The wheels are starting to turn again for this year’s Thirty Day Challenge. I really can’t wait!
Of all that was said in this special launch episode, the thing that struck me most was this bit:-
“Processes are not sexy, but every successful person in life is a person that’s worked out how to follow a process. I used to fight and rail against processes. I thought, “That inhibits my creativity - I’m a creative being. You know, I can’t follow a process, I need to be free and in the wind”. I was also very broke as it turned out. I was free, but broke. I worked out that processes was actually what made the world go round.”
Good stuff, Ed.
Show Notes:-
This show was originally recorded on Wednesday 14th May 2008.
6:05 I don’t know if you guys have got hairs on the back of your neck, but I have. Welcome to this, the launch for the 30dc 4.
6:20 Who would have thought that it would have grown this huge? What I find particularly emotional is if you back and look at that list of 32 names… I think I counted 4 millionaires in that list. I know a whole bunch of you are working full time on the internet and making a living out of the internet. It’s extraordinary and to me that is what it is all about. And for all of you starting from humble beginnings, that you have the chance to be part of that legacy, to be part of that history, to be part of the Thirty Day Challenge. And today is all about giving you a bit of the history; telling you about preseason, which is going to be awesome this year if I do say so myself; telling you something new about the competitions, because they’re always very important and also if we’ve got time, a few questions. But we’re going to keep this pretty tight. We’re going to keep this to about an hour.
Isn’t this amazing? I love this (Ed points to chat box)
7:58 I’m not going to see what is going in chat; we’ve got some moderators who are going to be watching. Gurubob will be noting down any questions and he’ll send them through to me on iChat.
8:31 First of all let me give you a bit of the history. The Thirty Day Challenge was created just after I sold all of my niche websites. I was sitting in New York, I had just done the deal and I was reading two books. I was reading iCon - the Steve Jobs’ biography; and also because I’m ADHD, I was reading about National Writers’ Month in a book about how to write a novel in 30 days.
The first or second season of The Apprentice had just finished filming and I was staying just down the road from Trump Tower. If you’ve ever been to the Trump Tower in New York, on the mezzanine level is a Starbucks. They’d just had the winner the previous night.
It really was just a mix of all of these things, [together] with one other thing.
When Frank Kern and I had been teaching the Underachiever Method, we had forgotten to teach one crucial element. It was something so important to people’s success online that I wanted to empirically prove it.
10:24 I thought what if we taught no holds barred, top-shelf, highest quality teaching for 30 days to try and people to make their first dollar online.
10:42 One of the biggest questions we get is, “Why just focus on a single dollar, Ed? I want to make hundreds of dollars. I want to make thousands of dollars. I want to make a million!” - like some of those from the original Thirty Day Challenge.
11:04 One of the biggest beefs I have in the whole internet space is…. People do make extraordinary amounts of money online; it’s a brilliant business - if there was a better business, I would be doing that, but for me this is the best business.
11:23 For me the key thing is that if you go to a conference and you see someone talking about how they made $75,000 last month, you’re brain records that whether you like it or not. You go away and you’re all exited - you’re enthusiasm bank account is at an all time high - and then you start working. All of a sudden, funnily enough you don’t make $75,000 in you’re first month.
12:06 Regardless of how positive you can think consciously, subconsciously your brain is just trying to look after you. It just wants the best for you, and it doesn’t want you in any way to exhibit any sort of pain. So, it will start going, “Hang on, this doesn’t work”, or it uses some justification to make it not work. This is why we focus on the dollar.
12:34 Everyone looks at the dollar and says, “Wiiih! Easy! We can make a dollar”. Well of the 900 people who thought, “Pah! Easy” 32 of them made the dollar inside the first month now many, many more went on after the 30 days to do so. In fact, of our most popular Thirty Day Challenge members - if there was a patron saint it would be this woman - Caro. Who could forget Caro’s incredible efforts in that first challenge? Boy, could she type. Despite her amazing efforts, no matter what she did, she didn’t quite make it. She missed the 30 days, but she worked so hard. Her win, and a lot of people’s win, is that if you stick at anything for 30 days that’s an impressive effort. I’m luck to get 2 days straight on my Wii Fit, and that’s with me icon looking like the Michelin Man.
