The idea of telling you how I network while I hate networking came after getting back from the Financial Blogger Conference in Chicago last weekend. So before I start with my anti-networking post, I wanted to say a few things about the awesome time I had in Chicago:

Phil from PT Money is the king of organization. He’s the man behind the FINCON11 and I can just say that it was PERFECT! If I ever have to plan my 2^nd wedding, I’m calling this guy!

J Money from Budgets Are Sexy has a very cool Mohawk! On top of that, he won so many Plutus Awards that it felt like watching Justin Bieber at the Much Music Awards (don’t worry, J is much cooler ).

SVB from The Digerati Life is the sweetest blogger in the world. She’s super kind and helpful.

Mike from Money Smarts Blog is not my Anglophone alter ego from Toronto! Regardless if he’s a financial blogger, has 2 kids, a wife and the same initials as I do, he actually has hair. So my baldness makes me unique ;-D

Pat from Smart Passive Income was never part of the ones to be picked first for basketball in college. But trust me, he has a hell of a shot!

Baker from Man Vs Debt is even more inspirational in person. I guess you must be very inspirational to get people to applaud at 8am after Saturday night’s party .

Tom from Canadian Finance is always laughing. A lot of fun hanging out with him!

Martin (MD) from Studenomics is a true machine! He drove to Chicago from Toronto and was up all night both days… though he mentioned that he wouldn’t be drinking on Monday morning

Dividend Ninja doesn’t have nun chucks but he is sharp as a blade.

Mike Piper from The Oblivious Investor is very generous to share all about his methods to write and publish books on Amazon. Thx for the tips!

All right, I originally had a much bigger list of bloggers I wanted to talk about but it’s getting too long already , let’s go on with why I hate networking and how I still do connect with people.

That’s kind of funny to say for a financial planner since I need to do a lot of what people call “networking” to be successful but I just hate it. Really, really, REALLY hate networking. I just don’t get how people jump from one person to another spending barely 15 minutes talking and ending-up the conversion just for the sake of “meeting” someone else. It looks more like pollination to me! To me, it sounds like the same script that you roll over and over again:

- Hey, how is it going

- Where do you come from

- How come you got into blogging

- yadi yada…

- okay, now it’s time for me to switch to someone else now that “I know you”.

I just can’t do that. When I want to talk to someone it’s not for small talk but rather to really know this person. Know him outside of his blogging strategies per se . Fortunately, I must say that most people at the conference were truly interested in connecting with people instead of doing basic networking.

How do I connect instead of networking with people

I think this is the most important message: connect with people don’t try to become friends in 15 minutes. I personally prefer meet less people but actually get to know them rather than doing pollination . That said, it is much harder to do than you think.

The first thing is that you need to know who will be there. You might have connected with some people already and a conference like this is the perfect way to solidify your relationship. Emails and skype calls are cool but there is nothing like a good face-to-face conversation.

So the first thing I did was to check out the list of attendees. Phil had this great idea of making that list to show who was coming. Then, I looked at people I really wanted to see… hum… that was a bad idea since I wanted to meet 80% of them… the other 20% were people I didn’t know lol!

After that, I made a list of people that I know a little bit more (based on email and skype calls). These were my “priorities”. While I didn’t have enough time to meet everybody that I wanted to, the time I spent with these people was genuinely cool!

Note that everybody is pretty busy during a cocktail. It’s important to know who you want to talk to before entering the room. If not, you won’t know with whom you can really connect and you might end-up going from one person to another until you find people with more common interests.

Speed Networking Formula

I don’t know where that Idea comes from but it was a great formula at the FINCON11. We were all sitting on a chair face to face and we had 1 minute to connect with people. This is great as you don’t get to spend too much time and you can see if you want to meet that person later on during the evening and talk more. I really enjoyed this formula and got to meet about 20 people in less than half an hour ;-D

About my trick to spend quality time with busy people

Oh yeah… I almost forgot! During conferences, there are always people that everybody wants to have a chat with. Therefore, you can either be lucky enough to speak with them for 10 minutes amongst the crowd or you just don’t get the opportunity to talk to them. But I had a trick that I used this time to see if it would work and guess what, I got to spend some great quality time with them.

Want to know what it is? I’m explaining my story along with all my notes from the conference in my newsletter on Friday. On Friday, I’ll be providing a 2,500 word document with everything I’ve learned from the conference to my newsletter subscribers and since it’s free, be sure to subscribe:

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I’m happy and excited at the same time as I’ll be part of the “ask the experts tables” at The Financial Blogger Conference! Next weekend, I’ll be in Chicago for the first Financial Blogger conference. This was already an exciting experience as I will finally meet most of my blogging idols and friends after 5 years of sending emails!

