PP 002: Small Business Tools for Entrepreneurs with Mark Mason

Late Night Internet Marketing host, Mark Mason, joins me as today’s guest for a discussion about how money moves online, the tools he uses to help build his own and his clients’ businesses, and how the best businesses create value by helping others.

Connect with Mark Mason

Small Business Tools Mentioned

Welcome back to positive productivity. This is Kim Sutton. And today I am thrilled to have Mark Mason from Late Night Internet Marketing, who I actually just found recently on iTunes when I started a marathon spree of listening to every podcast I can get my hands on. And Mark has been a constant feed in my ear. Feed’s probably not the right word, but hey that’s what I came up with. 

So, I have learned so much from you Mark and I just want to thank you for coming on the show.

Oh hey, it’s my pleasure. I’m so excited to be here and to hear you say that makes my heart smile because I do the show to inspire and motivate and help. That’s kind of what makes me go. So to have you say that and to the fact that motivated you to have me on the show… I just couldn’t be happier. Thank you so much.

I just have to tell listeners how it even happened that you got on the show because I think, if memory serves – and we were just talking pre-show about your jingle – I heard your jingle, and it just got stuck in my head, and I encourage you all to go over and check out the Late Night Internet Marketing podcast. You can go to Mark’s site and we’ll give you all that great info in just a little bit.

But now I have Mark’s jingle in my head. Like, I’ll be walking out to my car in the morning to take the kids to daycare, or going to pick them up, and I’ll hear it in my head. Mark, if I can possibly ask you to get a little snippet of that or if I can have permission to play it so people can hear what I’m talking about. I just have to warn you all – it’s going to get ingrained in your head and then hopefully you’ll start loving it as much as I do.

About Mark Mason

So Mark, can you tell the listeners about yourself and how you got started? I love how you’re doing multiple things all at one time, so yeah.

So I am classically trained as an engineer and I have a big boy job at a large electronics firm here in Dallas, Texas, and I have worked there for 25 years. I don’t name them… Whenever I talk about them I always say a large semiconductor electronics firm in Dallas because they have a very big social media marketing department, and I try not to mess up their SEO by speaking their name. But, I’m a manager there, and like I said I’ve been there for 25 years and I love my job. It’s an awesome job.

But back in 2007, the economy turned down quite a bit, and I was in the position where I was recognizing that even in corporate America, at a company you love, and a company that has been fantastic to you and treats people with a great deal of respect, nothing is for sure. Business conditions change, and so I started looking, trying to understand what an option would be for me. What could my plan be, so to speak, be?

I started investigating internet marketing, and I became fascinated with the way money moves online, how money is made online, how people market products online, and how the internet works in general from a marketing standpoint and so I started digging in. And that was back in late 2007, and I have been at it ever since, building small internet businesses online and helping people do the same thing part-time. The Late Night Internet Marketing brand is about the idea that you can build internet businesses in your spare time late at night after the kids go to bed.

Which is what so many of us do… I mean, and I’m working my business full time and I’m still up late at night, so I can’t even…

Hahaha!

Yeah.

It has that effect on you, right? I mean there’s always something else to do and when you’re the head cook and bottle washer for a small business, you do it all. Hahaha!

Oh yeah, the bottle washer in more ways than one. Hahaha!

Well I love that you love the job that you do during the day, and I’ve really enjoyed hearing you broadcast from places all over the world. Earlier today I was listening to one where you got the concierge at the hotel to do your intro and I thought that was fantastic.

I remember that very well. It was in the middle of the night. And I say I remember very well, I’m pretty sure it was in Taiwan. And in fact I’m pretty sure it was a one of the big Hilton Hotels in Taiwan.

But I remember I lost my passport on that trip. And I lost it while I was goofing around doing that recording, and I had my passport with me, and I had sat down in the lobby and I was trying to explain to this concierge and I left it on the table there. And fortunately, it was in a notebook that I was carrying around. Fortunately.

