In 2010, Alex Mandossian was at a four-day event for the Guerrilla Business School, where after his presentation, T. Harv Eker presented him with an idea – a five-day event where people could start the event with nothing and, at the end, make money online. Fast forward a couple months, they’re together in Hawaii planning the curriculum and gathering support for the project. Despite all the challenges, every single person monetized by day 5, with some even by day 3! Tune in to this episode to learn three key insights: why version 1 (of anything) is better than version none (even if version 1 is sloppy), why beta testing leads to wild success faster, better, and with less effort, and why perfectionism is the invisible enemy of your financial freedom.
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Sloppy Success Is Better…
Three Key Insights
In this episode, you’ll learn three key insights, which I believe are critical to making you a highly skilled ethical influencer. After all, ethical influence is a learnable skill. In this episode, you’ll discover why version one of anything is better than version none even if version one is sloppy. You’ll also learn why beta testing leads to wild success faster, better and with less effort. Third, you’ll learn why perfectionism is the invisible enemy to your financial freedom.
Lean in and read carefully because this episode could have a significant impact, how you can win the hearts of others with total and absolute certainty. If English is your second language, I hope you’ll read this and all the other All Selling Aside episodes not once, not twice but three times because nothing empowers the literacy or fluency of any language more than learning the art of ethical influence.
T. Harv Eker’s Impossible Idea
It was March 26th, 2010. There I am in Los Angeles at The Westin Hotel near LAX Airport and I’m at a four-day event called GBS put on by Peak Potentials that’s called Guerrilla Business School. I presented my presentation to over 400 people and there was a huge table rush going into the back of the room.
My good friend and the originator of GBS is T. Harv Eker. I’m having dinner with him in the green room and all of a sudden, he comes up with an idea. It was a setup and he planned it, but it seemed natural. Harv’s one of the greatest storytellers and stage salespeople I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s a good friend, a teacher and a mentor. Here was his idea. He said, “What if we could have a five-day event when people in the room could start with nothing and by day five, they could make money on the internet?”
The company he built was Peak Potentials. They had made hundreds of millions of dollars since he started, but they didn’t have an internet marketing course. He had handpicked me to lead it, not as his trainer, but as his partner. To my knowledge, he hadn’t done that before. I said, “Go on, keep talking.” His idea was that everyone would be connected to the internet in the room, and by day five, they not only would have created a website, sales copy and a shopping cart, but they would make money.
That was his idea. He said, “What do you think?” I said, “That’s impossible.” He said, “Do you want to do it with me?” I said, “Yes.” I said yes because the difficult takes some time and the impossible takes a little longer. The old saying is the, “Difficult can be done immediately, but the impossible takes a little longer.” It’s a military saying. That was the idea and I thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?” March 26, 2010, in Los Angeles at Guerrilla Business School.
[bctt tweet=”The deeper the roots, the sweeter the fruits.” username=”AlexMandossian”]
Fast forward a couple of months and there I am in Harv’s home in Hawaii. It’s a beautiful home overlooking the ocean and there’s a pool in the back. This was the planning stage of the curriculum and we spent two weeks together to plan a curriculum for an upcoming UIBC. That’s what we named it, the Ultimate Internet Bootcamp. Remember back in 2010, there was no cloud and there was no way that someone could create a website from scratch.
My friend Matt Mullenweg, one of the developers of WordPress, arguably the chief developer who started it, he had come up with a multi-user platform. Through another friend who suggested I would create a multi-user platform so that everyone could log in and they would have their shopping cart and they would have their website and they could do it on WordPress, which was the What You See Is What You Get editor, which is what WYSIWYG stands for.
That much I knew and I did have support. I gathered all the people I knew in marketing and I said, “Do you want to be a coach? Do you want to support it? Do you want to help train?” I kept getting yes after yes because it was an impossible idea to make money in five days from scratch from absolute beginners and yet Hawaii was the planning stage. It was terrifying. Harv had already sold all of the seats. The first event would be in August in Long Beach.
