In the last post- “How And Why (1)”, I told you how I found out about, and enrolled for a seminar to be given by an Australian Internet Marketing “Guru” called Brett McFall. It was to be held in a hotel in my then home town of Cairns in Far North Queensland, one Tuesday in April 2010, and was scheduled to run all day from 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon with an hour’s break for lunch.
Brett was / is certainly a very accomplished speaker and presenter, but due to the limited time he only skimmed over the basics things that “Newbie” marketers need to know. Six hours is nowhere near long enough to go into everything an aspiring Internet Marketer needs to know in any depth. I don’t really know how many hours of training in total, Dean Holland gives to his “iPro” members, but I would estimate that it’s well over 100 hours at least, and is being added to all the time.
I came away from the meeting with a notebook full of scribbled web-site URL’s where I could learn more about niche selection, S.E.O., key-word selection, blogging, affiliate marketing, outsourcing, web hosting, list building, autoresponders, URL purchasing, Google Analytics, ……. and so the list went on, and on, and on.
Brett seemed to contradict himself towards the end of the afternoon, when he changed tack slightly, and got an athletic looking man in his twenties, who we found out was called “Peter” on-stage. Brett started to throw ping pong balls gently into the man’s hands, which the volunteer easily caught. “Imagine this is me giving information to Peter.” Brett said. “When he catches one, that indicates that he has understood and will remember whatever it is I have just taught him. See how easy it is when I throw the balls to him one at a time. That’s similar to me teaching him one thing at a time. But look what happens when I do this.”
Brett suddenly turned around. Just behind him was a small table with a plastic bucket on it. Brett grabbed the bucket, spun around to face Peter again and tossed the contents of the bucket in Peter’s direction. The bucket contained about 20 ping pong balls. All 20 hit Peter’s chest at the same time, but he was unable to catch even one of them. “Now that’s what happens when you try to absorb too many pieces of information at once,” Brett announced. “Nothing, or very little is remembered. I must say Peter, that most of my past volunteer’s manage to catch at least one of the balls, but then, again, I normally give them some warning of what I am about to do, so perhaps I was a bit unfair on you, ha ha.”
That signaled the start of Brett’s sales spiel. Brett admitted that, due to time constraints, he had to rush through his introduction to Internet Marketing. “It was a bit like me simultaneously throwing 20 balls at Peter, instead of throwing them one at a time. He didn’t catch even one. Now how can I expect you to go home with your scribbled notes and URL’s and remember everything I’ve said today, and be able to start a profitable business? Especially if you are completely new to Internet Marketing, you don’t have much chance, without years and years of hard work, trial and error, and frustration.”
“However”, he continued. “For a one-time payment of 2,500 Australian Dollars I will give you ten months access to my web-site which is full of detailed instructions and videos, together with a copy of my newly published book called, ‘How To Make Money While You Sleep’, plus 2 hour long D.V.D’s sent to you every month. One of which is instructional, and the other is motivational.”
Brett added that we would also have access to his help-desk team, which was headed by a very smart lady who had businesses of her own, and was also a published author, called Donna-Marie Coggins. As it turned out Donna-Marie is probably the biggest asset Brett has. She is great and she has never failed to come up with a great reply to any one of the multitude of questions I have asked her. In the end Brett announced that, as he had enjoyed his trip to Cairns so much, he would extend the ten month membership period to a lifetime’s membership, which, of course, he would have done anyway.
However, at the time I was ignorant of Internet Marketers’ ways of convincing you to part with your money, and the lifetime membership offer was the thing that convinced me to take out my credit card, and part with 2 weeks’ salary. I’ve not looked at Brett’s site, www.warpies.com (not an affiliate link) for a long time, but I did so yesterday, and it does seem to have grown since I was last there. I will check it out in more detail soon. I am pleased that I am a member of Brett McFall’s Warpspeed program although he book and the original D.V.D.s are very basic and would only be of use to the newest of newbies. My biggest complaint though is that he has set up his own instructional classroom in his home town, “The Gold Coast”, which is a suburb of Brisbane in the South East corner of Queensland, Australia, and he expects students to go to him, rather than he go the students, or to use Webinars. (Donna-Marie holds a weekly question and Answer Webinar on a Monday). So, unless you are a complete newbie, who happens to live in the South East corner of Queensland, I would ignore Brett’s program, and join iPro instead. The costs are very comparable but the value you get from being a partner of Dean’s far outweigh the value you can get from Brett.