Losing your passport when you’re traveling overseas, and especially when you’re moving from country to country throughout the week, that’s a real drag. But, the people at the hotel, in fact the same person who recorded that introduction in Mandarin for me that day, she found it and brought it to me so I lucked out on that trip.

Oh yeah, you did.

The most underrated small business tools

So when you started this in 2007, who were some of the people that you looked at for inspiration and assistance, and do you still follow those people today?

Yeah. And in fact more than that, I’m friends with them. It’s kind of a funny story. So you know, when you do what people do when you want to learn something, you turn to Google. And I started looking around and trying to sort out what it meant to have an online business, and I ran into a lot of scammy things.

You know, you see these things “Make a billion dollars and live on the beach in three days!” You know that sort of stuff.

And I was really kind of digging around looking for someone or some set of people that I could really learn from. So, I ran across these people that had a podcast, Jeremy and Jason over at Internet Business Mastery, and I just got hooked. I got hooked on the idea of podcasting.

I’d never listened to a podcast before, and this was back in 2007, so podcasts weren’t new, strictly speaking, but they were considerably newer than they are now. I mean, mainstream people did not know what a podcast was, but I had this device that could listen to podcasts and I figured out how to download it.

And these guys were talking about how to build a meaningful business online, and so I followed them for a long time. I got involved in one of their masterminds. That’s where I met my buddy Pat Flynn when he was getting started, and we went through that program together.

Subsequent to that, as you’ve heard if you’ve listened up through episode 40, I became pretty good friends with Jeremy and Jason and have had them on the podcast and so forth. You know they’re just really good guys that are kind of helping people build businesses, which is what I do as well now.

Pro tip: Among all the small business tools you may find online, Networking is a must.

Yeah, actually now that I think about it, I think Pat Flynn’s podcast is what introduced me to yours, your podcast and you have introduced me to a whole bunch of others. And, oh my gosh, my podcast subscriptions have just exploded in the past few weeks.

And I just need you to know, what I’m doing is listening to each new podcast that I subscribe to. I’m going back to the beginning, because I don’t miss anything awesome.

So even though you might be talking about Panda and Penguin for Google, and I know there’s got to be a whole bunch of P’s since then, I don’t really stay up on that, just the value of everything I’ve learned has been incredible.

Having a resources page and sharing your small business tools

If you don’t mind me asking about this, one of the things I’d love for you to talk to the listeners about is even your recommended resources page, because already I have found it so handy.

Yeah, so it’s an interesting time for Late Night internet marketing. I’m just – in fact just before I got on the phone with you I was on the phone with my blog designer. We’re changing the blog design. I’ve had that blog design for about… Gosh, I don’t know! Two or two and a half years now and it’s due for an update. And I’m redesigning the resource page even as we speak.

But, you know there are a couple of resources on the resource page that are absolutely critical to the kind of things that I do as an internet marketer. And some of the resources are about the resources that I recommend. But some of them, it’s actually more important to understand, you’ll hear people recommend their favorite things, but really some of the more important things to understand are just the class of things.

So, for example keyword research tools. I’ve used many, maybe all of them. They range from free, like the Google ad words keyword tool.

The one that I’ve been involved a little bit in the development of and been with for a long time is one called Keyword Canine. Years ago I used Market Samurai quite a bit. So that’s a really good tool. And one that’s not on the research page that I’ve been using quite a bit lately also, is called Longtail Pro.

The importance of websites as a small business tool

So those are kind of the four different keyword research tools that I use. And the reason those are important as a small business tool is because one really useful source of free traffic on the internet, of course is traffic that Google sends you from search. And these tools can help you when you’re creating content, create the content in such a way that readers that are looking for your content will be able to find it.

If you know what you want to say and you have an important message, one important part of that message is making sure that it’s seen by people, and you can use keyword research tools to help kind of get in the way. So that’s one resource that’s on there.

Another one that’s really important for people who are starting out a business is hosting and I continue, for people who are starting out, to recommend Bluehost as a very inexpensive way to go get a slab of real estate on the internet. A little parcel of land, if you will, where you can put your Web site.

