesn't
work as well because I find these efficiencies that I lose when someone's not here in the
office with me. What I'll do is the way that I structure is we have about 4 people here
in the office that work with me and what they're working on is they're really doing things
that are very difficult to outsource because in my brand it's so deeply entrenched in it.
For example, a lot of video stuff that we do is in-house and obviously all the copy
and sales messages and all those sorts of stuff are in-house, but mainly in graphics,
it's done offshore. But the way that these 4 guys in the office work is they did have
assistants underneath them. So that's when we outsource and we got some other few guys
in the Philippines, person in the states, then we've got an additional couple of freelances
that help us with ad jobs as well. Pretty much here in the office we'll have project
or two that we're working on then each component of that will go to the assistants here in
the office that sort of manages the particular areas, so be it graphics, be it video, be
it whatever, they'll manage it with the assistants underneath them where we're trying to outsource
that. The process really starts off with me in the office having the intellectual IP then
teaching the people here in the office the way that IP works then the aid of the game
becomes having to take that and systematize it and get a system in place where we could
outsource that even further. So the work starts with me and then it gets stripped down the
line with the ultimate goal of getting it over to someone in the Philippines. Having
the system in place, which it constantly increases the value of the guys here in the office and
my time value as well. Because the more I can push those things out, the more I can
delegate then the higher level stuff I can begin to work on.
Tyrone: Absolutely. And, do you currently manage these assistants through a project
management system? Or, how does it all work, how do you get the work delegated out to the
right people? Because obviously you got a team that's pretty big team you're able to
manage too.
David: Yeah, so the way that we do it we run it through Basecamp, that's for monitoring.
And, working with the virtual team, there's a lot of different things that we've learned
along the way. Like again, Eben Pagan has got some really good ideas you know with these
end-of-day emails, when someone finishes up a shift they write down what it is that they've
done, and they tell you when there are issues or problems that they've come up against and
anything that you can help them out with. Having those end-of-day emails, we log that
through Basecamp which is an essential way so that if more than one assistant like a
virtual assistant is getting communicated with more than one person here in the office,
everybody knows exactly what the thread and where people are up to with different things.
That's why we'll use Basecamp as the central place. We meet the team here in the office
once a week and we talk about the different projects that we're working on. From day to
day point of view, I'll chat and check with the guys here in the office, like here's what
we're working on, here's what needs to be done, manage that with the assistants and
the assistants and virtual assistants log a lot of their stuff through Basecamp.
Tyrone: Okay, so that's really cool there. So you've got pretty much a project management
system in place, you've got virtual assistants and also team of staff in the office with
you, and you basically have the projects all managed in the office and basically delegated
out to that. Good stuff! Also, just want to get a better feel of firstly you've now talked
about doing another business which is SEO Melbourne that you've just recently launched
and you said there's a demand from your stock market business that you have there. How are
you managing say two businesses, say for example an entrepreneur like yourself currently have
2 to 3 businesses running at the same time, where do you focus most of your time on and
how are you managing the time you got there? Because obviously you got split businesses
to focus on.
David: So the primary roles that I say that I take, the hiring role is extremely important
and I think as a CEO and entrepreneur that needs to be something that or someone that
really focuses and making sure you're getting the right team on board. Once you get the
right team, it just makes everything work so much easy. So we're just talking about
hiring A-players and you know if you want to get up to speed with that, just read Brad's
smart book Topgrading, that's good place and stuff for hiring people. As far as like the
way that I split my attention I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs go
wrong. The reason I say that is because I'm guilty as charged. It's starting to many fuss,
the best *** when it comes to time is to make sure that you have a really single focus
and that's something that we've been working towards here. Look, I'm trying to strip out
so many parts of the business that I have been running so I can really focus and make
sure that the things that I'm working on all work synergistically. So, we had a big back
catalog you know as part of my SEO days, we've registered 530 old domain names and we built
the map and had them you know, all with unique content and trying to put them across multiple
IPs, all those types of stuff which just taking up too much attention and then I decided right,
we've actually just jumped over a broker here and running a team alone with flipping broker.
We're selling these sites on Flippa. The reason I tell you the story is so you understand
that what I'm trying to do here is cow all of that and somehow focus can be really tight
now. We decided to drop the stock market niche because we have such a good following, we
got a product line and it's very automated, it's just easy. We just did a product launch
recently for someone else in the stock market niche and they weren't really familiar with
product launches so we pretty much run the product launch and did exclusive product launch
to our list. That launch was what can you expect, just a small business with that launch.
