Shaa Wasmund: “Make Money Online With What You Already Know”

 

SW: Shaa Wasmund
NJ: Nick James
CD: Charlie Diamond
S: Sunita
A: Audience
DP: Dog people
CP: Cat people
A1, A2 etc: Interjections from the audience

SW: Good afternoon, guys. How are we? Good?

A1: Fantastic.

SW: Fantastic? I like that. Is anybody better than fantastic? Anyone feeling better than fantastic?

A: [Some assent]

SW: Awesome. Yeah, my favourite word. So, just so I can understand a little bit about you guys, so I’m tailoring my content for you, how many of you are coaches? Fantastic. How many of you are business coaches? How many of you are personal coaches? How many of you do both? Okay, interesting. How many of you are consultants, or run your own business? Okay, good spread. Right, great. That makes me happy, because it means that I’m going to be able to deliver you some fantastic content today. So, as the title suggests… is it coming on? Ah. Guys, could we have the AV linked? Because the AV link is not… the slides are moving, but the screen’s not moving.

So, what I want to talk to you about today: I want to talk to you about how you can make money online using the skills and expertise you already have. So, who would like to share with me what they coach about? Like, what’s your skills and expertise? Anyone down here? What do you do? You don’t know what you do. You don’t coach? What do you do? Okay. What do you do?

A2: I’m a how-to-make-money-online consultant.

SW: You’re a how-to-make-money-online consultant. So you do internet marketing. Anyone else? What kind of business coaching do you guys do? Come on, share something? Thank you.

A3: Image consulting.

SW: You’re an image consultant. Fantastic. What else? Lady at the back? It’s all the ladies. Are you guys scared of me or something? Am I so alpha female that you don’t know what to do? Come on, there. The lady up there – thank you.

A4: Stress management.

SW: Stress management consultant. A guy? Someone? Male. Put your hand up. Thank you, sir.

A5: I’m a photographer.

SW: You’re a photographer. Great. You’ve been smiling at me – what do you?

A6: I teach people how to use video.

SW: You teach people how to use video. Okay, fantastic. You can see there’s loads of different skills here. What I want to teach you in the next sixty minutes is how you can use the skills you’ve already got – whether it’s using video, taking photography, whether it’s image, whether it’s stress management, so you don’t have to learn anything new – and how you can take those skills and expertise and actually start to make money online with them.

So, why are we all here? I’m hoping they’re all working now. Okay, fantastic. Well, we are all here to learn a new way of doing business, and I am sure over the last two and half days, you’ve learned lots of different bits of advice and tips from the other speakers in how you can do that. So, this is what I’m here for. I’m here to teach you how you can actually reach fifty million new leads and get paid for it. Okay? So I know lots of the information that you’ve heard over the last couple of days has all been about how you can maximise Facebook ads and SEO and PPC, which is all an important element of your marketing, but we all know that actually that costs money, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. So, what I’m going to teach you doesn’t cost you any money to do it. In fact, it’s the opposite. You get paid to do it. So, it sounds a bit crazy, but I’m going to explain why. You see, for me, something recently changed. I myself learned a new way of doing business, and really crucially, a new way of working. Hands up those of you who are tired of constantly trading our time for money? How many of you love what you do, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do any more? How many of you, if you could find a way to earn more money – without spending any more time – would put both your hands up?

[Laughter]

Right. Well, me too. So here’s my reality. My reality is: I’m very fortunate. I have a beautiful house in London on Greenwich Park. I have another beautiful house in Kent, on the sea, in a place called Whitstable. I spent the best part of a month in Barbados this summer. Why do I say this? Is it to impress you because I’ve got a Ferrari as well? No, I don’t have a Ferrari. I actually choose to spend my money on experiences. There’s lots of research that tells you that the way to happiness isn’t actually money – it’s the freedom that that enables you to… and what you do with it. And typically, it’s about two things. It’s about having experiences, creating memories, and the people that you do that with. That’s the core secret to happiness. And obviously, having a bit more money allows you to do that more frequently, because it allows you to take time off, and it allows you to travel, and it allows you to do things. So, I had all these external trappings of success and wealth, but I was working sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty hours a week in order to do it. Has anyone done a sixty-hour week? Seventy-hour week?

[0.05.00]

Eighty-hour week? Yeah. And then we wake up, and we realise how long we’ve been doing this for. And we think to ourselves, ‘There has to be a better way.’ Because I’m so passionate about what I do, I’m so passionate about helping people with their back problems. Or I’m so passionate about helping small businesses with their websites, getting their SEO right. Or I’m so passionate about wedding photography and making sure that the couple has the best pictures they could ever have, or I’m so passionate about teaching people about how to get their videos up on YouTube. Whatever it is you’re passionate about, you know how much that means to you. So you think to yourself, ‘Well, why is it that I have to keep working harder and harder – oftentimes it feels like – just to stand still?’ So, something changed, and that’s what I want to share with you. And it’s this: I wrote a book at the beginning of this year that came out in June, called Do Less, Get More. And it was off the back of these experiences that I’d had. I’d been working for so many years, for so many hours, for so many days, weekends, nights, early mornings. And then one day I stopped, because I simply couldn’t do any more. And I started to find a new way of doing things, and it was actually… I realised that by doing less, I could achieve more. Now, it sounds completely counterintuitive, but it’s very simple. I made a very, very simple change. I did this: I got off the hamster wheel. How many of us have felt like we’re on a hamster wheel before? Yeah? Going round, and round, and round, and round, and we just think to ourselves: ‘When am I going to get somewhere? When am I going to get to that destination that I’ve been working really hard to get to?’ And I thought, ‘Well, I can’t just keep going round and round and round in circles any more. I’ve just got to stop, and I’ve got to get off, and I’ve got to focus on the areas of my business that are actually going to give you the biggest impact. And the key for me was this: I finally found a way to stop trading my time for money. If I could show each and every one of you a way that you could stop trading your time for money, how many of you would want that? Okay, who wouldn’t like to know how to stop trading their time for money? Okay, you lot can leave the room [laughter].

[Laughter]

You see, I think the point about trading your time for money and learning new ways of doing things is that actually, if I was to ask the three guys who put their hands up, part of the reason usually – and it’s the same for me – is that actually part of what I do in person, that I love doing. So I don’t actually want to never trade my time for money, because sometimes the one-to-one work actually gives me my greatest joy. But I want to have choice, and I want to have freedom. So my goal is to get my business, within the next twelve months – and we’re very much on target for that – where eighty percent of our revenue is derived online through scalable products, through a scalable business that doesn’t require me to constantly swap my services for somebody else to pay me. So what freedom does that give me? Well, it gives me the freedom that I can pick and choose who I work with. I can pick and choose when I swap my time for money, and with whom I swap my time for money. So that I can do this, so that I can make money living the life that I wanted to, and doing it the way I wanted to, because for me this is what it’s all about. I wanted to be able to spend more time with the people that made me happy. Like many of you… who has kids in the room? I have a nine-year-old boy. And whilst he’s very proud of me, he frequently used to say to me, ‘Mummy, why are you so busy all the time?’ In fact, has anybody in here had challenges with their kids, to put their iPads down? Yeah? Well, I had the same reversed to me. He said, ‘Could you just put your phone down for a minute?’, and it dawned on me how true that was. Now, I was lucky because I was doing something that I absolutely love doing, but I was still trapped. I was still tied to it. I was still doing things and working when really I should have been present with my son, my friends, my family.