So those are two examples of resources that are on that page, and it’s constantly being updated as I learn new things and evaluate tools and the claims that they make, and decide whether or not they’re good for my audience.

Mark, would you recommend that most, or many, most isn’t the right word, but entrepreneurs have some type of resources page on their website? And personally, I have a “What I’m Reading” page because I love to read and I won’t deny that there are affiliate links back to Amazon.

And then on my company site, I actually have a list of resources too, like the landing page software I use, and I won’t deny that those are affiliate links as well. But I find personally that people want to know what tools we’re using. Is that how your page got built?

Pro tip: Your website and the SEO will help people find you, but the Resources Page is also a networking and trust-building tactic.

Absolutely. And you know two points there. So one is, people who know, like and trust you, through your podcast or through the content that you create, they want to know, generally speaking, how to do what you did. How to, maybe it’s the small thing that you did, like, “I want to build a page. I want to build a landing page like you did because I see yours”, and “I know that I like the way you do things, and I want to do some things the way you do them.” is sort of the highest compliment someone can pay you to say “I love what you’re doing. I want to do that too.”

And so that resource page, I think the primary focus of that should always be to help people.

In fact, the best businesses create value by helping people. And so if you can always stay focused in your business on the topic of helping people do whatever it is that they need to do, that will always serve you very well.

So that’s the first thing. So the answer to your question is sure, that’s exactly why the resource page is there.

But with regard to the affiliate links, which is a very popular small business tool, I think, you know, as long as you’re transparent about the fact that you do have affiliate links… And if there are people in your audience that don’t know what that means, it means that you get paid for recommendations that you make. If people click on your affiliate links, you get essentially a commission if they buy that product.

As long as people know that, I think it’s completely reasonable for you to expect that for effort that you put in to compiling resources – vetting them, making sure that they’re the right fit for your audience – if you’re really doing it that way, you know, where you’re trying to help people, again, then there’s absolutely no problem at all for you to be compensated by that in some way.

As always you’re transparent about it, I think people understand that, and they don’t have a problem with it. And I think it’s an important thing for people to understand that these things take effort and time and you got to pay the light bill. You know that’s how it works.

Oh definitely.

About launching programs, courses or business

I’m going to jump back a little bit to what you were saying earlier about, you know, people who are saying they made $2 million overnight, and you know, there being shady stories out there.

In the community that I’m in, there’s a lot of people who have product launches or program launches. You know, they’re $2 million launches. When you’ve been building your business and you see people in your community having these big launches. How hard has it been to stay focused on what your goal is, and not get frustrated or distracted by what other people’s successes are.

That’s a great question, and just a trap that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into. I’m particularly susceptible to it. I mean, to be completely honest with you I have some really successful friends. I mean, some of the people that I consider to be my closest friends are people, you know, that you’ve heard of.

I mentioned Pat. Pat and I talk at least once a week. Cliff Ravenscraft, the Podcast Answerman, Ray Edwards over at RayEdwards.com, Leslie Samuel, Michael Stelzer from Social Media Examiner. I mean, these guys are my friends. I mean these are people that, you know, if I had real trouble, I would call them.

They’re real friends, and they are all wildly successful, and they’re also full time marketers. And they have that opportunity to go way faster than me, and some days I also feel like they’re a lot smarter than me, and they’re just better. Haha.

And if you compare yourself to those people, that can be a very demotivating thing. A lot of times it starts off aspirational. And if you can keep it that way it’s awesome. But you have to be careful about, you know, worrying about why something is working for somebody else and not for you. I think the most powerful position you can be in is to stay focused on being really happy for those people, and then working hard to do the best that you can do and be focused on what you’re doing.

I have another friend, Andrew Hansen, who always talks about the fact that when people tell him in one of his courses or something that they’re “behind,” this is an idea, you know, you set these goals and then you don’t reach them, and you say, “Oh I’m behind”, and “…behind where I wanted to be.” “I’m behind where Pat Flynn is.” “I’m behind where…” You know, fill in your internet superstar name here. “I’m behind that person….”