13:40 Committing to anything for 30 days is an extraordinary effort and an extraordinary win. Thanks to the whole social networking and Web 2.0 phenom, we now have between 50 and 100 people joining the 30dc every day. These are new people; these are not people coming from the internet marketing world; they are looking for a plan B.
14:22 There have been extraordinary stories - every year has its legend. Who could forget “Tumblr Gate” last year? Who could forget the first ever “Google Slap” in the second challenge? Who knows what is going to happen this year? Could we see Dan Raine de-tog yet again? Who knows?
Whatever it is, it’s an adventure, and it’s a journey, and it’s one that if you step up to the plate and commit to it, you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
Currently on the Thirty Challenge Blog there’s a great audio, which I did for the second 30dc. I was literally dropping out of the blue and ringing people up on Skype to get their opinion. If you get the chance to listen to that it really has made a huge difference in people’s lives. That to me is what is most awesome.
You might have noticed the slight increase in professionalism last year - that is thanks to my main man, your main man, everybody’s main man, the pink thong wearing scoundrel from Manchester, North England, Dan “The Man” Raine.
15:44 Now, unfortunately Dan “The Man” Raine is about to get on a plane in the middle of the night in the 30dc and head off to his villa. But, hey, it’s a tough life for some; some of us are here doing a minor thing like launching the Thirty Day Challenge. J
16:04 But seriously, Dan has been an extraordinary… with what I’m about to release to you and what I’m about to launch today, you’ll already start to see some of the major differences between the Thirty Day Challenge this year. It really is going to be huge! Absolutely huge!
16:28 It’s grown and grown in leaps and bounds - it really has been an extraordinary journey. To the point where last year, I don’t know whether you’re aware of this, but in terms of internet marketing, in terms an online event, it became the biggest single education event in internet history. Something that I am dreadfully proud of.
16:58 If you have a community and you have a bunch of people that are all trying to look for an alternative, the sum of that group is so much more powerful than any one individual. That to me is extremely gratifying, extremely exciting, it gives me a hope in the future, bluntly.
17:20 I think in this year’s challenge a lot of us, let’s face it, are facing a lot of challenges. The last couple of years’ challenges have economically been pretty good. Things are getting tough out there. I know it, I experience it, I see it, and you guys see it. I think that makes this year’s Thirty Day Challenge even more important because having that plan B or having that plan C, is such a crucial thing, because we all know it…. and gosh you’ve heard me tell the story of when I was running a large global corporation and a board 16,000 miles away decides that 80 hard working fanatics in Leeds, North East England, needed to be retrenched because they’d found a different way to do it.
18:26 I had to walk in there one day and… If you’ve ever seen David Brent, or the US version of The Office… that was pretty much my management style. People look at that and see it as funny; I look at that and see and deep, dark psychological profile.
They walked in expecting bad jokes, but what they got instead was pink slips. Close to the worst day of my life - it was horrific. The reason it was so horrific, was that I knew that none of these guy… they didn’t lose their jobs because they were slackers. No, they worked their testicles off. It was unbelievable. It was such a great team.
The thing that made me so upset was that none of them had a plan B. They were living week to week off their wages. A lot of them had been on benefits for months, if not years, prior to being employed at IQ. That was just horrific, and that’s always been in the back of my mind.
So, yep, absolutely hands-down, for 11 months of the year… hey I’m about making money. Who can blame anybody for that? But during August, it’s about getting as many people to have their first experience of making that dollar online. I think that is really, really important.
19:58 So, here’s the thing. What are we going to be doing this year that is different? So, let’s talk about pre-season.
Now, pre-season was a feature that we introduced in last year’s Thirty Day Challenge. The reason I did that was [because] there were a lot of tools that we were using in the 30dc which while they were important to your internet marketing, it was about teaching you tools as opposed to teaching you how to market. Let’s face it; we need those 30 days to market, to create products, to research markets.
The response to pre-season last year was immense; people loved it. A lot of people were introduced to a feed-reader like Bloglines for the first time. They saw how to “pimp” their browser - how to make their browser work for them.
Now, if you thought last year’s pre-season was cool, you have not seen anything yet. Bluntly, we’ve been holding out. There are some amazing new tools, which going to be showing you starting June 1st.