There would be over 300 people there. How are we going to get connected to the internet without getting throttled? You couldn’t do it with Wi-Fi. We had to do it with landline connections. We had to create this data center that we had to ship. We had to make things up. I got all of the people I thought I could trust and somehow, we made it to the third phase. Phase one was the idea. That was a moment. Phase two was planning and it was terrifying.
Phase Three: Preparing
The weeks that followed, I was even more terrified because I thought, “What if it doesn’t work?” On August 22nd, phase three begins called preparing. I’m in Long Beach in our suite and I meet Harv for a talk through and we’re preparing, The Ultimate Internet Bootcamp. In five days, you make money before you leave. There I am and he has his notebook across the table and I have my notebook.
He has his talking notes. I have mine. I’m noticing that my notebook is about 1/5 the width of his because he had all his notes, word for word. That’s the way you do it. I had a few notes and I thought, “I’ll do the best I can because I don’t know where this thing is going to go.” I figured, “We’re building the rocket ship after it’s taken off.” That didn’t protect my confidence in preparing because I would start it with Harv.
Sloppy Success: The deeper the roots, the sweeter the fruits.
Let’s move on to the next phase. I’d call it the terror phase, but I didn’t know what I call it other than testing. I thought this is a test. On August 23rd, there I am on stage with T. Harv Eker at UIBC 1, The Ultimate Internet Bootcamp 1 in Long Beach, California, August 23rd, 2014. It happened to be my sister’s birthday. In the next five days, we thought, “Let’s hope everyone connects to the internet.” For the first half of the day, it was experiential and lecturing, but no one got connected to the net.
I figured, “At least I’m off the hook for half a day, and I got 4.5 days of terror left.” Remember, there are no clouds at this time. We tested and everyone monetized by day five. Some people monetized on day three. I thought it was a miracle. The impossible was now possible. I didn’t tell anybody and I didn’t celebrate too soon, but I will tell you that I made 45 revisions that week. Can you imagine? To my script, I made 45 major revisions.
People were making bets when Alex would lose it in the green room. I’m talking about my coaches because we had coaches in the audience and there were the people who were going to coach them after the event, which is what we were selling. We were selling coaching. On August 27th, which was day five, we ended and I was relieved. That was after the testing phase. We tested and I had 45 revisions. We had a celebration to complete it.
It was sloppy, but it was better than perfect mediocrity. I noticed of all these phases, which there are four of them, the idea phase, the planning stage, the preparing stage, and the testing phase, the celebration is a moment. The idea was a moment, but planning, preparing, testing that’s a process. All three of those are processes. Here’s the epilogue, what did I learn? Version two, in other words, UIBC 2 had 17 revisions, not 45. That was a relief. It’s 1/3 of the first one.
The third UIBC was version three of the five-day event. Everyone monetized on the second UIBC, so we had 100% monetization. I wouldn’t let people leave the room unless they monetize, no matter how tech-phobic they were or how much of a tech dummy there were. Some people didn’t even know how to use a laptop and we had to give them laptops to rent. They didn’t even own a laptop.
In the third UIBC, I had less than five revisions. Check this out, 45 revisions UIBC 1, 17 revisions UIBC 2 5 revisions UIBC 3 and it’s no wonder they call three is a charm. That core curriculum was set and it was complete. When I say core curriculum, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t change. I made further revisions to improve, to prune the curriculum. I wanted more clarity, specificity and brevity. With each iteration, there were minor changes, but the core curriculum was there.
[bctt tweet=” The only way to serve humanity is to start it and then complete it.” username=”AlexMandossian”]
I had different trainers and some guest speakers, but when all was said and done for three years, I did over twenty UIBC’s. Those are five-day events on five different continents, and our data center was being shipped around. It was an expensive event, but I was relieved when it was finally done. What did I learn? Let’s talk about fruits. Most people like fruit and Harv is known to say, “First, you need the roots before you get the fruit.” Most people want fruit first.