There really isn’t a “behind.” You’re where you are. And in order to get better, you need to get to the next step for you.And that really doesn’t have anything to do with what a lot of these other people are doing so I think it is a very dangerous trap and it’s something that people need to aspire to be better, but it needs to be on their own terms.

I love all the people that you just mentioned because I’m seeing such a common thread amongst all of them, and as I said, I mean I found you through Pat Flynn, and I forgot about Leslie. I feel horrible now, because you introduced me to his podcast as well. And Cliff Ravenscraft. I’ve been waiting to get to Cliff in my podcast feed because I’m still listening to 2012.

The Giving Component

But, you and this whole community, you are so giving, and I think that’s what people forget about a lot – is the giving component. They’ll go out there and launch something that they haven’t given anything beforehand. And they’ll wonder why people don’t want to buy.

Yeah. You know, I think the whole world, not just the internet business, but everything… the grocery store, Target and Wal-Mart, the guy down the street who has a small business mowing lawns… They’re all about value exchange. And you have to create value and you have to be in a position where people will recognize the value that you create and be willing to exchange that value for something you value, which usually is a credit card.

And you know that value proposition, that can’t really happen unless people know, like and trust you. And the only way you can really do that is to build a relationship with people, and the best way to start off building a relationship with someone is to try and help them without asking for anything in return. And you know that’s just kind of the way, you know, the best humans that I know behave. And it turns out that that behavior is also really good for business.

And so like I was saying earlier, if you can focus your business on helping people, and by helping people creating value, the money thing sort of takes care of itself.

Pro tip: As an entrepreneur, one of your small business tools and primary advantages is the ability to play with that value exchange in ways a big business cannot.

Oh, absolutely it does. And I’m sort of embarrassed for a second because I’m having a temporary lapse in memory. In the end, oh I can’t remember his last name. There’s a Facebook group called Coffee with Dan. Oh, I just can’t remember Dan’s last name. So embarrassing (Note from Kim – my apologies to the awesome Dan Meredith.)

But he had an event on a Friday a few months ago. It was, and I don’t like to cuss that much, but it was called Free Shit Friday, and everybody could get on and they could give something or another, and I’m going to have to look up his name… so you can get on and you could offer whatever you wanted to to the rest of the group.

And this is a large group. I mean like thousands maybe tens of thousands of people, but I went up there and I offered like 10 Twitter strategy sessions or something like that. And they were a half-hour apiece. But the relationships that came out of those quick calls have been worth far more than I think those 30 minutes. Or for me anyway. I hope that the people on the other end received just as much. But I know their relationships going both ways have been far more so.

Yeah. And you know relationships… They tend to grow and be important and to be more important and in a lot of cases than the actual revenue that was originally related to the relationship. So I couldn’t agree with you more.

Taking good care of your small business tools

With all the changes that have been going on with Google, and I know I’m way behind, what would be your biggest recommendation for somebody who is building an online business for keeping their website safe? Can you recommend anything for keeping a Web site safe when Google puts their next algorithm change into motion?

Yeah, so, you know Google… I think the most important thing about Google is to understand what motivates Google. Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation that makes money at least from their search engine, from the search engine side of their business, by selling ads inside the search engine. That’s how they make money. They don’t make money by having searchers, or giving good results, or any of that sort of thing. The way they make money is by selling ads. Period. Full stop.

So, how is it that they sell ads? Well, they sell ads, because… They are able to sell ads successfully because a truckload of people come to their site and search for things.

And why do they do that? They do that because they know if they go to Google they’re going to get a good answer. They’re going to get what they’re looking for the fastest. They don’t go to Bing or Duck Duck Go or all these other search engines. They go to Google because Google has a reputation for giving the best answer the most quickly. And you know there’s such a reputation that they became a verb. Their brand is a verb. You “Google” something. “I’m going to ‘Google’ that to get the answer.”

