Interview with David Siteman Garland

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper Book Review

About a year ago I had the pleasure of virtually meeting David Siteman Garland (@TheRiseToTheTop) on Twitter. The more I learned about him the more impressed I became with what he was accomplishing online in such a short period of time. I noticed he was interviewing and featuring some of the top pros in the marketing / blogging / new media industry. He hosted interviews With big names like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, some guy named Sean Malarkey,  Tim Ferriss, etc.

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business Get the book on Amazon here.

What impressed me the most was how smart his approach was. He was networking and forming alliances with all of the top people in our space and doing it at a rapid pace. His hustle & drive was inspiring. Needless to say I was excited to read his new book Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

Here’s my honest review:

Get this book if you have a business, brand or product. Smarter, Faster, Cheaper is full of practical advice that works. I know it does, because as I read through the chapters I kept relating his experiences and advice to things I had been doing myself online for the last couple years.

What I really like about this book is David doesn’t say “this or that strategy” is what you “have to do”. Instead he exposes you to what he has seen work for himself personally and also what’s has worked for all of the brilliant people he has interviewed. He did a good job of introducing  a ton of good ideas that work well to cultivate relationships and business using mostly free tools available online.

David’s explanation of how the business mindset has drastically changed in the last few years is spot on. He talks about the power of collaboration with other business’s that may share the same customer base. He dives deep into video marketing and using online video to build your brand, which (chapter 7) is a must read.

This book  should be required reading for any college student getting a degree in business or marketing.

For me personally, there weren’t any major light bulb moments but it was  a good refresher and reminder of a plethora of great ideas to build my business online. It was a fun read and time well spent.

It was inspiring and I found it hard to read more than 20 pages at a time without wanting to put the book down and work on the ideas that kept racing through my head. David does a great job of inspiring you to take action which in my opinion is the mark of a good business book.

If you enjoyed “Crush it“, “The Four Hour Work Week“, “Un-Marketing“, “Purple Cow” or “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” — you’ll love this book.

Side note: While searching for photos of David for this post, I came across this and couldn’t resist sharing it with you. David is gonna kill me for posting this but whatever – enjoy.

Caption Contest: Leave a comment with your caption to this photo to win.

The 5 funniest captions will win a copy of David’s new book:

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business

I will pick the top 5 funniest captions and announce a winner this Sunday night. Enter as often as you’d like.

Unreal Hail Storm – Baseball Size Hail [Video]

I found this on Break.com via Digg.

Unreal – Wait till the one minute mark of the video. All hell breaks loose.

Pool Bombarded by Incredible Hail Storm – Watch more Funny Videos

The other day I was surfing around Facebook and I noticed something strange. In the language settings I noticed a language titled “English – Pirate” So I clicked it and to my surprise someone over at facebook has developed a language setting for pirates.

Not only have they developed the language, they have gone to great links to change almost every aspect of common text in Facebook. It’s impressive and entertaining. Some of my favorite lines are:

• What be troublin ye?  replaces –  What’s on your mind?
• T davy jone’s with it!  replaces – Delete
• 10 Sorry louts think they’re your mates. replaces 10 friend requests
• Shiniest booty – Fresh booty. replaces Top news – Most recent

The list goes on and on – even the notification emails are in Pirate. Check out this video I made to demonstrate how to change your language settings. Also about two minutes in, I play a prank on my wife with her settings.

Enjoy.

About 5 months ago, a mutual friend Introduced me to Than Merrill as he was needing help figuring out how to use Twitter for his online business and for his real estate business. He had been fledgling along for over a year and was not getting any value out of  Twitter.

In the few weeks that followed that introduction we had several phone calls & one on one webinars where I got a good understanding of his goals and needs and gave him some advice on how he could use Twitter.

In this call you will here how Than & his company:

• Added 9,000 new leads to their email list
• Added over 150,000 new followers in 5 months
• Tracks his progress on Twitter (he has this down to a science)
• Spends 5-10 minutes a day on Twitter & remains effective and relevant
• And much more

Listen Here

A few things to note –  we did this on skype with the webcams running and at one point when I was asking him about the value of the lead – I saw him reach for his iPhone, so you’ll here me ask him “are you calculating the value of the lead?”. I should have recorded that skype call with video, I dont know why I didnt think to do that.

