Spotlight
on...
Chris Greenhough
In our series of
"How'd They DO That?" articles, which spotlight
up-and-coming Alpha Dogs, you will notice several common threads
that run through ALL of these interviews. Although they may
have diverse opinions and marketing tactics, one thing they all have
in common is that they are genuinely decent, down-to-earth human
beings who care more about their families and downlines than they do
about making their first million bucks!
You'll note that
words like "honesty," and "integrity," and
"communication" permeate their interviews. These
Alpha Dogs all feel it's more important to be able to go to bed at
night with a clear conscience than it is to make enough money to
vacation in Tahiti four times a year. They know that success
does not happen overnight. They work hard, and on a
CONSISTENT, DAILY BASIS, and are very family oriented.
Chris Greenhough is
no exception. (Just one look at the photos he sent us shows
that!) He typifies the type of Alpha Dog that, using his
marketing techniques and philosophy of life, will be able to be
successful in ANY business.....
Stan:
"Let's begin, Chris, with you telling your fellow Big Dogs a
little about yourself. How old are you and what was your
previous business experience?"
Chris:
"I'm 36 years old and live in the United Kingdom - Muswell
Hill, North London to be precise. And you'll find me there in
Starbucks most mornings. Yes, Starbucks has now conquered the UK!
I attribute ALL my success to my daily dose of Cappuccino (or
Caramel Macchiato). And if I'd known how big the coffee
business would be in the UK, I would have put my money into that.
(In fact, I almost did... ah, well!)"
"Prior to
becoming interested in Internet Marketing, I've spent the last ten
years running a Graphic Design business of one form or another.
It's been great fun (though I'm not sure that's the word my better
half would use) and I love the creative side. The business
side, however, has been tough, to say the least. I've always
had to work very long hours (even though I've had other people
working for me) and family life suffers as a result. Another aspect
of 'traditional' business I have never liked is the fact that most
of the people who seem to really make it (financially) invariably do
so at the expense of everyone else. To be successful, you need to be
ruthless and shaft everybody. Well, I never wanted to be THAT
person."
"I'm married
(well, almost) with two children, both girls: Sophie 6 and Isobel 3.
They are the reason I got into the Internet. With the hours I work,
I just don't see them enough. The four of us live in a small two
bedroom house, but when the Internet business kicks off I want to
buy a bigger place so I can have my office at home and the girls can
have a garden which is actually big enough to play in!"
"My Graphic
Design work is still a full-time job with Internet Marketing
part-time, but my aim is to reverse that situation inside 12
months..."
Stan:
"How long have you been marketing on the Internet, and
what had your experience been previous to joining Big Dogs?"
Chris:
"I became interested in Internet Marketing, strangely enough,
after I received a SPAM email one day (shock, horror!) about a year
ago. I won't go into specifics, but as you can imagine it was
a 'get rich quick" type deal."
"It set off a
chain-reaction in the back of my mind, and two months later the
whole idea was really nagging away at me. Suddenly, the
potential of the Internet as a marketing medium began to intrigue
me. My professional life had brought me into a nodding acquaintance
with the web (I used it as a research tool all the time), but until
that email I had never thought about getting involved with actually
marketing on the Internet."
"Anyway, six
months after that original 'spam' email I thought it was time to do something about it. So,
really, I've only been actively involved for six months, the past
three of them seriously."
"Before
"Big Dogs" I'd had a modicum of success with affiliate
programs (by which I mean I had gone beyond ZERO sales), but of
course there are a heck of a lot of 'experts' out there offering
conflicting advice. As a newbie I seemed to spend more time
researching and trying to find 'the answer' than actually DOING
something and growing my business."
"The
Internet is just such a huge information tree, you cannot read
everything out there. Don't even try! After months of
reading everything I could find, I had nothing but a headache - and
blurred vision! It was time to take ACTION."
Stan:
"What are your general thoughts about the "Secrets
of the Big Dogs" ebook and the Big Dogs program in
general?"
Chris:
"'Secrets of the Big Dogs' made me revise my thinking on the
approach I should take to my marketing efforts, and certainly opened
my eyes to previously unexplored techniques. But, perhaps more
importantly, it got me thinking about the bigger picture. I loved
the introductory info about the growth of the internet. The whole
approach was just refreshing because it comes at the issues from a
different angle."