And so, that means that their profit motive while they’re trying to sell ads, the key to them selling ads is to give the best results possible. So for the rest of forever, Google is going to try and give better search results.

So, piece of advice number one is that, if you’re doing anything, and I mean anything, to try and “trick” Google into ranking your pages above pages that are actually better than a normal human would go, “Oh yeah. I know you’re ranking for” You know… Cancer above web M.D. But really the web M.D. page is better. You know you tricked Google but these other pages are better. That’s not going to last.

Google is on a constant mission, and there are billions of dollars at stake, to make sure that they get the right answer. And if you’re not the right answer, eventually one of these algorithms is going to come out. Hummingbird is the latest one, or Penguin or Panda… One is going to come out and your site is going to fall in the rankings. And if you’re depending on those rankings for revenue that’s going to hurt.

So, the best defense, always, against this is to be the best answer. Be the best web page. And that means write great content for readers. Not for Google. Not for a search engine.

Write real content that’s great for readers, and have that content be created in a way that it’s easy for Google to understand what it’s about. And when they should offer that as a response. So do some optimization that makes Google’s life easier. And then work on the next piece of content, and keep doing that until you have lots of content to where your site is authoritative on the topic that you are trying to talk about. And Google will love you for it.

Social network and trends, over websites

I find it really… Well, I agree with you by the way, and I’m seeing a lot of people thinking that they should be spending a lot of time on Facebook or LinkedIn. Or, I mean I spend a bit of time on Twitter. How do you feel about people putting their efforts in? And I have a feeling I know you’re going to say but…

Yeah, so I’ve said it if you listen to the podcast, I’ve said it many times that. So it’s ok… It’s ok to have a strategy for taking advantage of trends in website platforms. The latest one being snap chat. It’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you can take advantage of those things as targets of opportunity.

But when it comes to building something that’s going to last for five 10, 15, 20, 25 years, you need to build that base of operations as your own website.

And building your business on Facebook exclusively, or depending on it exclusively, is exactly like renting a piece of land and then building a home on it. Now why in the world would you do that. Because if you lose your lease, the home is completely worthless. You can’t occupy it anymore because you lost the lease to the land. If you build your home on Twitter, or Facebook and then something happens to Twitter or Facebook, or they decide they don’t like you anymore, then you’re kicked out.

So just as, you know, a simple thing… the right thing to do is to build the website that you can call your own. And then if you want to have rental properties on YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, I think that’s fine. Go do that. But your primary focus, I think should be your website.

And the goal of those social media platforms should be to get people back to your website so that you can interact with them there, and capture their information and add them to your email list and all these other kind of good things that help solidify your business.

Why repurposing content IS one of the top tools for small business

I think that’s great advice. So for all the people who are listening who might be putting a lot of time into Facebook Live videos or Periscope, which seems to be on a downward trend since Facebook Live’s really taking off, would you recommend that they save those videos then and put them on their blog?

Yeah. So it depends on the particular circumstance. I definitely recommend that you save them because I have an ongoing debate with some of my friends that we mentioned before about the value of things like Snapchat, because we create content on Snapchat and it goes away in 24 hours. And we have these debates about whether or not that’s ok, to be investing time on something that has that short of a lifetime, or whether you want to create something that lasts forever.

Like you mentioned, you’ve gone back to you know 2009 and have been listening to content that I created six years ago. You can’t do that on Snapchat. So I think you definitely want to save that content. And how you repurpose it…

I think there are some questions about what the right thing to do there is. Sometimes, it depends on the content and I’m not aware of this being an issue with video. But sometimes, Google can be a little sensitive to you re-publishing content that exists elsewhere on the Internet.

So a strategy for Facebook Live videos that I’ve seen people use might be to capture them and then upload them to YouTube for example. And then embed them in your blog, or if you have a robust YouTube channel, you might not even need to do that. But I think the answer to your question is, yes, absolutely save them for sure, repurpose them if possible. Just be thoughtful about how you do it for SEO impact and other things like that.

That is so true. 