But the best part has been confirmed: I’ll be meeting with anybody who has questions about valuing/buying/managing/selling multiple blogs. My name is now beside big guys like Mike Piper from Obvlious Investor, Peter Anderson from Bible Money Matters and Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income! (you can see the list of all “experts” here).

The “ask the expert” table roundup will be take place on Saturday. This will be a 30 minutes spot where everybody will have the chance to chat with any of us regarding specific topics. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for me to share my knowledge and connect with other people. So if you are coming to Chicago, be sure to stop by my table to have a chat ;-D

3 nominations for the Plutus Awards

The Plutus Awards are the first personal finance awards for bloggers. This year, the winners will be announced at the conference. I was happy to be nominated in 3 categories:

 
Best Personal Finance Blog for Entrepreneur (for The Financial Blogger)
 
Best New Personal Finance eBook (for Dividend Investing)<
 
Best Personal Finance Blog for Teens or College Students (for Green Panda Treehouse)
 

 
It is a true honour to be nominated for these awards! Sometimes, I compare myself to the “big guys” and often feel that I’m not “that good”. So I was quite surprised to find myself recognized! If you think I should win any of these categories, you can vote here.
 

Let me know if you are coming to Chicago this weekend, we’ll have a beer together!

Cheers,

Mike.

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Last week, I read a very interesting post by Sunil at Money Extra Blog asking if you would rather spend an extra hour on your profession or on your side business. I found this debate quite interesting as there is a huge discrepancy between what people say and actually do. It’s easy to say that you would spend an extra hour on your day job to increase your chances of getting a promotion but what are you going to do with this hour? The same rationale applies if you decide to use this hour wisely to work on your side business. So tell me:

What would you do with an extra hour?

I really want to know what you would do and am even more curious about what you are doing right now? Have you taken any steps to free up some time in your schedule? What are you doing with this precious time that you have cleverly wrestled away from one of those time eaters we encounter during a typical day?

I’ll tell you what I did during the last 2 years with not one extra hour but one extra DAY working on my side business!

Back in July 2009, I announced that I was working 4 days a week at my day job so I could have more time to hustle for my business. Now, 2 years later, I can tell you that it was the best decision I have ever made in terms of my personal finances.

Where I went before working 1 day a week on my side business

2 years ago, our online empire wasn’t that big. In fact, it was limited to:

The Financial Blogger

Intelligent Speculator

Gather Little By Little (which is no longer part of our empire)

And that’s about it. We were making roughly $4,000 per month from these 3 sites but it wasn’t enough to justify that we should work more than 10 hours each on the company. It was slowly growing and was easily managed. This is when you need to be cautious.

Cautious of falling into your comfort bubble and never escaping it

But we weren’t like that. Since we had several projects in mind, we decided that I could start working 1 day per week (which is 6 hours more) to work on these projects. That was really the key; when I worked during these 6 hours, I:

- Don’t write posts

- Barely answer regular email

- Don’t work on our main sites (unless for special projects)

- Therefore, I don’t do regular stuff

The key, when you are about to use an extra hour on your side business, is to direct your work towards CREATING VALUE

If you use an extra hour to write an article or to answer email, you won’t see much improvement. However, if you use this extra hour to:

- Work on the outline of a new site

- Look for private advertisers

- Create a group project with other bloggers (that will eventually drive traffic and new readers)

- Work on a product

- Think about your long term strategy

This is how you will create value and see amazing results. You want proof? Here we go:

In the past 2 years, with only an additional 6 hours per week (and counting 5 weeks of vacation ), we went from an average of 4K/month to an average of $8,000 to $9,000 per month this year. On top of this, we have diversified our income through a dozen websites and now count 5 major sites in our company. We now have 2 ebooks (Dividend Investing & Escaping the Rat Race) and are presently working on developing 3 other niche websites (which will be bigger sites than our current niche websites) along with 4 book projects on the table (the sequels to Dividend Investing & Escaping the Rat Race).

Would I have tripled my day job income with 6 hours more at work?

What would have happened if I had taken these 6 hours and put them into my profession? Would I have been able to earn a sustainable income out of it? I think the answer is pretty obvious: working longer hours at work will at best give you small benefits (such as a bigger bonus or at best a promotion) but it will never scale over time.

The best case scenario would lead you to a better job, earning perhaps 10% more income… and probably requiring you to work more hours . In comparison, I don’t work more on my online company but my gross income has tripled. It is true that I had to hire 2 VAs and more writers, but it was also with the purpose of creating a team that will be able to handle the growth over time. With our current team, I know that we can handle double the work we have on our plate right now, without increasing our cost… and without having me or my partner working more than 10 hours per week (+ my 6 hours ).