They want to pluck the fruit from an apple tree that doesn’t even exist. What I know is that the deeper the roots, the sweeter the fruits. I also know that before the roots must first come to the seeds, which disappear and sacrifice themselves into the roots. Let’s call them the seeds of success. That is the All Selling Aside tagline. If you remember, seeding through storytelling is the new selling.
Seeds are what caused the roots, which create the trunk, which creates the branches, then the leaves and then the fruits. Nature sloppily spreads the seeds. Think about pollination with flowers and bees, but these seeds that are sloppily spread like a great redwood tree or a Sequoia tree that we have here in California, some of them are over 2,000 years old. These seeds, there are thousands of them, they’re spread all over until a few take roots then the trunk, the branches, the leaves, then the fruits.
The best part is what is inside the fruit, more seeds. Think of an apple. What’s inside of an apple? More seeds. That’s how success is. That’s why success breeds success. Within success, there are more seeds of success. Version one is always better than version none, even if it’s sloppy. If you’re a procrastinator or if you’re a perfectionist, it’s because whatever you’re procrastinating or you’re a perfectionist about, it has a lot of meaning for you.
Instead of thinking about yourself, think about who you’re about to serve. Unless you started and completed, perfectionists don’t like to complete and procrastinators don’t get started, then you’re not serving anyone. You’re a human being, but it’s your human doing that makes a difference. With perfectionism, which I am, authoring a book is an interesting example because if you talk to most experts, they say that the most important thing about a book is to complete it.
The manuscript, the galleys and the notes won’t get you far. You need to complete it, publish it and sell it. Before completing it, why not put pressure on you, let’s say on Amazon to pre-sell it? That will put pressure on you to complete it if you’re a perfectionist. Everyone has procrastination and perfectionism in them. I don’t know what you are. You’re probably a little of both, but you typically have a bias towards one or the other.
Sloppy Success: Version one is always better than version none, even if it’s sloppy.
We tested at UIBC 1. We had already taken the money. I’d already given up these disclaimers such as, “I don’t know if we’re going to connect to the internet. I don’t know if we’re going to get throttled, and some of you get on the net and some of you won’t.” As it turned out, all the pieces were put together like a puzzle and it worked. Only beta testing can lead to wild success because version one is better than version none. If you beta test, then you’ll succeed faster, better and less effort.
Like an author, which is short for authority, the most important thing is to complete your first version, which is why perfectionism is an invisible enemy to your financial freedom. If you don’t complete it, whatever it is, your business, your launch, your product idea or your service, then you won’t serve humanity. The only way to serve humanity is to start it and then complete it. What does this have to do with selling? You have to start the selling process.
Some people are deathly afraid of that, then you have to complete it and get a commitment. It won’t always be closing the sale as they say. It’ll be maybe creating a safe enough environment, a buying environment so that you get another commitment, such as meeting again or getting information for another meeting or getting a down payment. It doesn’t always have to be closing. It could be getting the appropriate commitment of the level of intimacy you’ve created with your prospect.
The Alexisms for this episode is simple. Sloppy success is better than perfect mediocrity. I made that up and it’s in Alexisms, the book. The reason why I said that was for me because it was almost a form of self-therapy. I hate mediocrity more than I hate failure. I hate to lose more than I love to win. In the movie Amadeus, Salieri the mediocre composer, that to me is the worst of all. I don’t know wh. It was my upbringing maybe.
“Sloppy success is better than perfect mediocrity,” was a headline I utilized to help sell the Ultimate Internet Bootcamp. Once that was done, then we had UIBC 2.0, we made millions from that. That led to the membership site, the five-day event called The Ultimate Membership Site Seminar or UMSS, then we had UMSS 2.0.
At one time, we had over 700 students paying $500 a month and from the tuition and the coaching and all the revenue, I don’t know how many millions of dollars we made, but it deep in the eight figures before we ended it. It’s one of my proudest accomplishments. I made many mistakes along the way and I made a lot of successful decisions.
