I am very excited about todays interviewee – a personal hero of mine – Mike Geary of TruthAboutAbs.com
Mike is I believe the Ultimate Internet Lifestyle Entrepreneur – generating a substantial 7 Figure Income each year while hanging out on the Ski Slopes or sailing in the Caribbean.
But it was not always this way – as Mike reveals in this interview (Podcast, Video or Transcript) it took him over 2 years to break through, quit the day job and make that 7 figure income.
In a way I find Mike’s story even more inspiring than the so called ‘over night successes” that went from nothing to Millionaires in 90 days.
Mike is now a best selling author -selling circ 500000 copies of an eBook about ABS – in English, Spanish, German and French – but as you will see in this interview, Mike was almost ready to give up not so long ago.
Props to my Dad (Barry Dunlop) for grabbing this interview with Mike when they were both in the Banff Gondola taking a ride to the top of the Canadian Rockies for the best views in Banff National Park Alberta Canada. Also I note that Mike Geary gives my friend Ryan Lee a nice thumbs up and word of thanks in the video.
Enjoy – I look forward to your comments.
To Our Success
Michael
PS: Make sure to watch the Bonus Video at the end, only 40 seconds, but it sums up rather neatly I think, what Mike Geary and the Internet Lifestyle is all about
Click Here To Listen To Mike Geary Podcast
Confessions Of An Internet Marketing Superstar
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Transcript:
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Barry Dunlop: How did you get online? What was your first effort online in business?
Mike Geary: I had a fitness background; I was a personal trainer. I was researching just some training articles online back in 2004, and I saw an advertisement on how to make money on the Internet as a fitness professional, and publishing online and doing all this Internet marketing.
So I thought about it for a while and finally bought the product. It was about a $300 product. And I’ve got to give props, it was a Ryan Lee product. Ryan Lee is a great guy, I’m good friends with him now. That’s what started it all.
That was the basic stuff of learning how to publish online and make websites and info products and build newsletter lists. All that stuff. That’s what started it, that’s what got the wheels spinning. And I immediately started writing my first product, “The Truth About Six-Pack Abs, ” which I just knew there was a demand for that because I was a personal trainer and that was 90% of the questions I would get would be about abs and weight loss.
So it didn’t work for a couple of years. I got the product done, and that was the easiest part. It took a couple of years to learn the marketing; that was the challenging part. But then it was definitely once you get over this hump and learn the marketing, then it gets easier, and that’s when my business exploded a few years ago.
Barry: So the key there, Mike, was not to give up.
Mike: Exactly.
Barry: You still had a day job then, I assume?
Mike: I had a day job for about two or three years while I was trying to build up the Internet business, and I was finally able to quit that day job when the Internet business sort of exploded.
Barry: If you were to go back to where you were at the beginning, what was the thing that made the big difference from year two to three? What was the thing that eventually made the big breakthrough? What item of knowledge did it take?
Mike: I can be honest and say that I was about to give up, after about a year. I had made the product, made the website, and I kind of had these false hopes that I would just build it and they would come. I had built the website and I would just start getting these massive amounts of sale and everything would take off.
I didn’t realize that actually you had to work really hard to drive traffic and get exposure for your site. So it took a while to learn that. And because I didn’t give up, a couple of years later things started taking off.
I think the biggest shift for me was changing my mindset. I’d love to say that is was a specific miracle technique that I learned that just exploded everything. To be honest, there were a few things, like search engine optimization, pay-per-click. There were some individual tactics that I learned, that really did take things to the next level.
But what started all that was changing my mindset about I can do this, and really thinking a lot bigger and getting that shift from thinking small and thinking about exchanging dollars for hours and thinking big and selling my product to the entire world.
Barry: And as we said earlier, something like a half a million copies have been downloaded?
Mike: Yeah. Between my English version, probably 300,000 copies. And now I have Spanish, German, and French versions too. I haven’t kept exact tabs on it, but probably close to 500,000 copies now of my product. For a self-published product.
Barry: Wow. And an important distinction to make there is – and it’s very gracious of you to say – you were almost ready to give up.
Mike: Yeah. It’s a little frustrating after a year and you’ve only made like two sales. [laughs]
Zach Johnson: How many things did you try that didn’t work? How many products did you learn about search engine optimization and you’re trying to get out there and things didn’t work? Probably took some perseverance to go through.
Mike: For that first year, year and a half, I was trying article marketing and trying a little bit of pay-per-click, and I couldn’t get it to work. Trying to get some search engine optimization. But that takes time, especially search engine optimization. And it just took some time to really learn how to get it to all come together. Make the sales copy work, get the traffic, and make it all come together and make it a success.
Because you’ve got to have every piece of the puzzle. If you can get traffic but you can’t convert it, then you’re missing a piece. If you have great conversions but you don’t know how to get traffic, you’re missing a piece. Partnerships.
Barry: Was there anybody in particular who taught you what you needed to do? Was there any material that you bought, or mentors or masterminds?
Mike: Well, for me, for the first few years, to be honest, I never went to any high-priced events, I never bought any high-priced products. I bought dozens of individual low-priced e-books to learn a lot of different skills. And a lot of those $37 or $47 e-books, I learned a lot of really cool marketing techniques. And eventually I was able to kind of put them all together and start driving a lot of traffic.
Barry: It’s a good one, Mike, because so many people talk about the Internet lifestyle and they say things like, “Hey, six weeks later I’m a millionaire!” Or this happened or that happened. So I think it’s great.
And obviously, I think there’s more encouragement for people realizing that it took longer than a few weeks to get this to work. Because sometimes it does take a year or two. But the important to persevere.
And one very important distinction that I make to people is that having a day job is still a good bet. You don’t give that up until you’re ready to give it up, because it’s important as well.
Mike: But I can say that probably the best thing I ever did was quitting my day job.
[laughter]
Mike: Once I was confident enough that I was pretty consistent and making a good income online, the day that I quit my day job was probably the best day of my life. And I can say that the next month after I quit my day job was when I finally exploded my business. My business doubled the next month after I quit.
Barry: So some people, when they’re just at that point, getting both to work. If really want to take the Internet work further, they have to give up their day job.
Mike: That’s the point. I have a friend right now who started a website and has started to do pretty well with it in the water filter business. He told me he was finally at the point where he was making as much with the website and he was with his day job.
And I told him the best thing I ever did was when I got to that point was quitting my day job, because now you’re going to have 100% mental energy on what you want to do.
Barry: And focus.
Mike: And focus. So he’s doing that right now, he’s quitting his day job and going to focus on the online business.
Zach: Tell them now much money you invested in yourself the first year, two years, in failed attempts and failed pay-per-click campaigns before you made it.
Mike: I didn’t have much money to invest.
Zach: Most people don’t.
Mike: But like I say, I did make a small investments at a time, buying a lot of $50 e-books. I wanted to keep learning. And I can say there probably wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t learning more, that I didn’t buy a book or….
Barry: That is an important point, which often is – you have to keep learning. The biggest and best Internet marketers that I know – you think about Mike Koenigs, Frank Kern etc – those guys are learning all the time.
Mike: They’re still learning.
Barry: They don’t give up. And that’s why they’re at the top of what they’re doing.
Mike: Even though my business does well now, I haven’t stopped and just trying to ride the coattails and never work. I’m still learning every day.
More about Mike Geary at TruthAboutAbs.com
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BONUS VIDEO
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Mike Geary – enjoying the Internet Lifestyle and a Powder Day in the Canadian Rockies (Banff)