There’s a difference between repurposing and duplicating

When I started my business, I was putting my blogs on my private WordPress site, but I was also re-publishing them on my wordpress.com blog thinking that was going to help. And I didn’t realize it was actually probably hurting me because of the duplicate content.

Yeah, it’s you know hurt is relative. I mean the truth of the matter is it doesn’t help, for sure. And Google can get confused about which place to send people. “Do I send people to the one I found first? Or the other one?” 

And since crawl rates are different, maybe if you’re publishing them both in the same day, they don’t know which ones first, or they get it wrong. I mean it’s all just all kinds of stuff. So for republishing like that, it’s best definitely not to do it that way for sure.

Is AI actually useful as a small business tool? Anwer: It depends

So I just wanted to bring up one other thing that I… Well, actually two… The first one here was not what I was intending to go for it now but… One of the great resources that I found through you and I just want to bring up to everybody, and I’d love to hear if it’s still a recommended resource is ArticleBoulder.net.

ArticleBoulder.net Is a very interesting thing. So it’s a thing that is several years old, and it’s this tool online (Go to ArticleBoulder.net and check it out) that creates content automatically. And I think if you have a need for content that is of average quality, sort of not fantastic quality, sort of ok quality. Not as good a quality as you might write yourself, but let’s you need volume over very high quality, then I think it’s still a good resource.

Now, having said that, when would you need that? Well if you’re trying to make an authoritative website that is The Authority on the internet for some topic you don’t need that kind of content. You need the best possible content, that’s what we were talking about earlier. So for a site that you would consider your site or your, you know, your showpiece site. I think this is not the right tool.

There are SEO  strategies out there that are the exact strategies that I told you, in general, that you should be avoiding, where you build websites for the purpose of manipulating Google ranking. And you might need 100 pages of content for one of those sites in order to build up a, you know, kind of a mediocre site that’s out there, but that you can use for some purpose like linking back to your site or something like that.

In those cases, I think this tool can be useful.

The Ghost of the Past Small Business Tools

Years ago, when I first started out on the internet, these sort of spammy websites were incredibly powerful tools that you could use to extract money from the internet. And, at that time, this tool was incredibly relevant, because you could do stuff. You could really scale up stuff and do kind of amazing things using this tool.

To be honest with you, because I’m no longer interested in creating those kinds of resources, I don’t use this tool anymore, because I don’t really have a need for it. But it still works great. And if you have a need for creating that kind of content this is a really good tool for that.

I will tell you, maybe five years ago… I have a very good friend on the Internet, her name is Nicole Dean. She’s over NicoleontheNet.com. When I was new in internet marketing I actually paid her to coach me for about six months, and I was involved, in addition to doing my normal internet marketing stuff, I was involved in building these thin content sites that were just designed to generate ad revenue, and they didn’t really help people.

You know, they were just out there to kind of try to trick Google into sending traffic. And people would land on those pages and they weren’t very good, but there were ads there and so they’d see the ads and click them to get to maybe something that was more along the lines of what they were really searching for. So I was just kind of getting in the way of people’s searches and collecting a nickel every time or whatever. 

And that was a huge business model. I mean back in the early 2000s, even up until 2010, that was a huge way to make money. You create these so-called Adsense sites and you put Adsense ads on there. These kinds of tools are incredibly effective for this.

But Nicole told me something, it took me a while to hear her words, but she told me, she said: “You know if you’re going to build a business, you really should take the time to go ahead and make the internet a better place.”

That didn’t impact me as quickly as I wish it would have, but over time, those words that she spoke to me have echoed over and over again in my mind. And so, you know, now that’s kind of… and for the last three, four, or five years, have been kind of the one of my touchstones… is to make sure that whatever I’m doing on the Internet whether it’s an SEO strategy or whatever it is, really kind of makes the internet a better place.

The counterargument for something like ArticleBuilder.net is that, if you’ve got a fantastic Web site that nobody can find, and you use a tool like ArticleBuilder to force Google to put your Website in front of people, that is making the internet a better place. So I’m not judging. I’m just saying that I don’t use this tool anymore, although it still works great.