A7: [Coughing]

SW: Whoever’s dying in the room – can we have some water please? And this, for me, was the biggest breakthrough, and it was a breakthrough I wanted to share with as many people as I could, because this is actually revolutionary. Nobody else is talking about this right now, and it sounds… ‘Wow, what on Earth could Shaa be talking about? How can you do these things that she’s saying?’ Well, I’m going to show you, and demonstrate to you, because the key here is getting an audience. Because without an audience, you have absolutely nothing.

[0.10.05]

No matter how brilliant you are, no matter how brilliant your business is, no matter how brilliant your products or services are, you have nothing if you don’t have an audience. If you don’t have somebody to sell it to. So, imagine. I could have the best talk in the world. You’ve heard from my friends and my peers. You’ve heard from the awesome Paul O’Mahoney, who’s at the back of the room – My Honey, that’s who I refer to him as – we had Simon Coulson, who spoke earlier. You had Andy Harrington, you’re going to have the awesome Dan, and James Davis. But imagine if we were all here, and none of you were. What would happen? Nothing, right? First of all, we wouldn’t have a business, because there’d be nobody that we could serve, and there’d be nobody that we could sell to, and there’d be nobody that we could help. And nobody would understand just how good the things that we were teaching were, because there’d be nobody here. So it doesn’t actually matter what your business is – you have to find a way to find your audience, and you have to find a way to grow that audience. So how do you build an audience from scratch? Well, this is what I started to do: I started to think big, because I thought to myself… some of you may have read this book, but when I was eighteen, alongside to listening to Tony Robbins, I read a book called The Magic of Thinking Big. Has anybody else read that book? Awesome book. If you haven’t read it, I highly, highly recommend it, and the biggest takeaway I took from that was that it takes just as much time to do something small, half-hearted, half-cocked, than it does to do something big with all your heart and passion. But of course, if you do it small, you’re going to get small results. But if you do it big, you have every chance you can get great results. So I started to think really big, like, seriously big. Not in the thousands, but in the millions. Because if I was going to build an audience, I didn’t just want to talk to a handful of potential customers. I didn’t just want to find a few hundred people who might need the products or services that I had, because I would just be back to square one, trading my time for money. I wanted to meet fifty million people. Who else would like a marketing mess of fifty million? If I could say, ‘Here you go, guys. Each and every one of you. Just come to the front of the stage now, and I’ll give you an email marketing mess of fifty million.’ We’d all love that, right? How long would that take us to build? Probably three or four lifetimes. It just wouldn’t happen. But the key here is not actually building it yourself. So how do you do that? How do you find a way to tap into an email list and an audience of that colossal scale?

Well, you have to think differently, and that’s something that – as you hear my story over the next hour – you’re going to see is probably one of my talents in life. Thinking about things differently. And this is how I started to think. I think very differently. I stopped marketing. Altogether. I stopped spending money on PPC, I stopped spending money on Facebook ads, I stopped spending any money. Because it had taken me so much time and money, without any guaranteed results. I wasn’t guaranteed I was going to get leads, let alone that those people were going to become customers, and I’d wasted an awful lot of money on Facebook ads and PPC, and admittedly it could be that I just didn’t know what I was going, because as an entrepreneur, we tend to go head-first into things thinking that we’ll figure it out. I think I have a few too many male tendencies, like trying to figure things out without instructions. Most women are much better than me at that – they actually read things first, and I just think I’ll figure it out as I’m going through, and that’s what I did with marketing. And you can lose a lot of money. I wasn’t so worried about the money, but I looked at how much time I was spending trying to get this right. You see, it’s great once you’ve built a list, but you need a big one to make an impact. Because when you start selling to small lists, you only have a small impact. So I took some time out, and I thought to myself, ‘In this new world of marketing, who could I partner with? Who could I reach out to? Who’s already doing things that maybe I could take a different take on? Could I use my skills?’ You know you’ve all got your skills, whether it’s photography or video or it’s nutrition – my skills are very clearly two things. There’s two things that I am absolutely world-class at: One is business, and one is books.

[0.15.03]

I don’t do too much else other than those two things. I’m really, really good at those two things. So I started to think, ‘Well, with all my knowledge and expertise, how could I do things differently?’ Because when you look at the stats, the conversion rates if you’re selling to an audience… how many of you have a website, just so I… how many of you don’t have a website? Okay. Are there any web designers in the room? Sir, what’s your name?

CD: Charlie Diamond.

SW: Charlie Diamond. Did you see… I hope you were taking note of all those people who put their hands up.

CD: Every one.

SW: See? [Laughter] Because everybody needs a new website if they haven’t got one already. So, Charlie will confirm this for you: That if you’re selling to an audience from a sales page on your own website, you’ll be lucky to get a one to three percent conversion from your sales page, okay? So if you only have a hundred people on your list, you’re going to get one to three people converting, signing up for your course, buying your product, buying your services. So, to me, when I started looking at that, that didn’t really make any sense. So I decided to do something entirely different. I flipped everything on its head, and I did this: I found someone to do it for me. I found someone to do it for me. Which meant that I didn’t have to figure this out myself, or by myself. And that is really why I’m here today. So this is what I’m going to teach you. Over the next, probably, forty-five minutes, I’m going to teach you who that someone was, the results I got from working with that group, how I did it, and – really crucially – how you guys can too. So, these are the things I can’t do, just in case you thought I could: I don’t have the seeds for money trees. I wish I did, but I don’t. And I can’t print fifty pound notes, although that would be nice. I’d probably get arrested. And I don’t have a magic new invention. So, what I’m going to teach you… when I start going into it, you’re just going to go, ‘What?’ You’re going to think to yourself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ Because I promise you, it’s going to be so obvious to you. This is not smoke and mirrors. This isn’t some new-fangled scheme that won’t be relevant next week. This is something very, very simple, and very, very straightforward, but you need to know how to do it. So, what I can do, is: I can tell you… oh my God. That’s a bit jumpy. I can tell you a new way to get your product in front of millions of people, and – crucially – I can teach you how you can make a lot of money doing it. So here’s the key. This is the formula. You writing this down? Got your pens, paper? Let’s go. Okay, so the key is: The first part – information products. Okay? Information products. Does everybody know what an information product is? Anybody not know? Put your hands up, please. I’d be very happy for you to put your hand up if you don’t. Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. Every time one person puts their hand up in a question like that, I guarantee there’s ten other people who wanted to put their hand up and were a bit too embarrassed, so I appreciate you doing so. An information product is something like a digital product. It means that it’s scalable. It means that you could sell one of them, or ten thousand of them, with little or no extra work. You might need some extra customer service to support those sales, but you certainly don’t need to put in ten thousand more hours in order to serve ten thousand clients rather than one. So this is crucial. You need to have an information product, because the information product is the scalable part of your business, and I’m going to teach you what that looks like. So each of you, your information product will be linked to the expertise, the knowledge, and the skills that you already have. So, for the gentleman there, it would be video. For the lady at the back, it will be stress management. For the lady here, it will be image consulting. So whatever you do in your current business, however you charge, or what you charge your current customers for, that will become your digital information product. So let’s assume you’ve got that. Then what do you need? [Whispers] An audience.