"All in all,
'Secrets of the Big Dogs' has got to be the best $19.95 investment
I've made. Not just for the insights it contains, and not just for
the CHIP program (which, of course, is nothing short of genius), but
because of the way that it finally got me to FOCUS. It made
me think about a co-ordinated marketing system which I realized I
was struggling to achieve while fighting through the blizzard of
'must-have' information out there."
"I suppose Big
Dogs struck a chord because, like you, I had been running a
dirt-world business with huge overheads (rent, wages, phone bills
etc.) and also gone through that painful learning curve. After
reading the sales page for the 'Secrets of the Big Dogs' ebook and
your introduction in the ebook itself I said to myself.....'Now,
THIS is a guy I can relate to!"
"Also (and I
don't want to get on my soapbox here, but... :-) I was SO relieved
that you didn't use one of the horrible what I can only call
gimmicks or tricks to strong-arm someone into buying. You know the
sort of thing..... 'If you'll just give me your money before
midnight tonight I will give you the moon on a stick, but if you
leave it until tomorrow, you know what? The moon will be gone!'
Yeah, right. Jesus, I just hate those things!"
"Will everyone
PLEASE stop doing that? Please?"
"Surely anyone
with an ounce of sense will know that it's a ploy. They may not know
how it's done, but they know there's something fishy going on. Even
the 'clever' ones who don't use JavaScript but employ a server-side
script... it's not necessary. The really sad thing is that it
undermines what might be a perfectly legitimate product by making it
sound cheesy."
"People will
only fall for a trick once. After that they will view you with
suspicion."
Stan:
"What type of ads are you using to promote Big Dogs?"
Chris:
"I've kept things really simple, to be honest, and feel I'm
only just getting going with Big Dogs. All I've done is scratch the
surface!"
"One thing
that came across to me was that, in order for people to become a
customer or a member of your team, you've got to establish a sense
of trust. Therefore I always include my name, email
address and phone number, and I always try to respond to feedback
(positive OR negative) within 24 hours. I've had some great
phone conversations as a result, and it's nice to talk to people
rather than hide behind the Internet. It makes a big difference if
you make yourself available."
"Somehow
you've got to distinguish yourself from the crowd. I hope that my
years in the Design world have enabled me to do that and hopefully
do things just a little differently. So I use a really short message
rather than one that tries to beat you into submission. I get so
many long emails which I often don't read all the way through unless
they are well put together. Usually because they are just a
mountain of hype. I just want people to be curious enough to visit
the site. I'm not trying to FORCE them to do anything."
"Be
honest."
"Don't try to
sell someone something you wouldn't buy yourself in a million years.
That lack of conviction will come across. If you wouldn't buy it,
why should they? And it's not good for the soul!"
"I know you've
advised against HTML emails, Stan, and I can see why: it's very easy
to make a real mess. But I've adopted a method that not only allows
me to (I hope) present my message in a different way but also
analyze the effectiveness of my email campaign besides clicks on my
link. By putting a tracking code in the HTML of the email I can also
find out how many people have read the email in the first place.
Pretty neat as it allows me to analyse the worth of any lead source
(and, of course, my subject line :-) in a way that was just not
possible before. And I format the email in such a way that there is
a plain text version if the recipients' software can't display HTML
pages. In fact, any decent autoresponder as well as applications
like GroupMailPro will do this for you automatically."
Stan:
"In addition to promoting through the C.H.I.P. programs,
what other forms of advertising have you found to be effective?
And do you have any other words of wisdom you'd like to share?"
Chris:
"I've got a couple of other FFA lead-gathering sites which
boost the number of leads from the CHIP system. I also use PPC
search engines which I have always found to be one of the most
effective ways to use my marketing budget. I've also tried 'buying'
traffic (pop-unders or whatever) with mixed results. Sometimes it
works well, other times not at all. It's interesting to see the way
that visitors from one source are more likely to buy than visitors
from another source."
"All
visitors are not created equal! That's why it's SO important to use
a tracking system like AdMinder. I'm surprised how many people don't
do this. It's vital!"
"Besides
that I have started to build my own opt-in list. I'm sure there
isn't an Alpha Dog out there who DOESN'T have their own list, but
for anyone sitting on the fence... if you haven't heard it before, 'the
money is in the list.'"
"And the
most important thing is to DO something EVERY day. It doesn't
matter if it's only a small thing. Set yourself just ONE goal for
your Internet venture each day, and make sure that you DO IT even if
you achieve nothing else. Even if it just means sending out your
CHIP emails. Consistent effort will eventually bring results."
"Oh, and never
give up."
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