As the title of this post suggests, in marketing circles Rich is often known as The Guru’s Guru. That’s because he has “made” more millionaires than any other coach. Marketers that are already very successful pay him not 4-figure, but 5-figure sums to go on his training programmes.

That’s why my internet marketing coach, Alex Jeffreys, paid an eye-watering sum to be coached by Rich. And I know that Alex assigns huge credit to Rich for his own spectacular success over the last couple of years.

So it was a stunning surprise to find that Alex had arranged a bonus webinar with Rich for his Marketing With Alex 2.0 training programme students. For me, Alex didn’t need to big this up because I was already aware of Rich and his status within the marketing community. I knew that this was the kind of session that you just don’t normally get the chance to hear unless you part with BIG bucks. I knew it would be good. But even I was surprised !

What struck me about Rich was that he is very, very focussed. He tells you what he’s gonna tell you, then he tells you. His mind is so sharp and incisive and he brings such huge experience to the table. What’s more, as the King of Over-Delivery, he stayed on the call for around two and a half hours, way beyond the allotted time.

So BIG thanks to Rich for his time, expertise and skill and a HUGE thank you to Alex for pulling off this coup. Oh, and one last piece of advice …

If you ever get the chance to listen to, read or watch Rich Scheferen, grab it as quickly as you can ! You won’t be disappointed.

Over the last five days, I have been very busy working on the Blog Of The Day Awards. I am really enjoying it and my fellow students seem to like the idea.

The idea grew in response to a task set by my mentor, Alex Jeffreys, as part of his Marketing With Alex 2.0 internet marketing coaching programme.

But I have been working on other parts of the syllabus too. For example, I have now viewed the recorded video session that Alex had with Maria Andros, “The Video Marketing Queen”. Wow ! I’d figured for a long time that video is the way to go, but if there was ever any doubt in my mind about its effectiveness, she has dispelled that. What she is doing is amazing !

I have also been looking at ideas for generating reports that can be used in “giveaways”. For example, I have had a resale rights product “on the shelf” for quite a while and just before starting in on Alex’s coaching, I was getting a sale page together for that. So I thought that it might be worth writing a short report to act as a lead magnet for this product. But first, I wanted to know whether my sales page was up to scratch.

So I took advantage of the fact that we had our second brainstorming session with Alex last night. He gave me a critique of the web site I’d roughed out, but more importantly (and without realising it), he gave me a better idea for a lead magnet ! I shall get working on that later today, after I have made the next Blog Of The Day Award.

After that, I have a number of other things to move on. For example, I need to think some more about video because there’s also Alex’s video competition. And then later in the week, we have our next session on social media traffic generation. It’s all go !

Watch this space …

(Picture from sxc.hu by L_Avi)

But today, I’m going to make an exception.

I’ve already written that I am totally stunned by the quality of the blogs being produced by my fellow-students on Alex Jefferys’ Marketing With Alex 2.0 training programme. In fact, there are so many really good ones, sometimes it’s hard to keep up !

But anyway, one of those blogs is by David Walker. Over the weekend, I saw that he’d posted a piece with a humorous title: Something For The Weekend.

He also commented on the high standard of blogging that Alex’s “Class of ‘09″ was producing and went on to highlight 10 blog posts that he had particularly enjoyed that week.

As I read David’s post, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I saw that one, that was cool !” and “Yes, I saw that one too” or “Oh, I missed that, let me check that one out …”

But then I got to the last one and was totally amazed to discover that it was mine !

Yes, David had included my “Doctor” Alex Jeffreys gives his diagnosis post in his top 10 !

Well, as I told him in my comment to his post, I was (almost) speechless. But I was “chuffed” to bits

Only problem is, it just adds to the pressure ! I mean, like I said, the standard of blogging is so good ! And I know for a fact, that other students have latched on to David’s idea and want to “make it” in the same way. Lol !

I guess the flip side of that is that it makes us all strive even harder to deliver good content for your readers. Because, in the short time that rog-blog.com has been here, I have realised that this is possibly the key factor to producing a successful blog.

So David, thanks for the accolade. I’ll do my best to keep doing my best

As a member of Alex Jeffreys’ Marketing With Alex 2.0 coaching program, I’m very lucky in being able to connect with lots of people like me that are taking advantage of the fast-track that’s Alex’s coaching provides. One of the channels we’re using to connect is Facebook.

Now, I have to confess, I’m a real novice with social networking. Twitter is something of a mystery at this point (though I will be getting to grips with it very soon). But since I have access to the Facebook addresses of several of my fellow students, I figured that I ought to sign up.