[Laughter]

A8: Traffic.

SW: You need traffic, and you need an audience. And I call that “distribution”. So why do I call it distribution? Now, if you think about it… in fact, I’m going to give you an example in this very sector. If I had a brand new food product, it could be the best thing, literally, since sliced bread, but if I couldn’t get that into Waitrose, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s… not many people would realise how amazing it was.

[0.20.12]

So, those supermarkets are distribution, because each of those supermarkets has thousands and millions of customers, whereas me by myself… I might be able to go to the local farmers’ market and start selling my sliced bread, but how many people could I as one person ever reach, even if I worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? I could never, ever reach the scale or potential of the supermarkets in this distribution. But of course, we’re not talking about supermarkets at all. What we are talking about is how distribution use to be very expensive, so if you had to try to reach somebody else’s email list, you’d have to pay for it. You’d have to pay to get your product or service distributed. You’d have to pay to use other people’s platforms, and you’d have to pay to use their email list, so it used to be expensive. And growing an audience took time. Who in here has their own email list? Anybody? Okay. Anybody want to shout out how big their email list is? This isn’t like how big, it’s just…

S: (Unclear 0.21.20) about ten kay.

SW: About ten thousand. How long did it take you to build that?

S: Ten years.

SW: Ten years. Thank you. Appreciate it. What’s your name?

S: Sunita.

SW: Sunita?

S: Yes.

SW: Thank you, Sunita. Appreciate it. Anybody else? Who else has got a list? Can I ask you how big yours is? Charlie?

CD: Three thousand buying clients in three years.

SW: Three thousand buying clients in three years. Awesome work, Charlie. That’s amazing. Absolutely, it’s fantastic. So, you see there, how long it takes. So we’re looking at an average of building a thousand a year. Did you spend any money on marketing, advertising, Facebook, PPC? You’re both nodding your head furiously. Right? Okay. So it cost you money to actually build those lists. So what I’m going to teach you is how you can go – you’re going to see these stats in a minute – from zero, which is where I was at the beginning of last year, to… we’re just shy of fifty thousand people on our email list, customers, and this is in just over a year and a half, okay? How much money did we spend on that?

CD: Zero.

SW: Thank you very much, Charlie. My new assistant – please give Charlie a round of applause. Charlie.

[Applause]

So the main reason that people fail in business, or in anything they’re doing, is two key reasons. They run out of money, and they run out of time. So you can have a fantastic product, but you just can’t get it over the line. You’re just not making enough money quick enough. Your overdraft is just at the brink. You can’t take any more money, or else you’ll have to go and get a dreaded job. Now, I don’t want anyone to ever have to do that again. Anyone here ever had a job working for somebody else? Anybody here who has never, ever, ever worked for anyone else? Could you all stand up? Stand up if you’ve never, ever worked for anyone else.

[Laughter]

Give these two gentlemen a round of applause.

[Applause]

Awesome, right? Amazing. I take my hat off to you. I really, really do, because actually, the vast majority, over ninety percent of entrepreneurs, small business owners and coaches and consultants previously worked for somebody else, and most of us… our biggest nightmare is to think that we’d have to go back and do that again, right? Right? You don’t. Because, what if I could show you how to access millions of customers literally overnight? For free? Totally free. So, Charlie, Sunita – we’re not going to have to take any more of your money to do this, I promise you. Or even better, what if you got paid for those leads? Does that sound like I’ve been smoking?

A: Yes. [Laughter]

SW: Yeah. I thought it might. Is this being recorded? Yeah? Scrap that last bit. Okay, this is true, because I’m going to demonstrate exactly how we’ve done this, and I’m going to show you how you can tap into the fifty million email list of a big, global giant, and – get this – have a big fat cheque put through your door at the end of every single month. Okay. This bit, this slide, is probably the only exaggeration you’re ever going to see on any slide you’ll ever hear me present. Why is this an exaggeration? They don’t send you cheques. They send you a BACS wire transfer into your bank account, right? But this is true. This is exactly how we operate, how we’ve taught hundreds of people this year how they can operate this way too. You’re going to see some of our examples, and some of theirs as well. You’re going to do this with zero marketing budget, and you’re going to make sales whilst you sleep. Does this sound good?

A: Yes.

SW: Yes, or yes?

A: Yes!

SW: Do you like my T. Harv Eker line I just nicked?

[0.25.01]

Anybody else listen to T. Harv Eker? He has this great line – I’ve always wanted to use it. “Is that a yes, or a yes?” So, okay, I’m going to show you all of this, okay? And it is exactly why I’m here. And it’s this: Who’s heard of Groupon?

A9: Every day.

SW: Every day! [Loud laughter] Who’s bought something from Groupon? Could everyone who’s bought something from Groupon stand up? Don’t be shy. Everyone who’s bought something from Groupon please stand up. Everybody who has a husband, a wife, or a partner who they know has bought something from Groupon, stand up. Everybody who has a friend who they know has bought something from Groupon, please stand up. Will you all just take a look around the room at how many people that is? Okay, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You can sit down. Why did I do that? Because this seems like a crazy idea. Why does it seem a crazy idea? Because of this. Because this is what we usually think about when we think about Groupon. We know it for bargain haircuts, or buy-one-get-one-free meals. Or for half-price teeth whitening. This is what we’ve typically thought of when it comes to Groupon. But: That’s obviously not why I’m here today. Although I think my teeth are quite white. Are they all right? Yeah? Actually, please, all pay attention to this point. I promise you that what I’m going to teach you for the rest of my session could, if you chose it to, completely and utterly revolutionise your business in the same way it has mine, and hundreds of other people, just like you. Groupon is actually the world’s leading and largest distributor of online products and information products. That means they are the biggest in the world. This sector – online learning, online courses, digital products, this whole space – was described by Forbes magazine in June as the third fastest-growing industry in the world, with the turnover in this sector expected to double this year alone to over a hundred and ten billion. And this is the reality: Groupon needs you. Really, they do, and if you’d been lucky enough to come to one of our business boot camps that we hold, we had the online course director from Groupon himself at the event, doing a Q and A with me onstage, explaining that they have over fifty million customers worldwide, but their database, their email list, is even bigger than that. Now, we’re in the UK. We have a population of just over sixty million. How many people do you think Groupon has in the UK on their email list? Any guesses? Out of sixty million.