The most Important thing I want you to take away is that Than had a plan.  He had a simple blueprint and the tracking in place to measure his results. Anyone can do this – that is if you have the discipline to make a plan – measure your results and stick with it.

It was a pretty fun call and I think we will do a follow up – so please if there is anything more you want to hear or for me to ask him – leave it in the comment section and I’m sure I can get your questions answered.

Today I logged in and noticed some changes in my facebook account. I think I have finally made the ‘beta list” as some people have not gotten this update yet – w00t!

I made a video for those who have not seen it!

What do you think? Love it – Hate it?

As always – thanks for RT’s And diggs and all other shares! Much appreciated.

Hello from Argentina. Despite a flight being cancelled, sick kids and everything else above the equator – we made it! The dream I had 5 years ago to spend an entire winter (summer here) has officially become a reality. I wanted to share with you a few things I did to prepare for coming down here that have made life a little easier.

#1 Bills – (That should be a four letter word.) Imagine not having your mail to open and discover what bills needed paid? If you are like me, most of your bills are set up to pay online. But there are still a few, that despite my best attempts I have not gotten set up for online bill payment. So I set up a nifty spread sheet in excel that has all of the important information for each and every bill.

Click here to download Bill SpreadSheet

It includes Name of creditor, balance, payment amount, payment date, phone # for creditor, address for creditor, notes etc. I broke it down into several fields that include Credit cards | Utilities | Mortgages | misc bills etc.

If you want that exact spreadsheet – you can click here or the image over there –> to download it.

#2 iPhone – This has singlehandedly been one of the best purchases I have ever made. Aside from the cool photos it takes when mashed up with the free photoshop app, the skype app has been a life saver. If you have an iPhone and are traveling internationally or want to cut down on your minutes used while at home – download skype now. I downloaded it and paid the $3 a month for unlimited calling to US based Phones – which includes cell phones. If you click here and select the “Unlimited Country” option and get it. 

This has given me the ability to conduct business as normal. There are some other features like forwarding your US number to the skype account, but to be honest – I have not set that up and don’t miss the phone ringing 100 times a day. In fact, if you could do me a favor and call my cell and leave a message so my voice mail will fill up – i’d appreciate it (614) 867-5309.

There are some other plans to call other countries that are super cheap and the quality has been great. Just remember to turn your iPhone on “airplane mode” and also to turn on “wifi” and as long as you have a wifi connection – you are good to go

And oh yeah – one last thing, if you are taking a long vacation (longer than one month) change your cell phone plan to the lowest possible priced plan. At&t let me do this without extending my contract. The beauty is when I get back I should have approx 3000+ minutes in reserve so my plan will stay low priced for a few months after I return.

#3 Weigh your bags at home before departing - This one is so simple, but if your like me and like to pack bricks in your suitcase – get your scale out and weigh your bags. There is nothing worse that paying an extra $40 for packing that extra brick, or hostile employees & impatient people behind you as you repack your bags at the ticket counter. Most airlines require that you are under 50lbs per checked bag and 40lbs per carry on.

TIP* You can also check your carry on at the gate for no charge if you don’t feel like lifting it overhead and dragging it down the 3 inch wide isles on the plane.

And oh yeah – this video shows why luggage locks are useless…

Have you traveled for an extended period of time? Any tips or suggestions you’d like to share?

I have about ten more tips that include everything from winterizing the house to stopping your mail to notifying your bank you are traveling abroad etc.. Let me know if you’d like to see that in a follow up post.

As always thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments. The team over at Turbo Social Media has implemented a reply system for my comments – so I’m excited to put it to use and respond to your comments.

Are you using email marketing for your business? If not, you should be.

Most marketers agree that email marketing is more effective than direct mail and also a whole hell of a lot faster than snail mail. I am an advocate of snail mail and have literally sent hundreds of thousands of direct mail pieces – but nothing beats the immediate impact of an email campaign.