21:24 Don’t freak out; we are not going for effectively 90 days of balls-to-the-wall working. The pre-season is deliberately spread out over the run up, June 1st to August 1st, to give people time. It’s going to be a very relaxed pace. We’re going to be releasing 1, 2, we might sneak in 3 lessons on different tools to show you how to use to get ready for the 30dc. Even if you didn’t do the 30dc, it’s going to change the way you use the internet. When you see how these tools work and the time it can save you…. It’s extraordinary because things are changing all the time, and people ask us, “Why do you refresh the content every 12 months?” The whole world changes online every 12 months.
I must say the 2007 strategy that we taught still works beautifully. Not only does it work beautifully, you can pay a lot of money to learn that in other places. Or of course you can have it for free here, but hey let’s not get bitchy.
22:44 This year, the tools and the methods and the strategies that we will be teaching in the 30dc are brand new. In fact, before you ask, we’ve got 2 strategies and we are absolutely debating both. The labs are testing both at the moment. Both work really, really well, but the question is which one is going to be better to implement for the 30dc? So, we don’t know for certain ourselves which one we’re going to use.
Before you ask, “Is it pay per click? Is it SEO based? …” The answer to that, hand on heart, is that we’re not 100% sure. What we are sure of is the tools…. because you’re still going to need to market research.
23:32 The great thing is that 12 months is a looong time on the internet. It great for you to be able to use these tools, even in just you’re daily use of the internet, it’s going to save you so much time, make you so much better informed, and not make you feel like you’re trying to drink from a fire hose.
With the internet, particularly when you’re staring out, and you’re looking to make first dollar, you really want to filter. On one hand you don’t wanting to be missing out on anything, but on the on the other hand it’s just so overwhelming. So, we want to show you some tools and strategies that will really help you with that, and I’m pretty excited by that. I think it’s going to be a really, really cool way of doing things.
24:28 So, how’s pre-season going to work? It’s going to start June 1st; we’re going to have a launch party which will be Sunday night in the United States, and Monday morning in the UK. We’ll start off with a bit of a fun party and then we’ll get cracking on June 2nd with our first new technology that we’re going to be teaching.
24:54 What I am super excited…Have I said “excited” enough in the last 20 minutes?… What we are absolutely enthused about… I’ll have to get a thesaurus soon (… is the way we’re going to be able to teach this year. Some of you may have already seen if you’ve seen some of the Twitter videos that I emailed you guys about…. You might have noticed the extraordinary quality of those particular screencast videos. That is because of an extraordinary piece of technology that has been release called ScreenFlow, which really, really changes the way I teach. It’s going to be so beneficial for you guys - you’ll no longer going to have to squint at the screen and hope to see what’s going on. Everything is going to be zoomed in… I can’t wait to get into the lessons because it’s just such a pleasure to use.
26:07 Something I want to say right off the bat with media, and indeed this (i.e. Ustream)… every single piece of content will be recorded going forward. The whole layout will change - the layout worked pretty well last year if you were actually in the mist of the challenge. You went to the blog, you saw there was a new piece of content, and you went to the training section, right? That was great for people who were doing the challenge, but it’s become a 12 month thing.
When you’ve got the equivalent of 3000-4000 people joining every month, all of a sudden what made sense during August, did not make sense in February. So, we are completely overhauling the design and you’ll see the first fruits of this with the preseason.
27:03 I’ve got give a tip of hat one of the original Thirty Day Challengers, Randy Prior, who showed me a process for doing this which I just think is magnificent. Randy, thank you - we’ve borrowed liberally.
What you will do is you will go to one spot and you’ll all the little training modules and you’ll just be able to pick one. Then, when you go to the training page…. and don’t worry, there’ll be videos on all this - that’s the Thirty Day deal, right?… I don’t care how basic an operation it is, we make no assumptions. Remember, we don’t want to make an ass out of you and me.
You’ll have this page and on it you’ll have streaming video as one option. You’ll also have a download file, but unlike last year where there was one download file, you’ll have different download files, because let’s face it the world has moved on. For example [the iPhone] has arrived and I don’t know if any of you have looked at a 30dc lesson on one, but it looks absolutely extraordinary. It’s just beautiful. Even if you just look at a YouTube video…
I caught that he’s whipping out his thing ( Why did I see that out of the corner of my eye?
