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Tyrone: Welcome to another Internet Business Podcast on the Business Lifestyle Podcast
channel with Tyrone Shum here. Today Iíve got a special guest and his name is David
Jenyns and heís from Melbourne. So hi David, I just want to welcome you on the call today.
Davidís 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 itís 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 donít 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 Iím based down here in Melbourne, Melbourne Australia and Iíve been marketing
online Iíd say for the better part of 10 or 11 years now. First Iíve 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, heíd
said trade, they win or theyíll tell you when theyíre losing money.
Tyrone: No wayÖ
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, Iím 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 canít really trade what it is that you donít have. So,
once that happened, I realized I need to build up a little bit of extra cash. Iím 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 donít fully understand how to use
this charting package. Itís 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 donít know it exists, itís not really worth anything. So we have this
product sold well in immediate group but beyond that, we needed to get the word out. Thatís
when we got interested in a lot of old-school direct mail and I got interested in some of
the legends ó 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.
Weíve 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. Thatís 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,
weíre very much on the cutting edge when weíre coming out like when weíre doing VEO
for about 4 years ago now online, for promoting different products and services that we offered,
also the way that weíre 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. Weíve 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
weíve 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 copycatting
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 weíre doing some renovations on the MCG and Australiaís known to be extremely
sporting like weíre a sporting nation.
Tyrone: Exactly.
David: So weíre 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 Iíve picked up with the direct mail and online, funneled a lot of traffic
online to the website that weíve put up and obviously it converted and sold some things
but there have been other bits and pieces that weíve worked on. There are rock-n-roll
clothing music store, unique selling MCDC T-shirts, and itís 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, itís been bubbling along and
just recently I supposed because weíve had some really good success online especially
in the stock market niche which Iíd 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
weíre 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 itís 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 weíre taking what weíre 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 thatís 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. Thatís in a nutshell.
Tyrone: Thatís pretty cool. Itís 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
youíve evolved into other businesses. How do you think your lifestyleís changed in
that side and what kind of things have you done because of the businesses that youíve
created there thatís allowed you to have more time off, more time with the family,
do travelingÖwhat 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 thatís 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, itís more about working efficiencies. So making sure
that what I am doing, Iím getting the highest leverage from the time that Iím 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 whoís 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 heís focused
and when heís working on a project, he works extremely hard. For me, what building these
businesses meant for me is thereís a certain level of freedom and the way I structure my
business. When I first started out, you know I didnít 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 wouldnít 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 weíre 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, Iíve probably than a lot of traveling
than Iíve ever done. Iím 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 Iím taking the longest breaks for me which Iím having 4
weeks off next month and weíre going over to Italy but while thatís happening, having
built everything up, thatíll take over. When weíre 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, theyíre big long days. As I get towards the
end of the day, I become less sufficient but usually the way I structure my day, Iíll
make sure that Iím working on the most important highest priority stuff early within the day
and then when I get to the latter part of the day, itís 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 itís something I think Iíll continue
to do whether itís 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, Iíll be back into work again.
Tyrone: Thatís good man. I think itís exactly what it is and what youíve 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. Itís 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 doesnít really become work.
David: Yeah.
Tyrone: Itís 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, thereíll be certain point in
your life that you go like, ìIím 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.î 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, weíre still young
so thereís 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 youíre 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 heís really positioned himself to creating this
massive business, this $30M plus business that works for virtual employees solely. For
me, it doesnít work as well because I find these efficiencies that I lose when someoneís
not here in the office with me. What Iíll do is the way that I structure is we have
about 4 people here in the office that work with me and what theyíre working on is theyíre
really doing things that are very difficult to outsource because in my brand itís 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, itís done offshore. But the way that these 4 guys in the office
work is they did have assistants underneath them. So thatís when we outsource and we
got some other few guys in the Philippines, person in the states, then weíve got an additional
couple of freelances that help us with ad jobs as well. Pretty much here in the office
weíll have project or two that weíre 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, theyíll manage it with the assistants underneath them
where weíre 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 thatís pretty big team youíre able
to manage too.
David: Yeah, so the way that we do it we run it through Basecamp, thatís for monitoring.
And, working with the virtual team, thereís a lot of different things that weíve 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 theyíve
done, and they tell you when there are issues or problems that theyíve 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.