[bctt tweet=” Instead of thinking about yourself, think about who you’re about to serve.” username=”AlexMandossian”]
What I know is when Harv presented the idea on March 26, 2010 at the LAX Westin in the green room, after I gave my speech at Guerrilla Business School, I said yes. I didn’t think I just said yes. I was terrified during the planning stage, the preparation stage and I was even terrified during the testing stage.
I didn’t want the launch to come on day one on August 23rd, my sister’s birthday, simply because I was terrified that we may not go online with everyone and that was the promise. As Darren Hardy, my friend and publisher of SUCCESS magazine say, “Scary work pays well.” That’s what I heard from him one time, and I’ll always remember it.
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Main Points Quick Review
A quick review of the insights you and I both rediscovered in this 51st episode. On iTunes, it’s in reverse chronological order you probably listening to it before you listen to episode one, but if you go to AllSellingAside.com it’s in the chronological order from one to wherever it is. I want you to apply these lessons that you’ve learned. Number one, version one is better than version none. Wouldn’t you agree? Even if it’s sloppy, get version one done. That’s the key.
Starting is not enough, getting it done is everything. Number two, beta testing. That was a UIBC 1. We were beta testing it and we’re getting paid. It’s only beta testing that can lead to wild success faster, better and with less effort. At least you have something to measure and improve.
Number three, you’ll learn why perfectionism, the fear of finishing is an invisible enemy to your financial freedom because you won’t serve others and you won’t get paid if something is not finished like a book, a product, a service or whatever it is that you do. Remember, these insights will only work for you if you work them.
Please, make sure you execute what you’ve learned in this episode because if you do, I promise, your future will be bigger and brighter than it is and you’ll create it on your terms. That third thing is most important, your terms. Speaking of reviews, if you’ve already given me a review on iTunes then, I want you to write your biggest takeaway or your a-ha moment from this episode on an index card.
Sloppy Success: Starting is not enough; getting it done is everything.
You can revisit it at a later time. Hopefully, you have a stack of ASA, All Selling Aside, episodes. If you have not given me a review on iTunes, then go to AllSellingAside.com/iTunes and please write your biggest a-ha in the review section. Most podcasters will ask you to review the podcast. I don’t want that. I want you to give me your biggest takeaway from this episode if it has meaning for you.
Don’t review it, just give me your a-ha moment. It’s specific and other people can read it and decide, “I want to have a read this thing.” The review section was not designed for that, but that’s what I want you to do. It’ll mean much to me and I bet it’ll mean a lot to you too because you’re declaring your a-ha.
Once you do that, iTunes will automatically ask you to rate this episode. I hope I’ve earned five stars from you. If that’s the case, give me five stars. If you don’t think this episode was five stars, then listen to another episode and then give your biggest take away from that one. Give your five stars if you think I deserve it because you only get to review it once.
Will you do that for me? It’ll take three minutes out of your day, but what you declare could provide you and others reading it a valuable lesson. It’ll allow the truth for those who hate to sell to go up in the ranks on iTunes and more people can get access to it.
I have one final gift to you and for you in honor of this 51st episode and that is complimentary, that means free, access to my video e-course that will teach you how to identify your market, create your message and capitalize on the most lucrative media sources available to you.
It’s our four-part video eTraining series and you don’t have to pay then $197 tuition everyone else does because you’re listening, you got in. Go to MarketingOnlineMentor.com.
I do hope our paths cross again for the next episode. This is the show dedicated to making ethical influence within your reach so that you can achieve and even exceed your potential and you can bring more certainty into your life. Please, do whatever it takes to join me because our topic is called The J-Curve Growth Principle. I encourage you to invite a friend or bring a study buddy.
I encourage you to refer a study buddy to this episode so you can have study, someone to study with, maybe even two people because it’s more fun to learn how to sell with someone else. I can’t wait to connect with you then. It’ll be super fun and I want you to join us with your study buddy at All Selling Aside. Until then, all good wishes. I can’t wait for our path to cross.
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