How To Build a Profitable Business While Transforming People’s Lives… The Infopreneur Way

 

My business life changed in 2004.

It happened because of a windfall success. An infoproduct I launched with the help of a partner made a big splash in the marketplace. When the dust settled, I was left with a nice profit.

There were two choices I could make. Invest it into doing more of the same. Or into learning how to do things better.

I chose the latter – and signed up to a 26-week mentoring program with 3 coaches, one of whom was the legendary marketing expert, Jay Abraham.

What I learned over the next 6 months completely re-wired my system from a business perspective. What’s more amazing is how much the philosophy that Jay Abraham shared over the period touched various aspects of my life outside business as well.

Looking back, I can see why this isn’t so surprising after all. Those lessons were all rooted in universal principles and age-old wisdom that has guided people across generations. Values and attitudes around which paradigm shifts in history happened.

Fairness. Respect. Value. Empathy. Compassion.

All of them innately human traits – that are often sacrificed on the altar of business profitability by clueless marketers focused on short-term benefits.

You Do Business With People

Jay Abraham distilled many of these core values into a guiding principle that he calls “The Strategy of Pre-Eminence”. And one of its tenets is to consistently and constantly act in the best interest of one’s clients… no matter what.

Having had no formal ‘business’ training myself until then, and learning all my online marketing from various public resources like forums and discussion groups, ezines and web tutorials, I treasured this advice coming from a man who has guided Fortune 100 corporations to collective multi-billion dollar profit boosts.

And I’ve made it an integral part of my infopreneur business.

Even coached my own infopreneur clients in it.

It became known to my group as…

The Infopreneur Way

The Infopreneur Way is the ethos of information marketing. It builds upon a foundation of never mis-guiding, mis-leading or exploiting prospects. It is based upon building trust naturally, steadily, and without any gimmicks.

Above all, it is rooted in the motive of adding value to the lives of everyone you come across in business – and being fairly compensated in proportion to the value you add.

This may sound intuitive and obvious. But it is, unfortunately, rare.

If you’ve bought any of the high priced marketing programs out there, you’ll find most of them blithely ignore these concepts. Instead they’ll focus on ‘mind control’ tricks and ‘positioning strategies’ that create a perception in your prospect’s mind that literally brainwashes them into spending more money with you.

The argument in favor of this approach is that what these ‘gurus’ teach is being used by some of their clients to rake in rich rewards – which automatically validates it, and squarely places the blame for those who fail to profit from the same teaching upon the shoulders of a buyer who is too inept, lazy or inefficient to do the same.

Ignored, conveniently, is the reality that not everyone learns the same way, not every entrepreneur is driven by the same motives, and not every marketer is willing to stretch their ethical lines beyond a point to turn a quick profit.

Especially when that comes from a ‘win-lose’ scenario, where either side must be disadvantaged for the other to benefit.

That’s so ‘old school’.

We live in an abundant universe, where there’s enough for everyone to share and enjoy. The Infopreneur Way is anchored in such a belief system – and in a sense, spawned by it.

Because Infopreneurs Care

They care enough about a problem to take steps to fix it – and if they generate a fair profit from the process, it only ensures mutual benefit to both sides.

And being guided by a desire to add value and relieve pain, successful infopreneurs will never seek to take advantage of a ‘mark’, but strive to solve a client’s problem effectively.

If the product or service they offer is not likely to do that for specific types of prospects, the ethical infopreneur will not try to foist it upon them with ‘killer marketing tactics’. A value-adding infopreneur will either re-design the offer to match the prospect – or direct them to a better solution.

What matters more is solving a client’s problem – not making a quick buck.

And deciding to do that involves adopting a certain mindset.

One that thinks about people as clients who are under their protection and care, rather than “walking wallets” with bodies attached to them!

But…

Does That Approach Really Work?

For beginners, this is a valid concern. Until I knew better, this same thing worried me, especially when all around me there were marketers hawking their wares with increasingly incredible and unreal claims.

Time is a great teacher. 15 years after I launched my infopreneur career, there’s a bare handful of those who started out along with me in 1995 still around and successful. The rest have faded away.

Why?

I believe the answer lies in this mindset of caring for your client.

The few who are still thriving in their career as infopreneurs share that one element in common. They consistently and constantly act in their clients’ best interests.

Not in their own, but in their client’s benefit.

Which, quite interestingly, also ends up benefiting themselves over the long run.

Here’s one example of how infopreneurs who add value to their audience end up winners in a big way.

Meet An Enlightened Infopreneur

You might be familiar with the name Derek Sivers. If not, I’ll tell you more about this remarkable man after the story.

Derek was a musician. He wanted to copyright his music. Found out that he needed forms from Washington. This was in the ’90s and there were no downloadable versions. So Derek scanned them and made it available for other musicians to print off his site.

Thousands of indie musicians benefited from his selfless act.