Thatís why weíll 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 weíre working on. From day
to day point of view, Iíll chat and check with the guys here in the office, like hereís
what weíre working on, hereís 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 thatís really cool there. So youíve got pretty much a project management
system in place, youíve 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 youíve now talked
about doing another business which is SEO Melbourne that youíve just recently launched
and you said thereís 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 youíre getting the right team on board. Once you get the
right team, it just makes everything work so much easy. So weíre just talking about
hiring A-players and you know if you want to get up to speed with that, just read Bradís
smart book Topgrading, thatís 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 Iím guilty as charged. Itís starting to
many fuss, the best *** when it comes to time is to make sure that you have a really
single focus and thatís something that weíve been working towards here. Look, Iím 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 Iím working on all work synergistically. So, we had a
big back catalog you know as part of my SEO days, weíve 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, weíve actually just jumped over a broker here and running
a team alone with flipping broker. Weíre selling these sites on Flippa. The reason
I tell you the story is so you understand that what Iím 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 itís very automated,
itís just easy. We just did a product launch recently for someone else in the stock market
niche and they werenít 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. Iím 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 Iíve noticed just recently Iíve got a business coach and
what weíve talked about is being an entrepreneur, a lot of what youíll find youíll do is you
got these big spots of profitability and this comes from product launches and things like
that where youíll see youíve 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. Thatís great
but the thing is itís 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 weíre focusing on Melbourne SEO services. Weíre targeting and weíre going to go after
12 clients and weíre going for high-end clients who understand that. As long as weíre getting
them a positive return on investment, they happen to spend as much cash with us as they
like and that business that weíre 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 thatís over and above, thatís
what weíll take and look to invest into other businesses because my passion being the entrepeneur
is starting and growing businesses. Weíre thinking of evolving into being like the Waren
Buffett of the online world ó weíre 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 weíre shifting away from the stock market stuff but Iíll
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 youíll do.
Tyrone: Yeah, itís interesting because Iíve 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 thatís the path that youíre
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 itís 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 itís all a personal preference. For example, Marc Lindsay, heís 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 everybodyís entrepreneur journey is really
different and everybodyís goals are different in life. But itís 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 thatís 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 Iíd say is get clear. Itís good to work on something
that youíre passionate about. Iím fortunate that marketing is my passion so I can then
apply that to any niche that I go after like, I really enjoy that. Itís 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 thatís something that he enjoys so
I can work the longer hours because itís something that I enjoy doing. Make sure that
thatís something that you enjoy doing. Make sure that you pick out that niche, once you
pick out that niche, once youíve picked out the niche, the best thing that you can do
is create the idea. This is something Iíve been thinking about more so recently. A lot
of people just donít 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. Donít 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
thatís their business. Think about how youíre 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 Iím
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 youíre 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 youíre going to try to
execute and how youíre 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 thereís anything that you can outsource thatís
always a smart idea. Make sure that you start off by outsourcing those regular menial tasks
as quickly as you can. So if itís checking your customer support, if itís you know,
doing your books for your accounting, all of those type of things that could vary easily
to outsource especially if you donít enjoy it. I say keep it if you enjoy it and then
outsource it if you donít.
Tyrone: Thatís certainly that I think a lot of people have been starting to learn and
also with a lot of the audience that I know, theyíre learning that if itís not necessary,
theyíll eliminate it as much as they can and automate the process as much as you can.
Itís all part of streamlining your systems. Actually thereís one thing that I wanted
to also ask you as well just for tips for people who got website businesses and youíre
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 theyíre 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 thereís really two main components. Youíve got the on-page
optimization and youíve 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 youíre selection the right keywords means that you have to get into their head
of the person whoís searching. Once youíre inside their head, you really think about
what are these that theyíll be talking into Google behind your products and services.
You start to identify those keywords and there are different tools that you could use, thereís
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 youíre 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, donít 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, whoíll know. Make sure you put it on your title tag,
your meta description, your meta keywords. Now, the meta keywords at the moment isnít
playing an impact on search engine rankings but it doesnít hurt to put it in there just
in cases thereíll be changes one day. Then go ahead and put keyword a couple of times
on the page but donít 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. Thatís the basics of on-page optimization, thereís nothing too new or flashy there.
Then, the second part of it is doing your off-page optimization. Thatís where the bulk
of it counts. To get the best *** for your buck for building links, yeah thatís ***
itís 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 youíre
trying to optimize for. Youíre going to make sure you vary with those keywords as well
because what weíre trying to do anything with SEO is making sure youíre replicating
what happens in nature. Itís natural to have all of your links coming back to your website
from WordPress blogs so we donít 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. Itís 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 Tyroneís 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 thatís continually
executed in those links built in natural, organic fashion. At the moment, the big takeaway
is where big sites win ó the more pages you have, the better. As John Reese said, the
more pages you create, itís like another ticket in the search engine lottery so bigger
sites are winning thatís why e-commerce sites rank so well. I know thereíve 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, thereís 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 youíre doing here
Tyrone has spot on. Whatever niche youíre 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 Iíve 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: Thatís excellent advice. I know thereís a lot of content there but probably weíll
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, thereís two main places to go. If you head over to DavidJenyns.com, so thatís
D-A-V-I-D, Jenyns, so itís 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 itís hard to spell. Or just Google
my name and itíll 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. Thatís it.
Tyrone: Iíll 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. Itís been an absolute pleasure
and Iíve 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 youíll find plenty more interviews and podcasts
like this. Thatís it for today, my name is Tyrone Shum and Iíll see you next time.