I'm not just going to drop that business but my attention is starting to shift and trying
to go into more Melbourne SEO services. Because the biggest thing that I've noticed just recently
I've got a business coach and what we've talked about is being an entrepreneur, a lot of what
you'll find you'll do is you got these big spots of profitability and this comes from
product launches and things like that where you'll see you've got your baseline and sales
that come in, and that might be a certain level. Then, every now and then you get these
massive sparks. That's great but the thing is it's not focusing on building necessarily
a business, you got the baseline of sales but it really should be focusing necessarily
to build a business and which is why we're focusing on Melbourne SEO services. We're
targetting and we're going to go after 12 clients and we're going for high-end clients
who understand that. As long as we're getting them a positive return on investment, they
happen to spend as much cash with us as they like and that business that we're building
is going to provide quite high-end clients providing more than enough money to fund operations
here in the office with the overheads and staff. Then have money over and above that,
with that money that's over and above, that's what we'll take and look to invest into other
businesses because my passion being the entrepeneur is starting and growing businesses. We're
thinking of evolving into being like the Waren Buffett of the online world -- we're buying
web businesses, building them up, taking their expertise, refine the systems with the clients
that we are working with and those clients will for that overhead. I think we're shifting
away from the stock market stuff but I'll never let it go completely. My advice for
anyone is watching news, the more that you can strip away and have that single focus,
the better you'll do.
Tyrone: Yeah, it's interesting because I've spoken to a few entrepreneurs in the past
and depending on what the circumstances and what their goals are in the businesses or
like you say journey. Some of them just want lifestyle so that they design the business
where they just run and take side of it without much intervention. Then there are really other
entrepreneurs out there who just want to keep building new businesses and being involved
to businesses and growing it and so forth. I can see that that's the path that you're
looking to head down which is to grow those business and to yeah, create large ones there
to be able to go through which is really good because it's something that I think you can
take in both angles, you can learn from each other because it depends on what you want
in your life and it's all a personal preference. For example, Marc Lindsay, he's got a very
successful SEO company up in the Brisbane and a lot of clients all across Australia.
He tells me he works 12 hours plus a day because he loves doing it but also he works with the
clients hand on hand. Whereas with people like about Yaro Starak, he probably works
only 2 hours a day but he enjoys what he does. So everybody's entrepeneur journey is really
different and everybody's goals are different in life. But it's really good just to be able
to learn in those business aspects with those same principles as you said just focus on
one thing at a time rather than have yourself split up all different areas. So that's really
good. Any parting advice I guess in terms of for other people who are wanting to start
their business and where they should look at starting first like say maybe three tips
in starting an Internet-based business.
David: Yeah, okay. The first thing that I'd say is get clear. It's good to work on something
that you're passionate about. I'm fortunate that marketing is my passion so I can then
apply that to any niche that I go after like, I really enjoy that. It's good idea to work
on something that you do enjoy. As you said earlier, you really hit the nail in the head
like Marc Lindsay can work 12 hours a day because that's something that he enjoys so
I can work the longer hours because it's something that I enjoy doing. Make sure that that's
something that you enjoy doing. Make sure that you pick out that niche, once you pick
out that niche, once you've picked out the niche, the best thing that you can do is create
the idea. This is something I've been thinking about more so recently. A lot of people just
don't do it, the idea of finding out and once you know that niche, pick a person and create
a normal around through that person, what the biggest issues are, what are the demographics
as well. Get really clear on that so you get inside their head. Make sure that you create
a product that fits them that they want so you want to make sure that whatever you create
rather than just marketing stuff. Don't create the product first then look for the market,
look for the market first then create the product. So, get clear on that and my other
piece of advice is make sure you build a smart business model. This is where I see most people
going wrong. Setup an e-book website to sell a $17 e-book and that's their business. Think
about how you're going to structure over the long hole and what I would think about is
make sure that you come out with the front-end lead generator which is your low-end entry-type
product that will introduce them to your product line typically at just the second level which
might be the higher end level priced product. The front-end lead generator maybe are the
free, $7 or $30 something down that low-end, anybody can jump on board. The middle thing
is kind of looking between the $97 to $500 or $600. Then, build out that product line
and beneath that try to see if you got anything else that you can add it into the mix, continuity
or coaching or something like that. Now, I supposed I'm talking a little bit more about
service-based business start business there, just plan out what your business model is
first and make sure that you're doing more than just a 17-dollar e-book. Pick the niche,
plan out the business model and then make sure that you focus and get a little bit of
an action plan together as what it is that you're going to try to execute and how you're
planning on building that business and then just start buying off small pieces off that
and do little bit each day. Always thinking out of your head on how can you increase those
efficiencies so is there's anything that you can outsource that's always a smart idea.
Make sure that you start off by outsourcing those regular menial tasks as quickly as you
can. So if it's checking your customer support, if it's you know, doing your books for your
accounting, all of those type of things that could vary easily to outsource especially
if you don't enjoy it. I say keep it if you enjoy it and then outsource it if you don't.
Tyrone: That's certainly that I think a lot of people have been starting to learn and
also with a lot of the audience that I know, they're learning that if it's not necessary,
they'll eliminate it as much as they can and automate the process as much as you can. It's
all part of streamlining your systems. Actually there's one thing that I wanted to also ask
you as well just for tips for people who got website businesses and you're the expert in
SEO as well. If people have say their website and they want to get it up on the search engines,
say for example they're just starting out for their new website or whatever that business
is, any sort of takeaway tips that you can give them as well in terms of SEO to be able
to just help them rank better. Maybe 5 tips that you can do that. Just give them parting
advice for this too.
David: Yeah, well with SEO there's really two main components. You've got the on-page
optimization and you've got the off-page optimization. On-page optimization is really quite simple.