A10: Twenty.

[Hubbub]

SW: Five? Fifteen?

A11: Twenty million?

SW: Thirty? Twenty-three point eight million of the UK’s population are on Groupon’s database. Twenty-three point eight million. They need you, and your knowledge, and your expertise, because they have a huge, hungry audience, that they can’t currently satisfy. Because they don’t have enough products, and that’s why they’re on a mission to get more people, just like you – coaches, consultants, and people who are looking to leverage your existing content and skills. Now, for me, there are so many amazing things about this. Whether it’s the size of their distribution, whether it’s the fact that you don’t have to pay for any of these leads… and don’t worry, I’m going to explain exactly how this all works. But this bit here is really key for me, as someone who is really busy, if I’m going to try to teach you how to stop leveraging your time for money, you’ve got to start with your existing content and skills. We’ve got to start with what you’ve already got. Some of you… anybody here written their own book? If you’ve written your own book, you would be absolutely crazy not to take this seriously, because the information that you’ve got in your book… you re-purpose it to create a digital product, which is exactly what Groupon are looking for. Does that make sense? Yes or yes?

A: [Affirmative noises]

SW: Thank you. Anybody here who wants to write a book? Okay.

[0.30.00]

Anybody here who writes a blog? Anybody here who creates presentations? Anybody here who writes emails to customers? Do you get the point? Yeah? Doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a book, a blog, presentations, emails. The content that you’re already creating, or that you’ve already created, is exactly what they want, and what they need. They have a global audience. I’m going to talk about that later. You see, here’s the beauty: When you create a digital product, you don’t just sell to your own country. You can sell to a much wider audience. Again, I will go into detail on exactly how you do that too. So don’t think about this as just a UK opportunity, because it’s not. So, you could have a bedroom business with absolutely no list, and with the help of Groupon, you’ll turn it into a powerful and profitable business with a growing database very, very quickly. So, who would like to see a real, live, example of exactly how to do this?

A12: Yes, yes.

SW: Yes, yes [laughter]. Thank you. You’re helping me already. Let’s go. This is my example. As I said to you, there’s two things that I know about: Books, and business. So I started… again, I want to make this all really clear to you guys. I had never, ever, ever, ever done anything remotely like this before January last year, okay? So I started, January 2014, with no list, no online course, no digital product, no information product. And this is what we did. We created a course, which was called How to Start a Business in Thirty Days. That’s me with my Groupon teeth whitening, and… this course launched for twenty-nine pounds. Now, you might think, ‘Wow, that’s really cheap’, okay? Well, here’s what happens. When Groupon sells your course, or your information, or your digital product, for twenty-nine pounds, you get to keep half of that. Okay? So let’s assume, just for argument’s sake, round the number up to thirty. So, for every product of yours that they sell, you keep roughly fifty percent. Obviously, you need to learn how to negotiate the best deal, and I’m quite good at that, so we got a good deal, and we got fifteen pounds out of every sale. But do you know what else happens? Charlie, could you guess what happens? You ready? So, Charlie gets an email from Groupon, like this lady here, who gets them every day, right? Every day. Charlie thinks, ‘You know what? I want to buy Shaa’s course.’ So Charlie presses the big green Buy button. He buys the course. This gets registered at Groupon. At the end of every month they send us a big cheque… well, they send us the money by BACS. But what else do they send us?

[Hubbub]

Say that again.

[Louder hubbub]

All the emails! We are not paying for any of this. We are getting paid to do this. I get Charlie’s email, I get this lady’s email… gentleman at the back.

A13: Those emails.

SW: And yes, I get your email too.

A13: Is it those people who have bought your product, or [overspeaking]

SW: Yes, the people who have bought your product, so you know that not only are they a lead, but they’re  a highly qualified lead. A highly qualified lead, why? Because they have…

A: Bought.

SW: Bought. They’ve bought your product, so you know that whatever you do, they are interested in what you do. Now, is this starting to sound interesting?

A: Yes.

SW: Yes or yes?

A: Yes!

SW: Thank you. Hey, I said it’s not rocket science, but nobody else is teaching this. Now I want to show you some results. The way Groupon works is: It’s a little bit like old-school farming. What do I mean by that? Well, how old-school farming used to work – and organic farming looks like that – you’d put one crop on, and then you’d pull it off and you’d rotate it and put something else on. What happens with Groupon is: Once you learn how to get your course or your product approved, and they take it, they will put it on, and they will run with it for a set period of time, usually two to three weeks. Sometimes a bit less. Sometimes ten days. Then they pull it off, and they give it a break and they put something else on, and then if your course or your product does well, in another three to four weeks they put it back on, and they keep doing this rotation. So, these are the figures in the first two weeks, okay? That means… how much money did we make, in two weeks?

[0.35.00]

Fifteen thousand pounds. Fifteen thousand pounds, in two weeks. Now, you heard from Charlie, and you heard from Sunita, in how long it took them to grow their email list of three thousand or ten thousand. Ironically, I don’t think they know each other, but it took them exactly the same period of time, pro-rata. A thousand a year, and they both spent money to do that. How long did it take me to get a thousand people on my list? Two weeks. How much did it cost me?

[Hubbub]

Fifteen grand in profit! Surely this is the better way of doing things, right? Yes. So, I know that at this point lots of you are thinking, ‘Oh my God, I just want to do this right now.’ Some of you, however, are thinking, ‘Ah, that sounds really good. There’s got to be a catch. You know what? I don’ t think that what I do will work. I don’t think that my skills or expertise will work on Groupon. I think that actually it’s just the kind of stuff that Shaa does.’ Okay, are you ready? You ready for having all of those myths blown out of the water? Because this is a candle-making workshop, okay? So if there’s anybody in the audience that teaches how to make candles, this was in their first two days. I didn’t realise that so many people wanted to make candles. Three hundred and twenty-nine people bought this course. Autism. An autism diploma. I don’t actually know, but I can guarantee you this would have been in a two- to three-week period. It could have been two days, it could have been two and a half weeks. Seven hundred and thirty-seven people bought this course. What’s interesting about this course is: This course on autism was actually designed by a parent who had an autistic child, because if you’re in that situation, or… there’s another example which I haven’t go on here. One of their bestselling courses of all time. Any idea what it was? Nutrition Superhighway. Anyone interested in nutrition in this room? Anyone interested in NLP in this room? Okay. Those two are their two highest-performing. Nutrition and NLP. Hugely successful on Groupon. No, it wasn’t it was…

A14: Sausage making.