No money was asked for. No thought of profit motivated him. He saw a problem faced by musicians like himself – and acted to provide a solution.

Derek Sivers cared about his market (except that, at the time, it wasn’t a ‘market’ in the sense he didn’t plan a business or have a product or service to offer them)

In other little ways, he did small things that helped fellow musicians over the years – and one of them was offering them a way to let them use his merchant account to process payments for their CD sales through an online store.

Again, the idea was to help small musicians solve a pressing problem that would cost them time and money to solve on their own.

But serendipity led to this selfless act turning into the seed of a profitable business called “CD Baby” (yes, Derek Sivers is the founder of the online music powerhouse that serves over 100,000 independent musicians!) – which he sold a few years later for $22 million… that he donated to charity!

Questions for your favorite guru who teaches a different approach to being an infopreneur:

Did you have a $22 million payday? If you did, would you give it away?

Are These Exceptional Infopreneurs?

You may well wonder if infopreneurs like Derek Sivers are the exception that prove the rule – that this is a harsh world where every man and woman is out to look after Number One (ourself).

Well, I’m not aware of every infopreneur out there, but know a fair sample of them – and just about every successful information marketer embraces a similar approach, even if on a smaller scale.

They respect their audience. Care about solving their problems. Consider their needs, abilities and resources. Provide them with viable solutions that work.

And the best infopreneurs do so willingly, generously and graciously – only charging enough to fairly compensate them for their effort, and adequately enough to allow them to keep doing it for a longer time, to benefit a wider audience.

At the heart of such an attitude is the reality that most (if not all) information can be accessed for free – and the real value that’s provided by an expert infopreneur lies in curating the very best quality material, presenting it in a fashion that’s easily or enjoyably consumed or utilized, and designed to generate the maximum benefit.

Not that this makes it less valuable.

But at the same time, it keeps everything in perspective.

Let’s say you put together an amazing course about growing the best tomatoes. You can sell it for $100 – or give it away for free. Both approaches are valid and effective. But which one should you choose?

If no one else in the world knows how to grow tomatoes (or teach it well), you may be able to sell all the copies you want for $100 apiece.

But in the ‘real’ world, where such information is more widely available, you’ll find it tough to justify such a price point – unless you add so much value to your creation that it’s perceived that way.

And when you consider that the actual cost of delivering that value digitally or over the Internet is as close to zero as it has ever been before, you’ll realize that ‘fair profit’ is a very flexible term, governed only by your mindset and desire to help more people.

You couldn’t afford to print and gift physical books in the past – unless you were a millionaire. Today anyone can create and gift an ebook – at little cost, if any.

What was precious in the past is not so today. And by embracing the mindset of these successful infopreneurs, you’ll get what is precious today – the attention of your marketplace!

Once you become known as the kind of infopreneur who seeks to add value to a client’s life regardless of whether or not money changes hands, you’ve instantly and automatically set yourself apart from the herd – and established pre-eminence in your prospect’s mind.

Once you’re recognized as a value-obsessed infopreneur who will always act in the best interest of a client, never exploiting their anxiety and insecurity, never leading them astray through ignorance or callousness, you gain their trust – and that can lead to some magical things happening.

So How Does This Infopreneur Profit?

Many times, when I teach this concept, students wonder if I’m advising them to give everything away for free.

If you read this lesson carefully again, you’ll realize that I’ve never advocated giving away your stuff.

Not even a little bit, if that’s the way you feel.

What I’ve explained is that your cost of distribution has dropped to as close to zero as ever before in the past, giving YOU the flexibility and freedom to price your offering at any level you feel delivers you an adequate profit for your efforts.

That’s the point, entirely.

Fair and adequate profit for your valuable content.

• You could fleece an unknowing prospect by charging a huge multiple of your market’s fair price… but in the cycle of business and life, you’ll be caught out sooner or later.
• You could charge a small fortune for ‘me too’ content that’s not differentiated or in any way more valuable than other material available for free or cheap… but you’ll lose out on back-end profits from the once unwary buyer whom you can cheat once, but not forever.
• You could front-load your promotions, hitting new prospects with a barrage of marketing, hoping a few hapless victims will end up buying something… but that’s a short-sighted strategy that misses out on the lion’s share of the profit potential latent within your niche.

Prospects are people. People desperately crave recognition. They want a responsible leader to take charge and guide them to a better future.

You, as an infopreneur, can be that leader… in your field of expertise.

By knowing more than them, by having greater experience than them, by being able to solve their problems more effectively than them, you have the unique opportunity to lead.

Don’t squander that chance away.

It could become the costliest mistake you ever make in building your business.

Choose to build a solid, profitable business – The Infopreneur Way.

All success

p.s. If you haven't yet read my free "The Smilenaire Way" report, grab your copy here - and decide if you're ready to start smiling every day in your business. (When you are, click here)

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Tags: ethics, fair profit, generosity, infopreneur, the infopreneur way, value

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