In the end, it’s not how many extra hours you are able to find in your week to work on your side projects, it is what you do with them . Try to outsource all admin work and focus on value creating activities.

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You probably didn’t notice but I was on vacation for the past 2 weeks and just came back to work this Monday. Those were real vacation as I left with my family for Virginia Beach. I did bring my laptop and BlackBerry but didn’t use them to work on my sites. I rarely do this but for 2 weeks, I barely answered my emails and comments on my blogs. Since I work with my brain all the time, I needed a time where I could shut it down completely and enjoy the small things of life such as a sand castle contest!

While I was getting some rest, I got stuck by a lightning: I’m making 2 terrible mistakes this year. I left my day-to-day tasks long enough to look at my online empire differently. I was shocked by the results of my reflexion. I’m sharing those 2 mistakes as you probably do them too. Regardless if you are doing it with your blog, your career, your sideline or simply in general, I’m sure you do at least one of those 2 major mistakes.

#1 I’m Getting Lazy

Don’t get me wrong, I work a lot. I work 4 days a week at my day job as a financial planner and 1 full day on my online empire. For the past 3 years, both my career and online are growing exponentially. I’ve managed to reach a 6 figure income at the age of 28 and I am now making 6 figure online too. The problem is exactly where my success is:  it is becoming too easy.

If you ever hustle very hard for a long time and you have a great structure in your business or throughout your career, you will eventually be successful. This is exactly where you need to be very careful. Closing new deals at work became easier since many clients trust me now and refer me their good friends. Making money online has become easier too as my blog network is growing and I have a few niche websites earning money too.

But when everything is running smoothly and the money is coming in, most human being will tend to surf the wave instead of looking for the next big one. So I just noticed that I have been working on keeping my routine instead of bursting out of my comfort bubble to do some serious creation. I have tons of projects on paper that I didn’t start yet and tons of todo’s that have not been even looked at. I’m getting lazy because I feel that my business can keep growing without me working. Well this ain’t gonna happen! There is a reason why you are standing where you are right now and it is the sum of what you have done to get there. If you only keep doing what you do in your routine, you won’t grow anymore. Even worst, you might slow down and get engulfed by the next wave instead of surfing on it. This is exactly what happened to RIM (manufacturer of the Black Berry) while they ignore Apple and their iPhone to surf their small wave.

#2 I’m Getting Cocky

Hum… maybe I should rephrase that: I’m cocky and I’ve always been. But while a bit of cockiness is acceptable, being over-confident creates a feeling of completeness and you don’t see the urge of working harder. Worst; you start overlooking what you do thinking that you are just too good at it.

This is what I did when I first created my niche websites and started to hire VA’s and outsource a part of my work. Since I was making a lot of money, I thought that I could run multiple projects with little to not input from myself and everything would run perfectly. While I didn’t do any critical mistakes by overlooking what I did in 2011, I have realized during my vacation that I could have been much further if I had taken the time to sit down and analyzed what need to be done. I used to check and double check my strategies and carefully implement each element myself. More recently, I’ve put everything on the shelf to concentrate on writing my eBook. I thought I could do both writing and managing without looking too much at was is going on. After all, I’m an online genius and I just can’t fail… I was so wrong!

This is how I ended-up with running cash flow negative for the very first month of my company’s history. It’s not too bad as I realize my mistakes fast enough but it could have been catastrophic if I didn’t take those vacations at a perfect timing!

Look at others to understand what you do wrong

This lightning that enlighten my cavern was provoked by the reading of a blog that I know for a while but I hadn’t had the time to read recently: Budgeting in the fun stuff. Crystal, who runs this blogs among many others, started only 18 months ago and racked-up more than $7,000 in July. So while I was having my worst month, she was having her best one.

Crystal and I have 2 very different business models and we don’t always agree on the method of making money online (mind you, we are still friends ). However, I can tell you that we share many things in common such as a strong spirit, a taste for entrepreneurship, good writing skills combined with an unlimited creativity. So I was surprised but very proud of Crystal when I noticed how far she went since she started her online venture. This is when I read a few posts on her blogs about her recent success that I have realized that I was getting both lazy and cocky at the same time.

What’s next

The good news is that I am in a perfect timing to take everything back under control: I’m back from vacation and I’m on fire. I’m about to launch my first eBook from a series of 4 books about escaping the rat race and I have a complete plan to hire another VA (my main VA is on maternity leave). This fall will be a huge turning point for my company and I will share each of my steps with you in this crazy adventure!

I wonder if you ever been lazy or getting cocky after being successful at work, online or with your company? How did you wake up? Do you think that you are currently in this situation?