SW: Sausage making? Who said that? You cheeky mare! [Laughter] Was that organic sausage making? It was how to sleep.

[Laughter]

How to sleep. Anybody here have problems sleeping? Okay. If I was to ask the people in the audience, who have problems sleeping, if you could buy a course from somebody who had suffered from insomnia for twenty years, and then found a technique that they had tested with five hundred people, that added an extra two hours’ deep sleep, would you pay twenty-nine pounds for that? Do you know how many people paid twenty-nine pounds for that course? Who said ten thousand? Keep going. Up.

[Hubbub]

Bit more.

[Hubbub]

Bit less. Who said ‘A million’?

[Laughter]

A15: Eighteen.

SW: Seventeen thousand. Seventeen thousand people paid twenty-nine pounds. Twenty-nine pounds, to buy a course on how to sleep. Online cognitive behavioural therapy. Five hundred and forty-two bought. Twenty-nine pounds, you see, is this magic number. Twenty-nine, twenty-nine, twenty-nine. Basic accounting – this is by a bookkeeper. Do we have any bookkeepers or accountants in the room? Now, I’m going to tell you that I know the person behind this particular course, personally. And he isn’t an accountant, or a bookkeeper. Are you hitting yourself? He’s not an accountant or a bookkeeper. He was a small business owner, and he got very, very frustrated with the way he was taught how to use Excel, because it just didn’t make sense to a small business owner. I will be the first one… anyone else put their hands up with me. I struggle to get my head around Excel. Yeah? Anybody else struggle with it? Be honest. And if you don’t struggle with it, because you’re not doing with it, you actually struggle more because you’ve got to do it to understand your numbers. So what he decided to do was: Teach people how to use Excel, with a bookkeeper’s help, but in plain, normal, everyday, human being language. On this particular outing, he sold eight hundred and sixteen. But can I tell you why it’s called “Best of Groupon”? Can you see there? The writing’s small, but can you see this blue thing here? It says “Best of Groupon”. It’s called “Best of Groupon” because… how much revenue do you think he derived, from Groupon alone, purely through these courses, in 2014?

[0.40.05]

Four million. Four million. Four million. Now, I’ll tell you another story. His name’s Mark Zanders. Very interesting guy, and this is a true story. He was about to shut the business. He was two weeks away from shutting the business, because he couldn’t get any traction. He’d developed the courses and was trying to sell them through other accountants and bookkeepers to their clients, and probably quite naturally – and obviously, when you think about it in retrospect – they didn’t want to do that, because they thought they had all the knowledge and the expertise. He was two weeks away from having to shut down because he was at the end of his overdraft and he couldn’t get access to any more funding. A friend of his had said, ‘I’ve just seen this NLP course on Groupon, and actually it was really good. It was just by a regular NLP practitioner. Why don’t you try doing that?’ So he used her contact, and he contacted them. Like us, in the first two weeks, he’d sold over a thousand. Now, he’s been doing this for the longest period of time of anybody in Groupon in the UK. He’s been doing it for all of two and a half years. Gradually, bit by bit, more and more people are cottoning on to a new way of working, a new way of doing business, and a new way of leveraging their existing skills, content, and expertise. And now I want you to be able to do the same. And I’m going to run through these very, very quickly. Two hundred and thirty-five people bought an online forensic science and profiling course. Why? Because they liked CSI. This is true! Honestly. I promise you this is true, because this is a story I didn’t know about, but again, Ross – who’s the guy from Groupon – when he told this story, he said that he was so surprised. This was one of the ones that he was really surprised about, because he couldn’t understand it. All these people want to be forensic scientists, so they do some market research. And they started calling people to ask them why. Number one reason: They said it’s just like reading a crime novel. They just wanted to understand how it worked. They just liked CSI. They just wanted to find out. Photography. Hands up who’s a photographer?

[Laughter] [Hubbub]

SW: [Laughter] You bought this course! [Laughter] So we have a buyer in the room as well. Well, you are in good company, because… can anyone see the number here?

[Hubbub]

Two thousand plus people bought this course, okay? Why am I sharing with you so many examples? I’m nearly done. A Photoshop course. Anyone in here good with Photoshop? Any design people in here? Okay. One thousand plus bought. Is the message sinking in? Yes or yes?

A: Yes.

SW: Any topic. When you’re teaching people to sleep, you have an autistic child, you’re an expert at Photoshop, you’re a genius at photography. You are a wizard at teaching people how to use things like Microsoft Word or Excel in a language that they can understand. Groupon needs you, and their customers want you. That’s a fact. So all you need to do now is join the dots together, and figure out how do you do this. So, the last couple. Special education needs. Let’s go back. Eight hundred and fifty-one bought. How to become an exceptional writer. Now, this is… I usually have a video here, because this is actually hilarious. When you watch this video… fifty-four pounds. So, one of the highest ones. Can anybody… I don’t know. Anybody down the front read that number? How many students?

A: Twenty thousand, four hundred and ninety five.

SW: Yeah. Twenty thousand, four nine five. If this appeals to you, if you’re sitting here thinking, ‘Okay, I want to know, how do I do this?’, I want to be really clear with you what is possible. Because not everybody is going to get exactly the same results that we did, or that Mark did. So what is possible? This is entirely possible. To go from zero to an additional two thousand pounds of revenue plus a week, and an additional hundred-plus leads a week very easily. We’ve obviously done way more than that. We’ve sold, I think, now, if I looked at the current numbers, it’s just under then thousand courses. Ten thousand courses. We did two courses – one on how to start a business on thirty days, and another one I haven’t showed you, which is how to write a bestselling book. So if you’d like to know how to do that, you can buy a course from Groupon. And we’ve built our email list up to just shy of fifty thousand whilst doing this, and getting paid for it. So, this is what I’ve done in my business. In the last twelve months, I’ve grown my list from zero to forty-eight thousand and ninety six people.

A16: (Inaudible 0.44.57 – 0.45.04)

[0.45.04]

SW: Sorry?

A16: (Inaudible 0.45.05 – 0.45.06)

SW: What do you submit to Groupon?

A16: (Inaudible 0.47.09 – 0.47.12)

SW: Yes, you have to… Groupon have the final say. You can’t just put yourself up there. So you have to learn exactly how to do it. You have to learn the format that they like. I mean, we all know when we took exams, all of us, at some point in our lives, have had to take an exam. There is a format to doing things, like there’s a format to applying for a loan at a bank, for a business. But once you learn the format and the structure, and you know what they’re looking for, it’s much easier to do it. It’s a very standardised process, buy you need to know how to do it and what to say. This, for me, is crucial. As I said, I had all the trappings, but I was killing myself in order to do it. This way, we’ve made over half a million pounds in passive revenue. So that’s not me swapping my time for money any more. This is passive revenue. Yeah? Absolutely. Why twelve months when the other one took just over eighteen months? Because actually, when we started off [laughter]… this is something I’m going to teach you not to do. So, when we started off with Groupon, we got so excited about getting the passive revenue each month, that when those leads came in, what do you think we did with them?

