Dennis Yu

How to instantly recognize the experts from the amateurs

Leave a Comment / Advertising, advice, Awesome People, Branding, Business, Conferences, content marketing, Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship, ethics, fraud, marketing ethics, mentorship, Networking, personal branding, promoting yourself, social media /

Know how to instantly tell an expert from an amateur? The expert spends 90% of their time practicing the fundamentals and only 10% of their time doing “pro” stuff. The amateur spends 90% of their time trying to do the “pro” stuff while ignoring the fundamentals. The amateur marketer chases tricks and hacks. The amateur golfer wants to hit from the black tees. The amateur health nut focuses on fad diets and pills. The amateur author/speaker/coach dreams of speaking on the big stage, instead of quietly honing their craft. Their attention is seeking out celebrities to snap “validation” pictures with celebrities, instead of letting the experts testify to their competence. A true expert has massive depth– like an iceberg with 90% below the water, unseen. True expert publishes because they are compelled to serve and share, with publicity as a necessary evil. A true expert has a loyal following with demonstrated proof of their published how-to process. Are you focusing on merely how you look or on truly improving who are you? The fundamentals of digital marketing are getting your GCT (goals, content, targeting) right. That’s what we teach and what I spend most of my time working on. It’s not flashy, but highly profitable. I’ve taught over 500 workshops in the last 20 years. And nearly every time, the ones we list as “experts” with the “latest” tricks and secret algorithmic updates are the ones that pack the room. But when we actually deliver that material, we lose the audience and they are unhappy– especially the ones who represent themselves as a pro (a clear sign that they are not). Yet when we teach the fundamentals, people say their minds are blown, largely because these are pieces they’ve been missing all along. And then this drives results. Drive for show, putt for dough, as the golfers like to say. I am enamored with folks like Ryan Deiss, Michael Stelzner, and Shawn Collins who teach based on their own execution. They focus on the step-by-step HOW TO, like expert chefs that have time-tested recipes for the most requested meals.

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What I’ve learned going through 20 of the most popular course-selling courses

Leave a Comment / Advertising, Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship, ethics, Facebook Advertising, facebook marketing and advertising, fraud, internet marketing training, marketing ethics, Online marketing, promoting yourself, social media /

I think I’m going to throw up. The number of people selling courses on how to sell a course is mind-boggling. And I’ve forced myself to go through about 20 of the most popular ones to see what they’re doing. Here’s what I’ve learned if you’re curious: + 95% of this is hype designed to make you salivate– like dangling a steak in front of a stray dog that hasn’t eaten a full meal in weeks. + The endless Lambos, exotic travel vids, and “freedom” is a total lie– yes, there is a lot of money to be made, but you still have to work and invest, like any other real business. + The people selling the courses don’t have experience in producing actual results other than claims of how much money they’ve made in getting people to buy their course on how to sell a course. + I could offer a course on how to make $1,000,000….. Interested? The price is $1,000,000, of course, lol. + I’ve sat through the 90-minute “live” webinars, waiting patiently through the “struggle”, “lifestyle breakthrough to riches”, and mindset motivation (I’m an ordinary guy who did it, so you can, too)… to eventually get to real value. But alas– it never comes. + There is a shred of truth to the “$375 million a day of online revenue being made per day– claim your slice” argument. But this is just another flavor of the “make money online” biz opp. Same clown, different circus– sucker born every minute. + The reason you only hear from the sole figurehead and nobody else is that their students aren’t winning. I’ve Googled to find their reviews and it’s not pretty. + But if I get you excited enough, you’ll not do the due diligence– since you’re panting about what you’d do with that extra $57,383 a month. You need to buy TODAY to get the 3 bonuses and 50% off the price. Would you buy heart surgery from the self-proclaimed surgeon offering it at 50% off, today only? + Yes, imposter syndrome is real– that the pros feel they aren’t really experts. But for the 99% of people who feel they don’t know enough to be competently able to dispense advice– you’re right! You could watch as many “motivational” videos to pump yourself up as a newly minted surgeon– but that extra confidence won’t stop you from killing your patients. + Would you trust someone who says they can teach you how to start a heart surgery business in just 6 modules you watch over the weekend– so you can start operating tomorrow? $2,000 is a great price if you can make $500,000 or even $700,000 a month, while actually healing patients. + And when you look over the course outline, what you find is 90% of the content is more “mindset” and teaching you how to sell the very same way you were just sold– instead of actually teaching you the practice. This is called a PONZI scheme. And many of these folks will go to jail– you watch. Thus, they’re just repackaging our Facebook ads course + PLF + perfect webinar for their particular niche– 5,000 people all selling the same thing– hope. So why not skip past all that expensive, heart-breaking fluff to get to the actual meat– to go to the source? You don’t have to drop $2,500 to attend yet another seminar (unless you enjoy feeling perpetually “motivated”), since the information is already online and almost all of it is free. I want to see YOU actually win, so I provide most of our methods free– in the same way you can go to the library to read medical textbooks and journals. The surgeons aren’t gasping at HEART SURGERY SECRETS taught only at midnight in a medical school. I want to teach you the fundamentals from my 23 years and 70,000 hours of digital marketing experience– and I was running million-dollar-a-day teams before these children were even born. The folks who actually are making money online– we all know one another and we have actual teams, processes, customers, overhead, and stuff you’d find in any type of real business– online or not. Does any of this resonate with you?

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Fraud in the name of God

Leave a Comment / fraud, marketing ethics /

The Wall Street Journal published an article about how some authors get on bestseller lists by pre-buying books. One of the main perpetrators is ResultSource in San Diego, which has a cozy clientele of mega pastors and the religious right. Tyndale, Crossway, Harper Collins Christian, and other large Christian publishers have regularly used these tactics. Until they are willing to declare such practices unethical, you can expect this to continue. The rationale to manipulate rankings makes sense– guys like David Jeremiah and Mark Driscoll note that they otherwise wouldn’t get the attention. In niche markets, selling 3,000 copies is often enough to make a New York Times best-seller list. Yet bulk orders and free copies shouldn’t count the same as individual purchases, even if these bulk orders are funneled through buying networks disguised to look like authentic purchases. Pre-buying books are the equivalent of buying Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Promoting yourself as a New York Times best-selling author definitely drives follow-on sales, lucrative speaking gigs, general cachet, and the whiff of sweet prosperity. It’s no different than gaming your Alexa ranking, buying links for tricky Google SEO, or embellishing your resume. But this unethical behavior by the most self-righteous of people backfires– undermining their cause. It’s like the cheaters who are calling for Brian William’s head– that he should be kicked off NBC. And it led to the downfall of Mars Hill Church, perhaps not indirectly, but a compounding of manipulating people, media, and book sales. In the shared economy, where we crowdsource opinions and make decisions by relying upon the preferences of others, do you expect such behavior to be more rampant? Likewise, do you trust people who are acutely image-conscious and actively seek the public spotlight? Personal branding is neither good nor evil, used by hypocritical maniacs and good people alike. I was recently asked to join an exclusive club for folks who have a 70+ Klout score. Aside from whether Klout is even an accurate measure of influence, the notion of hanging around influencers is silly. It’s wanting to join Mensa to hang out with other high-IQ people (I’m guilty of trying this). What matters is not your intellect, but what you stand for. I could hang around a bunch of people with a Klout of 80, but if they’re influential about car repair, home furnishings, or things I don’t care about, it’s no good. Likewise, having a bunch of random followers on a social network or nameless people who bought a book (but didn’t read it), is pointless.

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