28:48 Don’t tell anyone I told you, but June 9th …. (3G iPhone launch?)… Looking at the lessons on the iPhone is just extraordinary - it looks brilliant.
29:25 There will be a download for iPod, one for Apple TV… there’ll be a bunch of downloads based on what you’re going to view it on.
Also on a voluntary basis, you’ll also have the show notes for the lesson on this individual page as well. They are not going to go up immediately and there’s a method to my madness. If we just put notes up, people will bobble along to the training page and go, “Right. Got it. Check”. They don’t watch what’s going on and this is a crucial thing - it’s a real mistake people actually make.
30:49 If I said, “Hi guys, we’re doing pay per click this year”, people will instantly go, “Oh right, I know all about pay per click. Got it. Check”.
I think that we’ve proven over the last 3 years that when we do a method we do things differently. Of course, social bookmarking is everywhere now - it’s boring. But you’ve got to think back to August last year; that wasn’t boring - that was revolutionary. Nobody had taught that stuff.
31:19 That’s why we very deliberately we want to make sure we release information in chunks to make sure people consume it. We’re not in this for a fun time. It’s show business, not show friends.
Even though this is an extraordinary community [and] it’s brilliant, we want to do this for an outcome. We want to make sure that you are making your first dollar. That is absolutely vital.
I must give a big shout out to all the people in the UK that have stayed up for this as well, because it is late up there. So, I really appreciate that.
32:15 What happens if you join the challenge a week before the start of the challenge like so many people do? All of the preseason material will be on this one page, so you just click on the things that you need. It will be available all the time, so it won’t make people feel like they’ve missed out. That’s a big change in the way we’ve delivered the material.
It also means that after the 30 days, it’ll be great.
(Ed plays YouTube on the iPhone)
33:15 Right, what else have we got to tell you about? Tell your friends.
I don’t know if you’ve logged into the 30dc challenge site, but if you go to www.thirtydaychallenge.com/members, you’ll notice there have been some huge changes this morning. First of all you’ll see that we talk about preseason, but what I want to talk about is this bit - “Promote the Challenge and Win”.
34:24 What’s happened in the past, particularly last year, is that the social elements of the challenge meant that the challenge grew, and grew, and grew. We want to come up with a way of thanking you for that. Dan The Man has been working like a crazy person to deliver “Promote the Challenge and Win”. Let me tell you, the prizes are sick.
34:55 So how does this work? If you refer somebody to the 30dc you’ll get a point, and if they refer somebody they also get a bit of a point too. These points go towards prizes.
One referral point doesn’t mean much, but if you get a certain amount of referral points each month… and it’s not going to be that many… we’ve done the calculations and we’ll get this information out to you… you get an Immediate Edge membership. As long as that keeps up then you’ll keep getting that Immediate Edge membership for free, which is pretty cool I think.
35:58 In terms of prizes, we tend to get a lot of stuff as affiliates prizes through the course of the year. So, things like MacBook Airs will be the prizes, we’ll have watches like Frank’s watch that we’re going to give away today to somebody who is still here at the end of the call.
The coolest prize is going to be a vehicle. Yep, you heard correct. [There's] lot’s of Apple prizes, because let’s face it, I want to encourage that.
You can see here in the red [text] the traffic link (referring to the members page). Everyone’s link is different, and you can see that mine is 49. You probably don’t want to promote mine because I can’t win anything.
We’re not going to release the vehicle [details] yet, we are going to have some fun with it. People have talked Ferraris, people have talked Lamborghinis, but nobody has given away something this special. No it’s not a joke - I’m not going to give away a Matchbox vehicle. This is a real, highly, highly sort after vehicle. I’ll let you speculate, because we are going to have some fun with it.
37:43 We’ve got a couple of things built in here; we’ve got an “Invite a Friend” link in there….
While I’m here I wanted to mention something else. You’ll notice there is an ad up here…
In previous challenges we’ve had a zero affiliate link policy. This year, bluntly, we’re downloading a terabyte of data today. The costs are getting pretty extraordinary, so there will be a couple of affiliate type links. They’ll be completely optional, and when we represent the affiliate link it will also have the main link.