After sending friend-requests to my fellow-students, I left my PC for a while. I returned to it about an hour later and I was amazed to discover how quickly my contacts had grown. And I can see how that growth can be magnified very rapidly.

But it has reminded me of a story that I read a week or so back. Basically, it seems that Facebook can use your profile pics in ads that they display to other members. Check out this story, to find out what one guy saw one day when he logged on to Facebook !

Meantime, if you want to be my friend on Facebook, you can find me here.

Inconvenient for many of us, but for him, a complete disaster !

Why ? He has teenage children

Apparently, even a few minutes without internet access is almost unbearable for his offspring. Xboxes, GameBoys, etc only seem to compensate for so long, and what’s worse, in their idyllic new home in the Welsh countryside, there’s (shock horror) … no mobile phone signal !

This is purgatory for the modern teenager.

And as a confirmed tech-head, I actually understand what that’s like. Yes, I do really try and have a life beyond my PCs and web sites (as I shall describe in tomorrow’s post). But at the start of last week, I switched Internet Service Providers – and because of some kind of snafu, I ended up without access for about 36 hours.

I was climbing the walls !!!

Fortunately for my friend, his Total Internet Failure occurred on the eve of a vacation. Before he left, he called me to see if I could fix things so that there might be peace when they returned. After a few questions, it seemed to me that there was probably some kind of problem with the base unit. I suggested that he drop it off for me to look at on his way to the airport, then he could pick it up when he returned … and he has just done that.

As it turned out, it was only a loose connector on the power lead to the hard drive. No power to the hard drive, no Windows. I “jiggled” the connector and it worked !

I just showed this to him so that if something similar happened in the future, he could fix it for himself. I tried to explain all of this as simply as I could, because I know that he thinks that he’s “no good” with technical stuff. But here’s the kicker …

He’s a very highly trained and extremely skilled professional that quite literally has other people’s lives in his hands on a daily basis. In other words, he’s about as far from stupid as it’s possible to be …

He’s a doctor.

He calls me his “PC doctor”, but I always baulk at the comparison because he has an extremely difficult job with huge responsibility. I just poke around in the innards of PCs and servers.

But of course, if I ever have to explain anything about his PC, we often end up using medical metaphors, like today … “With no power, it’s like the hard drive wasn’t getting any oxygen and it just couldn’t get going !”

He looked at me and said, “Well, when you put it like that, it all makes perfect sense !”

Now you may be thinking that in relating this story, I’m citing another example of one of my favourite sayings: “We’re all stupid about something !”

Well, kind of … but I relate the tale because it puts me in mind of what happened last night.

Last night, MarketingWithAlex 2.0 students had another marathon webinar with “Doctor” Alex Jeffreys in which he held a surgery for his patients.

With outstanding stamina, he gave stringent health checks to several web sites, took the temperature of various blogs, evaluated the fitness of many mareketers and where appropriate, diagnosed poor health and prescribed suitable treatment.

It was very illuminating and I’m sure that we all learned a lot. But time and time again, the student in the hot-seat would listem to Alex and then end up saying something like, “Yeah, yeah, I see it now … when you put it like that, it all makes perfect sense !”

Bottom line ? Even though we’re not stupid, even though a lot of this is just common sense, sometimes you need somebody that’s experienced in a particular field to diagnose your problem, suggest a rehabilitation plan and prescribe some healthier options.

And that is why Alex’s mentoring is so valuable. I wish I’d been able to do this years ago !

PS: Happy Birthday Alex !

Many of us now have our own personal blogs up and running (like this one) – unfortunately, I’ve only had the chance to look at a few of these. I know that my last post mentioned the importance of good content, and of course that’s still true. But some of these blogs just blow me away with their look and feel. I’ll put up a little widget shortly that will provide links to some of the others, so check them out.

The other great thing emerging is the sense of community amongst the students. Some are complete newbs to the online world, whilst some of us have been using computers since before there was an “online world” ! (Ahem … no names here !) Some of use strange machines like Macs or even Linux (yes, that’s me !). Some don’t know their FTP’s from their ABC’s whilst others have TCP/IP running in their veins.

BUT … one of my favourite sayings is that “We’re all stupid about something !” (Guilty on several counts, Your Honour !)

And when you realise this, it feels good to be able to help others along, because you know that you’re going to benefit in areas where you have a blind spot. For me, it used to be blogging, although I am slowly getting up to speed on this one.

The area I’m most in need of help in at the moment is Twitter. (You can follow me at twitter.com/rogblog). Some of the guys from the first group have some good resources on this, so I’m looking forward to learning more about it.

Meanwhile, there’s more to do, so I must get to it …