Scaling The Online Mountain - My First Four Years As An Internet Entrepreneur
Greetings everyone,
My name is Richard Andrews, and I'm glad to be a new member of the JVNotifyPro community!
About me:
-I'm 34, and I was born in Toronto, Canada, and have lived in Seoul, South Korea, and New York state. I currently split my time between our Toronto area office and our Tampa Bay, Florida office. I love traveling, and have been to 33 countries so far. I have an open invitation to China, India and Africa this year from old college friends, and I hope to make it to all three places in the months ahead. I love literature, music, film, history, writing and science.
-I was a high school English teacher until I was 28. At that time, I left teaching to become the Vice President of a professional speakers bureau. I had experience in corporate communications and had previously worked in the field, so the transition was a good fit for me. If you're wondering what a speakers bureau does, we represent and book professional speakers, trainers, coaches, entertainers and other thought leaders. Some of the people we represent are well known figures, and others are more industry specific, with specialized knowledge. We work with every industry and every type of speaking/training/coaching/entertaining professional. The speakers bureau is both an online and an offline business, in that we have a website, but so much of my job is offline in nature (meeting and working with speakers, attending events, working with clients one-on-one, working with meeting and event planners, etc.).
After I got settled into my new job with the speakers bureau, I wanted to get into online marketing somehow, but I didn't know how to break in at that time. I wasn't interested in the 'make money online', 'get rich quick' type of internet marketing garbage that seemed to be everywhere, so I always knew that the basic affiliate/make money online approach wasn't for me. Not by a long shot. I wanted to create products and be an owner in an actual real, legitimate and established industry right from the beginning.
My internet marketing story begins:
After learning a lot about the ins and outs of internet marketing (I was a member of numerous IM paid membership training programs), in 2009 I founded Motivational Speaker Academy (aka 'Build Your Speaking Business'), a training program for new and emerging speakers and other types of information entrepreneurs.
After having come on board with the speakers bureau in 2007, I realized that the speaking industry didn't have a comprehensive, step-by-step program for new speakers to help them start and grow a speaking business. So I filled the market vacuum by creating this and offering it as a separate entity (on a separate site) from the speakers bureau business. My desire to be an internet entrepreneur dovetailed perfectly with my existing position with the speakers bureau.
I started by putting my membership training program on ClickBank. Before I knew it, I was approached by a significant industry player, who wanted to do a JV with me and offer my program to his member base, which had many thousands of existing members. Overnight I went from making random, sporadic sales and having very little traffic, to making a significant monthly income from my new membership program. My program was selling worldwide, with sales coming in every day from a total of ten different countries. My first JV transformed me into a legit internet entrepreneur very quickly, and I had to learn a lot in a short period of time. I've never looked back.
From the outset, I knew I had something significant to work with, and I also knew that I had a big advantage over the IM crowd wannabes and snake-oil salesmen types, having originally had the privilege of holding an actual professional position in a proven multi-billion dollar industry (the professional speaking and events industry). Since the beginning, I've never had to compete with the countless affiliates and other struggling internet marketers who seem to be fighting over the minor scraps. Most of these people have always seemed to me to never really be able to make solid and lasting inroads into how to make significant, long-term money online by creating success within established industries.
My next project involved taking my initial program and evolving it into an integrated, university caliber training system. I secured my second JV with an industry expert who was already hugely successful in his past businesses, and we rolled out a membership program that used weekly teleseminars, the Moodle platform, and weekly lessons. Members get more direct coaching with this version of the program, and there is a one-on-one business coaching element and an interactive forum involved. I've learned a lot from this partnership, and I continued to grow as a business person and an online marketer and entrepreneur. There have been serious technical and member base challenges from this business, but the rewards (in all ways) continue to be well worth it.
My third major online project involved setting up my third JV with my existing position as the VP of a professional speakers bureau. After convincing the president of our bureau that my monthly membership training model would work for our business, I integrated my existing program into our bureau website. The new program was launched on January 1st 2013, and has already generated significant results, as I knew it would. We've coupled the bureau representation offer along with the online training model in rolling out a monthly membership program. In keeping with who we represent, the new membership program is being offered to all new and emerging speakers, authors, corporate trainers, coaches, entertainers, information entrepreneurs and other thought leaders.
Essentially, we are the first and only speakers bureau to 'Facebook-a-tize' a bureau and have a login and training program feature. Our bureau has been around for 15 years and is highly ranked and regarded in our industry, so the aforementioned groups of people want to get a representation profile on our site. Couple that with my training program, and we've got a very potent and viable monthly membership site that has already generated a solid member base in our first three months in existence.
Why I'm here:
What do I hope to achieve by becoming a member of the JVNotifyPro community? Well, I've come to learn that JV partnerships are the best way to make a venture successful, period. I don't doubt that for a second. The best way to achieve your goals is to couple your existing skills, products, online resources, etc. with someone else and everything that they can bring to the table.
Therefore, I'm looking for someone who is ready to join forces with me and my bureau partner in our new bureau representation-training program monthly membership business model.
This is one of those rare online business opportunities that actually has a proven past, present and future. The success will continue to come for us, regardless of whether we do it alone or whether we can secure a JV(s) with someone new, but I know from personal history that a JV can provide huge leverage in shortening the path to success, and that's why I'm ready to find the right person/people to develop this into what it will ultimately become as quickly as possible.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to contributing to this site as much as possible!
Best regards to all,
Richard Andrews