If you want to donate is some way… and trust me the money doesn’t go to us. It goes to paying the Amazon S3 bill which is pretty substantial every month. It’s optional; it’s not like you have to click on it, and it’s only going to be a couple of certain places. You’re not going to be deluged with any of that crap, because we’re not into it. I wanted to be very upfront with you about that.
39:44 Check out the new video [on the home page], because that is pretty funky as well.
For me, the thing that I really like is the ability to earn enough to get an Immediate Edge membership for free. From our perspective, that’s what Dan’s and my day jobs are.
40:53 (Ed shows off one off a prize - the Omega Seamaster “James Bond” watch worth $2222)
42:50 Wow, 360 viewers. Awesome. Brilliant. Oh Lisa’s here, hello Lisa, queen of voiceovers.
42:59 People asked about the motto for this year. Last year it was “It what Willis was talking about“. I loved that. I really want to use, “Prepare for awesomeness”, but I’m pretty sure DreamWorks would sue our butts as fast as we could say, “Father Christmas”. (because it’s the tagline from Kung Fu Panda)
Oh! Speaking of suing our butts… You’ll notice that last year and the year before there was a distinct absence of music which was sad. The first thing you heard [in the intro of today's show] was music from The Mission.
We haven’t used music in the first couple of years, because we’re concerned about copyright and rights issues. Well, thanks to some good friends, you know who you are, we actually have the rights to use music this year, which is brilliant.
43:58 We are also hoping that the wonderful, the magnificent, the extraordinarily talented Phil Mason will come up with a new theme for us this year. In fact, just to remind you of what that was like last year - let me give you a walk down memory lane.
(Ed plays the video “That’s The Thirty Day Challenge” by Phil Mason.)
Can you ever get enough of that? Well done Phil. I’m still trying to learn it - you’ve got to give me the chords.
47:23 (Questions & Answers Section)
The first and most important [question] is for goodness sake people this is FREE! There are no hooks, no catches, it’s free. Get that through your head - there are no catches whatsoever. I know people find that hard to believe, because there are catches online - I completely understand that.
The only way I can that across to you guys is to ask veterans from past challenges - and there are not. It’s just something that we do.
48:30 Somebody else asked, “Why are teams important?” In my humble opinion, teams are vital. Of those 32 people who started that first challenge, ironically the person who won, Tom, he wasn’t in a team, but everybody else was. You’re percentage chances of completing the 30 days are through the roof. Bluntly, if you do it by yourself, you’ll let yourself slack off, you’ll let yourself go. If you’re in a team, you’re that much more likely to gut it out because you don’t want to let the team down.
Of course the cool thing about teams is it’s not only about the negative side - it’s also the positive side. 1+1=3 when it comes to a team.
If you get a good mix of skills… you might have someone who’s a techie, someone who’s a writer, you’ll get a whole bunch of skills and that is awesome.
49:40 I don’t know if you heard the recording before the show started - people used the words more than once, “Friends for life”. The friendships that have evolved out of the 30dc have been extraordinary and something I really, really, really love.
People ask, “How do you get on a team?” Well, there is a team section in the forum. In fact, let me just log in for a second and I can show you…
By the way thanks to Caroline Middlebrook for the heads up on that hosting too.
Here we are at the forum… While we’re here, I just want to point out something. Usually you would login in this top right-hand corner here with the same password you used to sign up.
You can see we’ve got our “General Chat” area, and, “Team Talk”…. look at this, we’re even on broadcast and there’s 13 viewing General, 8 viewing Team Talk, and 3 viewing tips.
If you go into the Team Talk section, that is where you can put ads like, “Looking for a team”.
Look at this - there’s 52 people online as we’re speaking, which really is just huge. I can’t tell you how big the Thirty Day Challenge has become.
52:38 Question: “Are people creating there own products for the Thirty Day Challenge this year?”
Again, we’re not going to preannounce what people are going to do, because we don’t want people to focus on something that they’re not ready to focus on, because it’s market first, right? If there’s anything you need to be thinking about now, it’s to get yourself out into the wide world and starting getting you’re little notebook and jotting down ideas for ideas. That’s what you need to be focusing on.