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The other day, I was going through the Yakezie Forum and a new blogger was asking a very interesting question:

What would you do if you could go back in time and start your blog all over?

If you have been following me since the beginning, it means that you have read a total of 1,275 articles over almost 5 years (the blog started back in November 2006). You have probably noticed a lot of changes on this blog since the beginning. I went through different topics and orientations throughout the years. My most famous post back then was about The Smith Manoeuvre and my highly debated Primerica Reviews. Since then, I have evolved towards a “make more money while working less” approach with “open door articles” such as how I went from 18K to 125K online income per year and my monthly blog income report. But even if I was able to build a 6 figure online business, there are tons of things I would have done differently with my blog if I could start all over:

#1 Start a Mailing List

To be honest, I had been reluctant to create newsletters with my blogs. It is my silent partner who finally convinced me to do so after 3 years of operation! While I still don’t master the concept of having a newsletter along with daily posting, I certainly understand and appreciate its power. Here’s a quick example:

When I launched Dividend Investing (my first eBook), I got 47 downloads in 15 minutes only through The Dividend Guy Blog Mailing List. By the end of the day, out of 500 subscribers back then, 432 had opened it and most of them downloaded the eBook.

Since then, I’ve been using the TFB mailing list to communicate with my most loyal readers and ask them what they want to read about in my Rat Race eBook. In order to reward them, I will offer them a 50% pre-sale offer in September to buy the book (so there’s is still time to register in the spot on the right column ).

A mailing list is a privileged access to your most engaged readers. You can provide them with additional content and they can give you more feedback this way. I get several article ideas from my newsletter readers and I can now see its power. If I had started my newsletter 3 years ago, I would probably have thousands of subscribers! Fortunately, it’s never to late!

#2 Go Light on Advertising

Have you ever noticed that it’s easy to cut something you don’t really benefit from but it’s darn hard to cut out something you enjoy? Well I enjoy making money and I’m making a lot of it by selling private advertising on my blogs. However, I want to move TFB towards a site where I can communicate with my readers and where we can exchange ideas (such as Smart Passive Income, ManVsDebt or Think Traffic).

If you have ever gone on any of these sites, you have noticed that they don’t have Adsense and that they are very light on advertising that are not directly related to their products or services they use. This is why I am seriously considering cutting down adsense on TFB in order to keep more readership. I guess my loyal visitors don’t mind the advertising but I know that most new visitors can be turned off by so many ad spots. I’m having a problem making the switch since the money is really good. If I had never sold advertising on my site, I would have been able to build a stronger community and make even more money than I am right now! The 3 guys I have mentioned are making tons of money and they generate it through their own products or through affiliate programs. People buy from them because they trust them. And that is where I want to bring TFB.

#3 Connect with people

I had started to comment on other blogs and send emails to my fellow bloggers after almost a year of blogging. No wonder my traffic was about 10 visits a day for the first year! Then, I started to connect with people in my niche and comment on their blogs. This has had a huge impact on my blog.

If I have one piece of advice to give you regarding connecting with other bloggers is to do it honestly. Don’t connect with people in the hope that they will retweet your post or that they will offer you a guest post spot on their huge blog. Just email them explaining why you read their material and why you think you have points in common. Share a true friendship and help them to grow by asking questions or contributing with stellar comments on their blogs. This is how you will truly build online friends that will eventually help you out in the future. I’ve learned this from Baker by the way.

The guy needed financing at one point in his project. We had liquidity sitting in our bank account and we were amazed by how this guy was successful and showed a high level of motivation. This is why we have decided to lend him the money with no interest for a few months. This was a door opener to a great friendship. And today, he is helping me grow my business and has coached me for my eBook and TFB redirect.

#4 Buy another Blog

One of my most famous moves as a blogger was to be among the first guys to drop significant cash into a website. My first purchase was Intelligent Speculator, but what put me on the map was buying Gather Little By Little (which I sold back in 2010). When you buy a blog, you not only buy the traffic and the reputation, you are also buying a good part of the blogger’s knowledge.

Each time we purchased a blog, we looked at the special ingredient that lead them to their success story. This is how we have learned so much throughout the years and how we were able to apply many tricks we found on other blogs across our network. For example, a while back ago, we discovered a plugin that allowed us to put adsense code in each post. It seems pretty common today but it was quite a revolution a few years ago. With this simple piece of code, we cranked up our revenue by $1,000 per month! I will keep buying websites once in a while but am currently concentrating on building my own sites at the moment. It is cheaper than paying the big bucks every time we want to build another asset!

Do these 4 things today and become a successful blogger!

If I had to start again, I would start my business with these 4 steps. This will definitely help you to grow and build a true online empire!
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