[Hubbub]

SW: Nothing. Right? Nothing. So they say you teach people what you need to learn yourself, right? You teach from your own experiences. So I’m teaching you from my actual real-life, as-we-talk-now experiences. It was fantastic to get fifteen grand in two weeks. I thought, ‘Make hay while the sun shines, and just focus on doing that.’ But I missed a massive trick, and the trick was to learn how to nurture those leads into ongoing, continuing customers, fans, and passive revenue. Okay? I spent nothing on marketing, but instead I used Groupon primarily, and I’ve been asked by Groupon to make sure that I tell people that actually there are other sites that do similar things. So Amazon, Wowcher, Udemy. The reality is: Focus on Groupon. It’s much bigger, they have a much more mature audience, and what do I mean by “mature”, in this space? They have way more customers who are buying information products, digital products, and online courses. So when you start, I’m a big believer in focusing on one thing, and making it work, before you start spreading out. So this works for absolutely everybody in this room today. Whatever you do, if you told me, I’d tell you exactly how you could create digital product around it, or how you could create an online course. So the only difference between the people who are going to do this and the people who don’t, is what?

[Hubbub]

Action. You either will, or you won’t. That’s it. This is not rocket science. This isn’t… ‘You have to fit this category to make it successful.’ ‘You have to do this for them to approve it.’ Yes, you have to understand how to structure it, of course you do, but we’ve been teaching this now in workshops since March this year, and we’ve put a lot of people through our workshops, and you will be amazed – I’m going to show you some of the examples – at how quickly people turned things around, but you’re also going to be amazed at how, out of all the people, I’m going to tell you the number one course that Groupon got excited about, and it’s not what you think. We had a lady come on our workshop, and she had a very unique talent. She taught her cats how to walk on leads. And she taught her cats how to sit at the crossings, and she taught her cats how to high five each other.

[Laughter]

Now, I don’t know about you, but when she came on my workshop, I was a bit worried, because I’m very, very practical, and I really believe in delivering results for anybody who works with us. So, I was getting really worried. I said to my team, ‘Look guys, maybe we should just give her  refund, because I don’t think that we can help her. I mean, it’s great and everything, but, you know, who’s going to buy that?’

[Laughter]

So I took her to one side, and I had… her name’s Tasha. You’ll see her on Groupon [laughter], one day very, very soon. I said, ‘Look, Tasha, I’ve got to be really, really honest. I’m a bit worried about…’ ‘Don’t worry, I really want to do this.’ I said, ‘I know, Tasha, but…’ ‘Don’t worry, I’m fully committed!’ ‘I know, Tasha, but I’m not sure anybody’s going to buy your course.’ ‘I’m sure.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I can’t deflate somebody else’s dream, so I’m going to support you. I’ve given you an opportunity.’ I said, ‘If you would like a refund, I’m happy to that.’ ‘Why would I want a refund? I want to do this.’ Okay, so now, fast forward. Fast forward. We have our event, with Ross, from Groupon, and he sees all these great courses and digital products and ideas.

[0.50.03]

What’s the one he goes, ‘Oh my God’? Yeah. The cats. The cats. Anybody smarter than me have an idea why that might be?

A17: Because there are so many cat lovers in this country.

SW: Because there are so many cat lovers in this county. What else?

[Hubbub]

SW: Okay, who said, “cat videos on YouTube”? Stand up. Absolutely! That was it. Cat videos… apparently, on Facebook, the most popular videos on Facebook are cat videos. Now, I hate cats.

[Laughter]

You’re a cat person, or you’re a dog person. I’m a dog person!

DP: Yeah!

SW: Yeah! Who’s a dog person?

DP: Yeah!

SW: Who’s a cat person? [Makes a discontented groaning noise, somewhat lower than a boo]

[Laughter]

But now you understand, right? Who here’s from London? Okay. Who’s a north Londoner? Who’s a south Londoner? You see, you get it, right? You’re either one or the other. You’re either a north Londoner or a south Londoner. You’re a cat person or a dog person. And this is what happens sometimes with our brains, even when you’re right in it like I am. My limiting belief about cats made me look at that, and think, ‘Oh, that’s never going to work. That will never work.’ But of course, when Ross said to me, ‘Come on, Shaa. Like, millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of views of cat videos on Facebook every day. Of course it’s going to work. People will by it because it’s funny. They’ll buy it for their mother. They’ll buy it for their sister. They’ll buy it for the best friend. They’ll buy it because they think it’s funny, and interesting, and quirky, and stupid, and all of those things, and maybe someone will actually buy it because they want to teach their cat how to do something.’ So, this is absolutely why we’re here, and I’m going to talk you through, very quickly, how digital outlets like Groupon are hugely valuable for two things: Increasing your distribution, but most importantly, the data that you can capture from them. Okay? So don’t make my mistake. Don’t do this and then not have a plan on how you’re going to nurture those leads through it. Because it took us six months before we started to figure this out. Okay? So we wasted six months. Six months of revenue, six months of time, and you guys don’t need to do that. Who’s heard of a “sales funnel”? You must have been hearing about sales funnels for the last three days, okay? This is how we work it. This is your sales funnel. We start here. This is your Groupon product. So, for us, it’s our online course. It’s our online How to Start a Business in Thirty Days course. What do we do when somebody’s bought that? We then nurture them, and we upsell them into a higher-priced product. This will typically be another, more comprehensive, more detailed course. And this time it might involve live webinars. There might be a live element to it. And from there, we upsell them into the most expensive aspect of our business: My personal time. Does this not make sense? Yeah? Okay. So, using platforms like this is a way to find qualified leads whilst getting paid to do it. You can spend a huge amount of time and money trying to build your qualified leads, as Sunita and Charlie have, which is really valuable. But: It costs. So if there’s a way to do it that you can get paid for, then you can use that revenue to do other things. Other things that maybe you need the money for more, so when the money comes in from somewhere else, you can decide what you do with it. This is the next generation of business and making money, and it’s actually forgetting about marketing altogether, because it’s about getting a massive global company to do it for you, and then they send you the money. I mean honestly, every single month we log into our merchant account, just like you do with PayPal or your bank, just like online banking, and you see the revenues arrive in your account, and they send you all the data. Very, very simple. You just do a scrape, and you take all the data. So if you’re just starting out, or you just want to do something extra along the side, as long as you have a skill, an area of expertise, and some knowledge – which is obviously… because you all have this. You’ve all got customers of one description or another – that’s what we’re talking about here. This is a huge opportunity. Massive. And the key here is: It’s new. If we were to fast forward to two years’ time, I can guarantee it will be harder.