When you think of the SEO pie, you probably make yourself about 20% of the SEO pie and
the off-page optimization makes up better, 80% of the SEO pie. So the things that you
do for your on-page optimization, the the most important thing that you could do is
to identify who your advertising your target market is first, you get the clear. For on-page
optimization, where it all starts is the selection of keywords. Making sure that you're selection
the right keywords means that you have to get into their head of the person who's searching.
Once you're inside their head, you really think about what are these that they'll be
talking into Google behind your products and services. You start to identify those keywords
and there are different tools that you could use, there's Market Samurai, if you want it
free just search through the free Google Keyword Tool, it will come up number one. Identify
a set of keywords that you're going to go after rather than drilling down to keyword
patterns. Choose your keywords, just choose a good variety of keywords. Some competitive
keywords and vary some long tail keywords as well. Then you do your on-page optimization.
Optimize one keyword per page, don't try to do multiple keywords per page. Make sure you
put the keywords and lay some terms may or may not be familiar to your listeners and
pass in onto web, who'll know. Make sure you put it on your title tag, your meta description,
your meta keywords. Now, the meta keywords at the moment isn't playing an impact on search
engine rankings but it doesn't hurt to put it in there just in cases there'll be changes
one day. Then go ahead and put keyword a couple of times on the page but don't freak out too
much about trying to have the certain keyword density. Just put it naturally on the page
a few times particularly early and often. So you can have it on the first paragraph,
have it in the middle, have it in the end. Try to have about 300 words in the page at
least. Put the keyword if you can in the h1 tag and something like that. That's the basics
of on-page optimization, there's nothing too new or flashy there. Then, the second part
of it is doing your off-page optimization. That's where the bulk of it counts. To get
the best *** for your buck for building links, yeah that's *** it's a stock market term.
To build links the best, the best thing that you need to do with off-page optimization
is all about building links back to your website with the appropriate anchor text. So you build
links back to your website with the keywords you're trying to optimize for. You're going
to make sure you vary with those keywords as well because what we're trying to do anything
with SEO is making sure you're replicating what happens in nature. It's natural to have
all of your links coming back to your website from Wordpress blogs so we don't exclusively
use particular method for link building. So look at other methods for link building, everything
from posting to EzineArticles, to press releases, to blog networks if you got access to those,
blog comments, other article directories and you want to create a system, a process that
you can have automatically executed because SEO happens overtime. It's not a hit and run
thing for you to build links so for that race, you need to create a system and this comes
to the outsourcing stuff and listening to any of Tyrone's stuff to get you up to speed
on how to outsource correctly.
Tyrone: Thanks.
David: But all you need to do is to get that system in place and make sure that's continually
executed in those links built in natural, organic fashion. At the moment, the big takeaway
is where big sites win -- the more pages you have, the better. As John Reese said, the
more pages you create, it's like another ticket in the search engine lottery so bigger sites
are winning that's why e-commerce sites rank so well. I know there've been slight changes
recently with the MayDay effect which is the change in algorithm recently, but the fact
is still big sites are working and you just point links to their webpages that you want
to have ranked. So SEO in a nutshell, there's a lot of stuff there and I think a lot of
people can really caught up in the details of it as well and searching the gang of search
engines. But to get ahead of it, just have good quality product and then just do good
quality, white hat link building by getting articles out there and creating videos to
help promote because I think one of the biggest easiest ways at the moment to drive traffic
back to your website and get ranking is through video. So what you're doing here Tyrone has
spot on. Whatever niche you're in, find out some experts in the particular niche and try
to do it in video, optimize it correctly and all that on-page optimization stuff that I've
talked about plus you do equally the same over the video space then you drive all of
that traffic back and get the easy rankings back to your website.
Tyrone: That's excellent advice. I know there's a lot of content there but probably we'll
replay this if you need to listen to it again because Dave has just given so much good stuff
there. Well awesome. So David, I thought before we do head off, how can people get in contact
with you in terms of your services and probably get in contact with you too?
David: Yeah, there's two main places to go. If you head over to DavidJenyns.com, so that's
D-A-V-I-D, Jenyns, so it's J for Jollibee, E for Egg, N for Nitro, Y for Yellow, N for
Nova, S for Sand and dot com. I say that because sometimes it's hard to spell. Or just Google
my name and it'll come up that way. And, if you want any sort of help with SEO related
stuff, head over to MelbourneSEOServices.com and we got loads of free videos and we run
workshops in that type of stuff. That's it.
Tyrone: I'll put that down on my blog post as well and also in YouTube. If anyone wants
to get hold of you, they could just click on these links just below this video. Well
David, thanks so much for coming onto the interview today. It's been an absolute pleasure
and I've learned a lot from you too and I feel that the listeners also gained a lot
of great content from you so thanks again today.
David: Thanks Tyrone!
Tyrone: If you want to hear any more of these additional podcasts, or anything like this
as well, just hop onto Tyroneshum.com and you'll find plenty more interviews and podcasts
like this. That's it for today, my name is Tyrone Shum and I'll see you next time.