Wednesday, 4 June 2008
The Thirty Day Challenge - The Best Internet Marketing Course Going????
 If you run a small business it pays to learn the latest trends in internet marketing. In my opinion, the best course available to teach you is called the Thirty Day Challenge ... and the even better bit is it is free, with nothing to buy to make it all work.How the course is structured is a pre-season where you learn the latest free tools and software available on the net and the actual challenge in August where your goal is to earn $1US applying your learnings. I did the Challenge last year and from personal experience I can tell you it will push every one of your boundaries. The technology pre-season was brilliant - the tools I picked up boosted my productivity enormously. The actual challenge saw amazing and dramatic results for my business and my e-books and I now generate at least 1/4 of my business income as a direct result from the course (so you can see why I recommend it!). A heads up - from my HR history I have to tell you the guys that run the course (Ed Dale and Dan Rein) are not trainers. They tend to be a bit full of themselves, waffle and take a LOOOOONNNGGGG while to say anything that is needed to be said. The trouble is their nuggets of content are so unique and worthwhile that it is worth putting yourself through the agony of poor presentation to get the content (or do what I did and find someone who created cheat summary notes from the waffle and refer to the notes rather than watch the videos/TV streaming). The other thing is often you are asked to do things without context or explanation - just "do this it is cool" or "it works". I found this personally challenging and almost threw in the towel a few times because of my need to know "WHY". But they were right - it does work (and yes the results are cool) so put up with your inner demons if you are like me and work through it. They have continued this approach into this year's Challenge with the release of their first pre-season training video on the internet browser Flock. Lots of how and absolutely no why! AARRRGGGHH but given my experience last year, Flock is my new browser and I am controlling my need to know why. The Thirty Day Challenge just like all good training only works if you actually apply what you have learnt. Looking at the videos/TV streams or just reading the blog notes does nothing unless you actually apply it. You need to block out dedicated time and put the tools into action. I already have committed to a lighter workload in August to allow time for the challenge each day. One of the most powerful parts of the Challenge is the need to form teams to back you up. Last year I had a great team from people around the world and like all teams we had people committed to the project and the odd passenger. It was great experience again from a HR side of things about setting and running virtual teams using the latest free technology available and is worth doing the course just for those lessons alone. This year I am looking for a local team of small business people passionate about the internet, dedicated to following through and willing to commit the time it takes to do the course. I will happily share my expertise and look forward to learning from other team members as well. If you are interested drop me an email and we will have a chat about it in a bit more detail. The best sized teams are about 4-6 people. So - check out the Thirty Day Challenge, book some time in your diary and prepare to be stretched! I will keep you posted on my blog about some of the things we are learning through the pre-season and actual Challenge over the coming months. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: internet marketing, thirty day challenge |