Using your tools in a convenient way for you

I did sign up for them after hearing your podcast episode. However, I am not using the article as they gave it to me. I’m using it and then greatly expanding on it, and then editing it, which I know might be sort of counterproductive or whatever.

No, that’s super fantastic because starting with a blank copy of Microsoft Word or whatever, sometimes that is horrible. So yeah, used that way, I hadn’t really thought about that kind of use for it in a long time, but that’s an excellent use for this. And in fact you know… John, I know the guy who builds this tool.

He actually has been on the podcast as well and he lives down kind of in the next little suburb of Dallas over from me. He’s a fantastic guy.

And one of his reasons for doing this was he wanted to create jobs. And it turns out that the people that create the content for this are real people, who he pays real money. You know, they’re real U.S. workers. This isn’t some kind of offshore sweatshop, kind of thing. And, you know, he’s helping people with this from that same point, so I really do like that about ArticleBuilder.net. And the way you’re using it is kind of the best use case that I could imagine.

I didn’t even know that story about John. That’s fantastic. I love that.

Yeah, John… One time… John’s such a great guy. You know, to give you kind of an idea… You know we’re talking about is it OK to make money with affiliate links earlier.

The more money you make, the more you can help people. That’s really the simplest thing.

And I remember one time John sold a bunch of his stuff. He had a fire sale, and he sold a bunch of things and the proceeds – I think he made like $50,000 in a weekend  – and the proceeds to that went to save a train museum here in Dallas. He wrote a giant check to the train museum. They were about to go under, and he just sold a bunch of his stuff. Made, you know, made a special bundle deal for his email list and the proceeds from that deal went to save this train museum. 

And to this day, if you go into the train museum, you can see that, you know, he’s got a letter in there. He’s a big, you know, he was a big donor that saved the museum.

Oh that’s awesome. I love that. I think I was going to ask another question but that just blew my mind.

That’s OK. That’s good. I like that. I hope it blows your listeners’ minds as well.

Yeah me too. I can’t say any better than that. Now you can hear that I’m speechless. Hahaha!

Haha, awesome.

Going back to networking and sharing as small business tools

What has been the biggest motivator for you in keeping this going?

That’s easy. You know I get these e-mails from people. Real people, who I live in their ears. OK? They listen to my podcast just like your listeners are listening now. And every Thursday I put out the podcast, at least that’s my goal especially recently. On Fridays they download the podcast and they listen to it.

I’m in their ears. I live in their head, and they know me because I share things with them and I tell them about my struggles, and what’s going on in my business, and I try to help them with theirs. And occasionally, one or more of them writes to me and says, “This thing that you told me… It changed everything.”

Or, “Because I listened to you, I was inspired to do this thing.”

Or, you know, “Now my small business is going. I can afford the medical care that my kid needed or whatever.” You know. 

Wow.

So I get those. I don’t get them every day but I get a lot of them, and that’s the thing I like.

You know making money is great too. And I do have this realization that I won’t work at this very demanding engineering management job forever. I do know that. And someday, I can totally see a lifestyle where I take the kids to school, and I work on my internet business for four or five hours and I’m done by the time that I get home and I take them to baseball practice or whatever.

And so, you know, that’s a future that’s out there somewhere. When I get tired of going to Tokyo and doing fun stuff, is out there too, and so that you know visualizing that future is another thing that keeps me going as well.

Positive Productivity as strategy and tool

Mark, what does positive productivity look like to you?

Kim, I think positive productivity is all about getting, not just getting things done, that’s productivity, but getting exactly the right thing done, when it needs to be done. I think this is a really important kind of idea that, especially for entrepreneurs is so easy to get distracted.

I personally have struggled with a shiny object syndrome over the years. Where, you know I’m working on one thing, and then I see something else, or an email comes in, and someone’s you know doing a launch and all of a sudden I was working on something really important, and now I’m watching launch videos. And that gets me on some other idea, and then all of a sudden I’m evaluating some software somewhere, and I never did get whatever email auto-responder message written that I needed to write, or web page done or blog post finished or whatever.