[0.55.01]

Why? Because more people will know about it. Right now, I am the only person in this country that’s talking about it, and we only started teaching this in March. So if you’re going to do this, you want to get on this now. Now, I’m going to tell you very quickly a little bit about my story, because this is going to give you some context into why this is important to me. Because oftentimes, when you see somebody speak on stage, it seems like it must have been easier for them somehow. They must have had some little glimmer of something that made it easier for them. And sometimes people say, ‘Ah, it’s all right for you, Shaa. You’re some geeky entrepreneur. You’re a techie. You know how to do all these things.’ Well, as I said, the reality is that in January last year, I had no idea how to do it. I hadn’t done it, I had no product, and I had no emails list. So, here’s my story. I started off doing something very different to what I’m doing today. Does anybody know who this gentleman there is?

A: Chris Eubank.

SW: Chris Eubank. Chris Eubank, the former super middleweight champion of the world. This is where I stated my career. I started my career when I’d won a competition whilst I was at the London School of Economics, studying Economics, and all my friends were going to go and work in the City, and I was a mad, crazy boxing fan. And I won a competition to write for Cosmopolitan magazine. So I decided one day, when I was in the editor’s office, with a… waiting for her to come back, and there was a great big pile of paper on her desk, and it had in great big bold red letters, from the editor’s office… I thought to myself, ‘What would happen if I took some of that paper home, and I wrote to Chris Eubank, and I told him that I’d been commissioned to interview him for Cosmopolitan magazine?’

[Laughter]

‘I wonder what would happen?’ And I’ll tell you what happened. What happened was: I interviewed him, and he offered me a job. And this was really where my life, and my career, changed. And it was a very interesting experience for a twenty-one-year-old woman in a very, very male-dominated world. I went on to become the world’s only licensed female boxing manager, having put on over twenty-two world title fights, and what do you think most people thought I did? ‘Round nine!’ Because it’s not what people expect. You know, people, we do it to ourselves, and we do it to other people. We put ourselves in boxes. I was very lucky that this guy here gave me a massive opportunity. Certainly far more interesting than working for JP Morgan. Sorry if we’ve got any bankers in the room, but it was definitely way more interesting. Now, when this gentleman retired, again, you’re going to see from my career, I have a… I have a career history of being able to bump into pretty extraordinary people at very opportune times. Chris retired from boxing, and I met this man. Anybody know who this is?

[Hubbub]

Dyson. Sir James Dyson. I met James from around a kitchen table. Nobody knew who he was. When I started working with James… better than any MBA I could ever have done. There was five of us around the kitchen table in Bath, and twenty engineers in the back garden. This I should have paid for. That I should have paid for. I’ve been given so many opportunities in my life that my passion is sharing them with other people. I decided that I wanted to write a book, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, if I want to write a book, I’m going to go and learn from the best.’ So I signed up to a course with Tim Ferriss. Anybody heard of The 4-Hour Workweek? Okay, I’m a big Tim Ferriss fan. Well, I paid ten thousand dollars to go to the States for two days, to a course called OTK – Opening the Kimono, where Tim Ferriss taught everything he knew about how to write a bestselling book. And what was the difference between me and the other people who went on that course? I did it. Remember, we said: All of you can do this. And the only difference between those of you who do, and those of you who don’t, is action. You either will, or you won’t. And I decided I absolutely was going to do this. I’m very proud to say that out of the hundred and twenty people who went on that course, only three were from outside of the US. I, having no experience before, am a bit good like that. I’ll just throw myself all in there. I’ve never done it before. So what? Let’s just get started. Sometimes naïveté is a really good thing. I’m very proud to say that Stop Talking, Start Doing sold more books, in total… forget in the UK, but just in total, even with the guys who have books out in the US, than anyone else on that course. Anyone. This is all about taking action. And… anybody know who this gentleman is?

A18: Yeah.

SW: Who is it?

[Hubbub]

Richard… what position is he?

[1.00.01]

[Hubbub]

What position am I?

[Hubbub]

One! Why do I use this? Because it’s the only time I’m ever going to be able to say I’ve beaten Richard Branson.

[Laughter]

[Pauses pointedly]

[Eventual applause]

This broke all of WH Smith’s records. Not just for a first-time book, but for any book. We held the top spot for fourteen months in a row. I know more about writing books than probably anybody else in this country. In fact, how many of you heard Andy Harrington speak? Who do you think got Andy Harrington his book deal? That’s right. Why? Because that’s what I’m like. I really believe in helping people wherever I can. Anybody here know Andrew Reynolds? Who do you think got Andrew Reynolds his book deal? How many people in here have Andrew Reynolds’ book? Does it look a little bit similar to this? His book’s called Copy This Idea, right? Yeah, I think he copied my idea, just a little bit. Andrew and I have been good friends for ten years, and I am just a big believer in paying it forward, so wherever I can, I’m connecting people, teaching people, the things that I’ve learned along the way.

And this is my latest book. After the success of Stop Talking, Start Doing, I found myself in this crazy world, in this crazy frenzy, which included being flown to New York, and having all the publishers pitch me. And Penguin, who are the largest publishers in the world, offered me a six-figure – and it didn’t start with a one – a six-figure deal for my next two books. Now, coming from somebody that had never written a book before her first one, that is a pretty awesome achievement. And I tell you all of this, and the rest of my story, not to impress you, but to impress upon you that you have an opportunity today to sit there, take it all in, go home, and do nothing; or to sit there, take it all in, and make a conscious decision to start taking action and start creating the life and the business that you desire. We sold twelve thousand copies within three weeks. We have now sold over a hundred thousand of my books in the UK alone, from a standing start, from somebody who had never done that before. Exactly the same way as I’m teaching you now about online courses and Groupon. I’d never done it before January. Just because you haven’t done anything before isn’t a good enough reason not to start today. And this is what happens! Who’d like a good bit of PR for their company or their business? Who’d like to be featured on ITV’s This Morning? I’m telling you: A book is a fantastic door-opener. So this is me, with Eamonn and his lovely wife Ruth. Eamonn loved the book so much he kept me on live TV for seven minutes. Seven minutes, in live TV, is an awesome amount of time. And this is what happened next. This is me, doing Sky Papers. Anyone know who hosts Sky Papers? Eamonn Holmes.

[Laughter]

Right. I didn’t know Eamonn until I went to This Morning. This is another thing that I think is really important to remember. Just the power of being nice to people! Of course we want to make money and we want to be successful, and we want to do all these amazing things. But actually, just genuinely being nice to people, caring about somebody else’s outcome, makes a difference. And I’ve been featured all over all of these different places. Just a couple of months ago, two months ago, City AM voted me… they did a list of the hundred most powerful entrepreneurs in the UK, and I am number twenty-one. Not bad.

