When we made the decision to actually fire all traditional clients and not seek any additional ones some of my colleagues thought I was nuts.  This made me start to ask, how good are they at what they do, I mean how good are they really.

Years ago I wrote a piece on Comtech News called, “Why it is Hard to Hire Good Internet Marketers“? and my premise was pretty much that the best SEO and PPC experts are difficult to hire because they can make more money sitting at home working in their underwear then driving into an office each day to deal with corporate culture.   I can tell you this is true, the very best people out there at PPC, SEO and Landing Page Optimization are almost impossible to employ.  They are either…

1.  Working 5 hours a day on their own projects

or

2.  Running companies and taking traditional clients

Of course as the heads of companies they must train their in house people who either get good and go work for a competitor or go home and work for themselves.  As a new business owner when we were taking clients I thought about this as I had employee turn over, clients that paid for consulting but would not act on it and a myriad of other issues.  Eventually I sat down and asked, “can I really afford traditional clients”?  The answer was, “no, no I can’t”.

Now I know this is not true for all and there are some great web marketing firms out there but I believe that if you are really talented, the type of marketer that can honestly create revenue out of thin air then dealing with going into board rooms to try to get a company paying for your advice to actually follow it is a waste of time.  I also believe that trying to serve the small business that spends tens of thousands a month on newspaper and radio advertising but sets a monthly online budget of 1K is also wasting your time.  Neither will let you fully utilize your talents and neither can make you long term income that provides what amounts to a future annuity.

Take our work with Val Riazanov for instance.  When we began working with him he was a little known Russian Martial artist with no real website, no product, no marketing, no staff, no nothing except specialized knowledge and a good background that was verifiable and a system of self defense that was easy to learn.  In the beginning we worked like crazy on the Balistic Striking product line, we did far more work then we ever would for a typical retained client, one with anything less then a 25K a month retainer anyway.  We did follow up systems, split testing, SEO, PPC, multi varient testing, Youtube, Myspace and the kitchen sink.  Today the web site  is still very simple and quite small.  Most “big company” types would scoff at the design and simple messaging.  But you know what, the site makes money every month, some months are big some are smaller but there is profit for all of us month in and month out and there will be for years and years to come.

The process is now 90% automated!  I monitor the inventory of the DVDs and order new product when we get low but the fulfillment company takes the orders, ships the product, etc.  I even handle the very limited customer service personally.  Our accountants do a sales tax report and cut a royalty check to Val each month.  How long will this income stream last?  As long as people want to know how to defend themselves!  There is no effort in “retaining” Val as a client, he does whatever he fancies in his life (he is training security in the UAE right now) and we send him a check every month, you tell me if you think he is a happy client.

We are in the early stages of project we expect to be much bigger in revenue right now with PGA Pro Rick Woodson.  The beauty with Rick is he is local and we can continue to develop new product with him for years and years.  We selected him as a partner because Neil took golf lessons from him.  As a passionate golfer Neil has taken lessons from big names around the world and he knew Rick was special from day one.  Using the same business model that made Val Riazanov successful we are now doing the same in the golf market with Rick.  It will be a lot of work for the next six months as we create the brand and platform but in the end another equity stream is created.

We are also developing two new in house products at the moment.  One is an educational product for online marketing called The IM Mentor and Neil is working on a second project that for now is a secret.  We are developing The IM Mentor, not so much because we want to make a bunch of money in “how to make money” market space.  On the contrary we think that market is a cesspool and can’t stand the loads of BS that we see going on in it.  So Neil and I will create a complete course that teaches people what works and what doesn’t work.  The various forms of income there are to make, how to understand search engines, etc.  we will do it all in multimedia, downloadable reports and audio courses.  We  will do it once and with a few occasional additions to the product mix it will be very low maintenance but deliver to customers what it promises.  We won’t be back ending some massive “coaching program”, most of which are total scams by the way.  It will be simple, 50 or so bucks, everything we can tech a person in that format and then it is up to them to fly or flop.

Honestly most of the “how to” programs about making money out there play on weak minded individuals that would do better with emotional counseling or adult day care then “how to make money training”.  I just got an email from a person who purchased one of my courses in the past he was excited about The IM Mentor.  You may not believe me but I told him, don’t buy it.  Why?  With Marketing ICE (the old course) I and some partners provided very specific instructions on several ways that ANYONE and I do mean ANYONE could make money.  This guy loved the course but said he had yet to make dime online, after 4 years of trying.  I can’t help a person like that and I owe it to them to be honest about it.

Yet in the end you can see that we have created several long term income streams and are creating more as we go.  Some we do with true partners, none of  whom are anything like a traditional “client” and some 100% internal created by Neil and I as a team.  These projects are only limited by the time we want to spend on them and above all what we have a true love and passion for.  None of them will fail, some will do very well, some will just make a decent annuity income but all will make money.  How can I say that?  The system we use prevents failure!  We are good at what we do, damn good, I am not arrogant, I won’t say we are the best.  Honestly I personally love recreation too much to be the best, but I do know exactly how to take an idea, create a product and turn that into revenue.

My question for anyone else out there is if you can do that, can you actually afford “clients”?  I guess it is the way some choose to spend their efforts, time and money but for me if it doesn’t keep paying for years and years after the bulk of the work is finished I simply don’t have time to work on it any longer.