In terms of methods and everything like that, we’re not going to talk about that until it’s the appropriate time. It’s like when people ask me, “So what do you do for tax?” and they haven’t even earned a dollar yet. There’s a path here: Earn money - pay tax. It’s not do offshore tax planning before you’ve even earned a dollar.
We’re very real here at The Thirty Day Challenge; we can afford to be real, because you haven’t paid any money. Because of that I can tell you exactly what I think. We will do that, because I’m interested in you getting a result. I’m not interested in you having a great time. I’d love it if you have a great time - where’s the law that says you can’t have fun? But if you’re here, then you’re here to get a result. That is crucial.
53:38 Question: Do you have to sell your own product to qualify for income for the contest? Well, it depends what year. Last year, no. Again, we’ll be very clear about that when we get to that period of time.
53:55 Specifically, how do you register? You go to … http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com… The first thing that you do is to drop in your name and email and hit “register”. When you do that you’ll be taken to an invite a friend page. So, if there’s team mates that you want to make part of this then that’s the place to do so.
Then, you’re taken to the members page.
55:20 Someone just asked if that is George Clooney on the home page. Get their name, they have just won the watch J.
55:27 Can there be a section of the forum to ask questions of past veterans?
Well, I must do a huge shout out and thank you to the moderators who are all veterans of the 30dc - they do an awesome job. There’s really veterans everywhere.
There’s also the “Advanced Tactics” section that is not 30dc stuff. We did that so people could break away and do that as well.
55:58 Do I need to register again if I participated last year?
No you don’t. You should be able to log in, and you’re off to the races
56:35 This year is going to be…. If we did nothing else, it will be triple the size of last year and last year was huge.
We’ve scaled up an extraordinary amount. We’ve put a huge amount of resources into what we’re delivering for you for this year. The only thing we ask in return is for you to make a decision to say, “You know what, I’m going to commit to it. I’m going to take 30 days in the summer to commit to doing this, and I’m going to take advantage of the preseason to make sure that I know the tools of the trade.”
57:20 We’re going to look after you in terms of different formats, different videos, downloads, texts, the whole deal. We are going to look after you, but at the end of the day we can only make it as easy as we can. At the end of the day, it’s going to be up to you, but we’re going to give you every option.
57:46 People are asking, “Is the target $10?”
I’ve been listing back to previous podcasts, in preparation for today, and I think that we’ll do a dollar, because I just don’t want the money to…. It’s about the process.
Processes are not sexy, but every successful person in life is a person that’s worked out how to follow a process. I used to fight and rail against processes. I thought, “That inhibits my creativity - I’m a creative being. You know, I can’t follow a process, I need to be free and in the wind”. I was also very broke as it turned out.
I was free, but broke. I worked out that processes was actually what made the world go round. That is a crucial part of what’s going on.
Let’s face it, as Lisa Hartwell was trying to make the joke there, hey, a dollar’s not what it used to be. So, it’s an awesome opportunity for you to be absolutely proud. Make no mistake, it’s a lot of effort in making a dollar online.
Most importantly you’re setting yourself up. Because we can show you a trick to make a dollar. That’s easy - anyone can do that, but setting you up a business which makes it’s first dollar and then hopefully goes on to make hundreds of dollars if not thousands of dollars after the challenge…. that’s a different kettle of fish.
So there we have it. I hope that you guys will be part of it. I hope that the new technology enables us to deliver the content even more effectively to you guys. It’s going to be a huge, huge year.
I hope you can join us for the June 1st kick off preseason party. It’s just like NFL - we go into preseason, get those fundamentals right and then we launch into game days on August 1st.
With that we’ll work out who has won the watch and we’ll announce that up on the blog - so look on the blog later today.
We might have a little bit of an after party for half an hour or so, I’ll hang around. We’ll end this part of the presentation. A tradition here at the 30DCTV… we’ve been doing this for sometime now… is we hang around for a bit… as educational value, it’s useless, but it’s nice for me just to watch the chat window and have a talk to people.
Get ready for this year - let’s reminisce and remind ourselves why we’re here.
We’ll have the 30DCTV show next week, hope you can join us. We’ll have feedback, we’ll have reaction, to what’s happened today.
Wish you all the best, we’ll speak very soon.
