NOTE: Yes, i missed last week’s ’W cast! Next wednesday i’ll share with you what happened. For a glimps into my past week in technology listen to DM 22, all about backups One of the goals that I set myself without writing it down at the beginning of 2017 was to establish more relationships with other people who do the same thing that I do, however you know, not quite the same. This means that working with people who are motivating, inspiring, and educating other entrepreneurs around the world are the type of people that I definitely need to work with. Being completely blind myself and targeting blind entrepreneurs, or the team members of small business owners who just happened to be blind… There is plenty of room for growth in my knowledge, so connecting with other people who don’t have limitations that I might have even though I don’t like to admit it, is definitely an advantage. Because then I can take the knowledge that I acquired from that expert, and turn this knowledge into knowledge the other blind entrepreneurs or the team members of the small business owners who happened to be blind can use to help move business forward. my first joint venture experience In March of this year, I had my first joint venture experience and I told myself that there would be a few things I would do differently in the future, that I neglected to do for my second joint venture experience this year. The first thing I learned I need to do differently for my next joint venture adventure Maintain control… Having the know how and ability to maintain control of as many aspects of your joint venture partnership as possible, is definitely an advantage. Let me give you two examples of how if I were to maintain control of all of the aspects of the two joint venture projects I’ve been involved in, could have made the experience better for me, and a ton better for the people I invited to join me. Tracking Efforts The first joint venture I participated in March of this year was The launchers event, if you missed it hears my presentation in the embedded audio below, feel free to listen. In this event, one of the tasks i completed was set the marketing system up for Fedora Outlier LLC. This was fine, except I didn’t set up my own marketing system for my leads. http://traffic.libsyn.com/yourownpay/Produced_-_Michael_Babcock_of_the_Your_Own_Pay_Podcast_on_the_Launchers_event.mp3 I then invested into some paid traffic, and I was only able to calculate how many people clicked on the link, but because I didn’t maintain control of the entire system I didn’t know how many people actually converted. The other thing is the other presenters didn’t know what advertising method they were using that were effective as well, because we were all driving everyone to the same webpage… Again, none of our advertising efforts were trackable, by us… The presenters experiences for the guest Being able to maintain control of the entire experience for your audience especially when connecting with a specific audience like myself allows you the opportunity to control the experience for your visitor throughout the entire process. In this latest joint venture opportunity, I realized that I needed to track a little bit more In this latest joint venture opportunity, I determined it would be best for me to brand my tracking link to myself, so I can at least be aware of how many people are clicking the link to visit the registration page. However, there was a slight problem People could click the link, and hell, it was even easy to remember… But, when people got to the page if on certain browsers with certain screen readers, it was virtually impossible to know what information the capture page was asking for. When this information was brought to my attention, all I could do is keep track of it so I could pass it on to Rick. The second thing I realized during my two joint venture experiences… Just Do It I originally reached out to Rick in April or May of this year, to be honest I don’t remember! When I reached out to Rick, I didn’t have a clear plan as to where I wanted to go with whatever we ended up doing. See, a couple of months ago, Rick had sent an email out to his list asking if people could organize a group of individuals looking to learn more about social media. Social media is Rick’s expertise. I remember thinking to myself that it would be quite interesting if I could gather a few blind individuals to be able to ask that Rick come and present to us. However, at that time I didn’t act on the opportunity. A couple of months later, Rick is offering this again to his email list, and until this point I figured why not Until this point, I had only spoken with Rick via social media. I figured why not, but up the phone, and give them a call! Until this point, Ric The third thing was Communicate clearly Listen to this episode for more information 😉 The 4th thing is Planning helps Listen to this episode for information about this part The 5th Thing is Having guests can help everyone involved Did you here the episode? If not, give it a listen… Links for this episode