So positive productivity is all about getting exactly what needs to be done right now done effectively.

That’s the key thing that I try to focus on. I actually have… I use a piece of software. I’m a Mac guy and I use a piece of software for this called Omnifocus. I use that software to implement sort of GTD-like system to try and keep track of the most important projects that I’m working on, and the next actions that I need to take against each one of those projects, and I track that in that software.

Oh, awesome. You’ve got me sort of laughing because the reason I turned to podcasts was to stop the shiny object syndrome.

Yeah, and now you have a whole podcast player full of shiny podcast episodes.

Oh yeah. My computer keeps on screaming at me. It’s a memory full because of the downloads.

There you go.

Hahaha!

Final words

Well thank you, so much, Mark, for coming on today. Where can listeners find you? And listeners. I want to tell you you got to go over and visit Mark’s site and read more and especially with these new changes coming.

Yeah, so, you know my home base of operations is LateNightInternetMarketing.com. And if there’s too much typing for you you can just go to a LateNightIM.com that all goes to the same place. You can join my email list there. You can find links to Facebook and Twitter, and reach out to me, leave me voicemail messages, subscribe to the podcast all that kind of stuff happens from right there.

I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear from your audience, and what they thought about the episode, and if there’s a way I can help. I’d love to know about it.

That’s so great. Thank you so much again. I had no idea when I asked you if I could…

H3 Hands down, the best small business tool will always be you, and your approach

Oh, I remember the tweet now! I said something about your jingle, and you said it was part of your evil plan, and I said if I keep on mentioning you enough maybe I can get you on my podcast to find out more about the plan. So I never expected a response. So, thank you so much.

I love that. Now, that’s a tale for your listeners too.

I mean I think, you’re a podcaster who’s starting. When you tweeted me. I looked. I took the 14 seconds it took to click through the tweet and see who you were. And I could tell you were trying to start a podcast, because the podcast wasn’t there yet. So I knew what you were doing. What you must be doing, which is getting episodes prepared to launch a podcast.

And to me as a podcaster, I know what that means: That means you need help. With content and getting interviews or whatever it is to get launched. And so it’s really easy for me to help you. And so my intention was to do that, and hopefully, I have.

But if you take that approach, I think if your listeners take that approach – in their lives and in their business – they’ll be so much further down the road for it. And the things that come out of that, that you don’t expect, and you’re not asking for, will just be tenfold over your lifetime, the amount of stuff that you put in.

It’s really amazing how taking a posture of helping people will pay you back, even when that’s not why you’re doing it. Maybe especially when that’s not why you’re doing it if you just try to help people and so that’s all.

And no I already closed out the show by saying thank you.

You’re welcome.

I just want to close it with one more thought that, I mean when we started this call, even before the recording started, I said I felt like I was talking to a celebrity. And you asked me if there is a third person on the call. And I think that’s an important thing for us all I remember is that – you reminded me that… Just because we listen to people, I mean we’re all people. I mean, all the mentors that we look to are still people and that’s what I love about all your friends that you mentioned, they’re just genuine. 

I mean I can hear it in their podcasts. They genuinely like to help just like you do so. And seeing as they are people mean they love hearing the feedback. So, next time you’re inspired by somebody, just send a tweet or mention them on Facebook because they do see it even if they don’t have time to get back to you.

Absolutely. 

Thank you again, Mark, so much for joining me today. And just one last time, share your website just in case somebody is driving and can’t write it.

Absolutely. LateNightInternetMarketing.com, and if you search Mark Mason, Internet Marketing will come right up to the top as well, hopefully.

Thank you so much listeners for joining us for this episode. If you like it, please subscribe, and like and all that great stuff, and I will be back in just a couple of days with the next episode.

Thank you so much for having me. This is the highlight of my day. I was looking forward to it all day long, and I really appreciate it. You take care.

Oh, as was I. And you as well, Mark.