[Applause]

Not bad. But what I’m going to show you next is what I’m proudest of most. At the beginning of this year, I was awarded an MBE for my services to business and enterprise, as a standout example to other people, by the Queen.

[Applause]

Thank you. But do you know what could be even better than that? This. I had three people I could take with me. This is my ninety-year-old nan, my mum, and my nine-year-old son. Four generations went to the palace. Four generations were part of the ceremony, there to witness me being awarded the MBE. Now, that was pretty significant enough for me, but for my nan, who’s ninety, for her generation, meeting the Queen was like ET coming home.

[1.05.10]

[Laughter]

Now, my nine-year-old son, you can’t see in this picture, he refuse to wear proper shoes. He went in his Converse. Five hundred pound Armani suit, but he wore his Converse. This, to me, is what it’s all about. It’s all about my family and the people I care about, and that’s why I’m so passionate about what I’m teaching you today. Because the more time you can free up, the more good you can do for other people. The more you can start to live life on your own terms, and generate passive revenue, the more choices and opportunities you have. You see, for me, that’s not where I started. This isn’t where I come from. This is where I come from. This is a hostel for homeless families, and… I was born in America. Very gratefully, I’ve lost the American accent. And I came here just before my eleventh birthday, and my parents divorced in the States. And without going into any deep detail, it was incredibly acrimonious, and I never spoke to my dad again, since that point. And the reason was, is: We were left completely destitute. My nan is British, and so naturally brought her kids – myself and my brother, who’s seven years younger than me – back to the UK. And we went on the council waiting list, and we were told we had two years to wait for anything, and the only thing that they could do was to put us here, in a hostel for homeless families. Now, you can probably imagine, that when you’re eleven, and you’re trying to make friends at a new school, and you have a stupid American accent, and have spent the last two years, because of my parents’ situation, eating McDonald’s for dinner virtually every night, I was two stone overweight, I had a stupid American accent, and now I lived in a hostel. I couldn’t tell anybody where I lived, because I was too embarrassed. I was too scared, right? I was too scared of being bullied, I was scared that nobody would like me, I was scared that nobody would talk to me. So I used to get off the bus a mile before where I lived, and I’d constantly be walking down the road, checking that nobody else was behind me, because the worst thing in the world of an eleven-year-old-girl is to be publicly ridiculed at school. And somehow, I managed to keep this a secret. But it was very difficult, because I had to keep saying no when people asked me to come over to their house. Why did I say no? Because I couldn’t invite them back. And what was I going say when they said, ‘Oh, can I come over to yours?’ ‘No, you can’t.’ ‘Why?’ What am I going to say? So I had to keep saying no to people. Now, this taught me an awful lot of life lessons, but the number one thing it taught me was: My greatest business and life lesson occurred on this bed. Because my mum sat me down, and she said to me, ‘Shaa. I want you to take a really good look around you. And I never, ever, want you to be afraid of taking risks, and following your heart. Because no matter what you do, you will never, ever be back here.’ Now, I share this story with you, because I know how easy it is, from my own self, to make judgements about people. What they look like, what they sound like, and I think, ‘Oh, it must be easy for them.’ And I just want you to all know: We’ve all got our own stories, and we’ve all got our own paths, but today is your opportunity to change your story, and to change your path, and to change the way you do things. So, for me, the internet change everything, and I truly believe it’s happening again. I think Groupon is tomorrow’s eBay. How many of us have heard of all those stories about eBay millionaires? Right? Loads of them! Did anybody manage to become an eBay millionaire? No? I’m going to tell you why, because I know there are thousands of people who have. It’s because we didn’t get on the boat early enough. Which is why I am so passionate about telling you this now. Because in two years’ time, there’ll be so much more competition for what I’m teaching you. I didn’t make fifty million by getting in first, but I’ll tell you what: I am absolutely captaining the Groupon boat.

[1.10.00]

And I want to teach as many of you as I possibly can to do this with me. It’s simple. Genuinely, you all can do this. And I want to show you exactly how you can. So how does it work? Well, this is Gwen. She came to our course in May. We taught her exactly what to do, and how to do it. Within forty-eight hours, she had her first product up, and she’d sold fifteen hundred pounds straight off the bat. Okay? Straight away. These are all public examples. I want to give you real-life examples, so you can see. By the way, who are the nutritionists, or the people who have a nutrition… okay. So, Gwen… and the NLP people? Okay. So, Gwen is an NLP practitioner, coach, and a nutritionist. So she had lots of different ways to approach the same space. But let’s look at something totally different. I think this is very much like the nineties property boom. Anybody look back and think, ‘Damn, I wish I bought properties in the nineties’? Because we all know how much money we can make from it, right? But actually this is like that now. So, what other kinds of things are working? This is a course that I think went live on the 18th September. You can find this live now, okay? If you search for it this evening, you’ll see it. So this is from a lovely lady called Julie Waddell. She came on our course. She learned exactly what to do. Her company’s called The Little Food Academy. She also has a real-life product, and it’s called Moorish, and she sells humous and baba ghanoush across Waitrose and Sainsbury’s and Tesco and Asda, but she, like me, was constantly swapping her time for money. And then she realised: There was thousands and thousands of people across the country, who loved food and wanted to learn how they could take their passion for food and turn it to an online business. And how did she get into Waitrose, and how did she get into Sainsbury’s, and how do you actually do that? Who do you approach? How do you connect with them? So she thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to take all those skills that I’ve learned along the way. I’m not going to teach people how to make humous. I am going to teach people how they can do what I’ve done.’ Take a product that they’re passionate about – in her case, it’s food – and how you get that into the supermarkets.

So, this course is live. Today. I’ve shown you so many different types of people, and companies, doing this. Whether they’re nutrition coaches, NLP people, whether it’s candle-making, teaching people how to sleep, walking cats or dogs. There is something for everybody to learn. Whatever your skill, knowledge, or area of expertise is, you can do this. As I said, we’ve sold over eight thousand courses, made over half a million in passive revenue. So, if I could show you exactly, step-by-step, how you could do this, really quickly, who would be interested? Who’d be interested if I said to you, ‘Do you know what? Because I’m so passionate about this, and because I want every single person in this room to do it, I’m going to give you the course for free. No catch. Who would want to do it then? Okay. I thought so. A dumb question… yes or yes?

A: Yes.

SW: Yes. Okay. What we want to do is to be able to help each and every one of you, and make sure you have absolutely no excuse, to make today the day that you make a change and start to really build the life that you want. Can I take this opportunity now that my voice is coming back, to say thank you very much for having me this afternoon. I look forward to sharing everything with you in the future. If you want to speak to me, I will be at the back of the room. Thank you, thank you very much, guys.

NJ: Round of applause for Shaa Wasmund, ladies and gentlemen!

A: Woo!