Also the data tracking that is available allows you to really figure out how effective particular campaigns were. There is many more aspects of email marketing that are incredible like – split testing headlines, or list segmentation etc – but in this post I wanna focus on how to increase how many eyeballs see your message.

This little technique was one that I learned middle of 2009 and its a dandy! It increased effectiveness and more importantly revenue. In the video below I will show you how to increase open rates by re-mailing those who didnt open your email the first time.

I learned this tactic from Ryan Deiss with his 13 email tricks product and I highly recommend this product if email marketing is a part of your marketing arsenal.

*note – This video walks you through the necessary steps to do this with Aweber. If you dont use Aweber you should consider it, as its one of the best email list management services. One of my other favorites is Icontact – It allows you to do the same thing, and I will outline the steps for Icontact in another video.

Hello World from Austin.

Finally, my new site is up and ready.  I just got the email that this is finally live. I wanna thank Matt & his team from Turbo Social Media for building this site for me. I met Matt through Twitter and what a treat it’s been to work with him & his staff. They are truly top notch.

I plan on using this site to share with you anything and everything thats on my mind. After all it is seanmalarkey.com! In all seriousness you can expect content ranging from Twitter, Internet marketing, my ramblings, social media, real estate, etc.

Why am I in Austin?  I decided earlier this year that I wanted to move.  Ohio has been great to me, but for the first time in a long time I am no longer tied to a business that requires me to be in a physical location. For the last 10 years I have been working in the real estate indusrty and did not really have the freedom to move. So almost exactly one year ago to the date I decided to make some changes in my life that would allow me to have more freedom.  The freedom to choose where to live was a big part of that decision process.

So prior to going to Argentina in a few days, I decided it would be nice to break up that long ass trip. We fly out of Houston to go to Argentina – so I thought this would be a good opportunity to check out Austin and cut some travel time off the usual 30 hour trek to S. America.

So far my wife and I are really liking Austin. We did a ton of research on the city and I think it could be a great place to live. It reminds me a lot of my current home town Columbus.  Both cities are the capitol of the state. Both cities have huge univeristies (OSU #1 largest in the country and UT is #2) The universities are key in feeding smart young people into the city, which give it a progressive feel and provide it with smart young talent for the workforce and economy. Also they are similar in size. The main difference is the climate. Here in Austin it is a lot warmer than Columbus.  I am tired of cold ass winters in Columbus where we see the sunshine a total of 11 days the entire winter. I know it will be hot in Austin in the summer – but the humidity is so bad in Columbus that I am sure the dry heat here will be bearable.  Plus we have been looking at houses with pools – so I am not too concerened.

Ideally I would like to live on the west coast, but for many reasons  Austin I think could be a great place to relocate to.

#1 – It is warmer & has almost twice as many sunny days compared to Columbus.

#2 – Austin appears to be a cooler/hipper, more open minded place than Columbus.

#3 – The cost of living is very cheap here compared to the west coast (you should see what 3k a month gets you here for a house, heres an example  http://lp.realtour.biz/?P=52406 )

#4 – I hate lists – so heres a few more reasons – low crime rate, good government, economy is doing well, schools are good, only 3-4 hours to the beach, the landscape is beautiful, tech minded city, home of sxsw,  the housing styles are beautiful – think tuscany, medeteranin, spanish, modern etc.

All in all its a pretty neat place. It will be hard leaving family and friends behind, but I feel confident in the end it will be worth it as the quality of life will be a lot better.  And I dont have much to lose as we plan on leasing our house in case we dont like it and want to move back.

In April I am speaking at Than Merril’s Web Wealth event in San Diego and I am taking the family with me. We plan on taking a week or two to check out the west coast. I used to live in California and I really liked the coast between Laguna Beach and Monterey – so we are gonna rent a car and go check it out.  I have a feeling I am gonna want to move there when we go there, but there are many reasons already why were leaning towards Austin. So we shall see what happens.

That’s it for my first post here. If you have any thoughts on moving, Austin, the west coast, leave them below. I would love to here your thoughts / feedback.