Vladimir Chen | a Blog of an entrepreneur

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Let’s see. Today is May 14, 2008.

Today we’ve launched our online PR campaign on Mingoville via PRWeb.com and MarketWire.com.

Already now I can see that results are great. We’ve been published in a number of News portals, specialized websites and so on. Some of them include Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Google News, MSNBC, Excite, IWon, MorningStar, NewsBlaze, MarketWatch, TheEarthTimes and many more.

Mingoville on Yahoo News

If you need to increase your web visibility PR is definitely a way to go. Not only it increases your web presence, exposure to the readers and trust through transparency but it also builds backlinks which greatly contributes to your overall ranking (for search engine optimization).

A lesson to entrepreneurs: To execute a succesful PR strategy you need a solid news angle, well-written press release and properly targetted distribution. If you can’t write contact me and I will send you contacts of my PR writers. They will write you a stellar press release that will place you higher in search engines and will increase traffic to the website.

Today, to compete one has to be different not only in the “WHAT” he or she does but also in the way “HOW” they do it.

There are lots of cyclists in Denmark. There are special roads and traffic lights for cyclists. In Scandinavia, it is quite often I catch politicians and famous actors ride a bicycle to commute from home to work.

Kids learn how to cycle at early ages. The elderly cycle at a speed sometimes faster than I do

So, the bottom line is: it is a humongous market. So, it is definitely a good way if one wants to reach out to the mass market.

Today I’ve ‘caught in action’ one of the biggest Danish publishing house, Information.dk, put these nice tarpaulin covers in bikes to protect the saddles from rain. Of course on the covers there would ‘accidentally’ be Information’s logo.

So, when a bike owner sees this ‘gift’ he definitely is going to like it because it rains like hell here and the cover is a nice thing to have if one does not want to get his/her butt to wet.

It is not to say that this marketing is a completely new thing in Denmark, but what I am saying is that if one wants to stand he/she needs to strive to go beyond ordinary or as Anthony Robbins says “extraordinary”, Seth Godin refers to it as “remarkable” and Jim Collins “from good to great”.

Eben Pegan says that in competition it is all about “non obvious” and “counter intuitive” things. If you think in terms of those two then you should be able to nail it on the head eventually.

In his presentation at TED, Seth Gordin, the best seller of marketing books, calls this type of marketing “remarkable marketing”. He elaborates the word “remarkable” as being ‘worth making a remark about’. Watch this video and you will learn a whole great deal

Yanik Silver, whom I consider my mentor, has spent some time on the Necker Island together with other great minds. On the way back home he came up with 34 rules for entrepreneurs. In particular, I like these 8 rules:

7) Create your business around your life instead of settling for your life around your business.

Consistently and constanntly force yourself to focus on the “critically few” proactive activities that produce exponential results. Don’t get caught up in a minutia & bullshit.

10) Get your idea there as fact as possible even if it’s not quite ready by setting must-hit deadlines. Let the market tell you if your have a winner or not. If not - move on and fail forward fast. If it’s got potential then you can make it better.

15) Measure and track your marketing activities so that you know what’s working and what’s not.

18) Keep asking the right questions to come up with innovative solutions ‘How?’ ‘What?’ ‘Where?’ ‘Who else?’ ‘Why’ open up possibilities.

19) You will never have a perfect business and you will never be totally “Done”. Deal with it.

33) Get a life! Business and making money are important but your life is the sum total of your experiences. Go out and create experiences & adventures so you can come back renewed and inspired for your next big thing.

34) Give back! Commit to taking a % of your company’s sales and make a difference. It this becomes a habit like brushing your teeth pretty soon the big checks with lots of zeros won’t be scary to write. If you think you can’t donate a percentage of your sales simply raise your price.

Two hours ago, I opened and thumbed through the “How to sell high-priced products” workshop by Yanik Silver. And what stroke me was this letter from Donald Trump (below).

“Think Big an Live Large”

“This is the final rule of the Donald Trump School of Business Management. Once you’ve mastered it, you are ready to graduate.

It’s a big world. The possibilities are always there. If you’re thinking too small, you might miss them. In some ways, it’s easier to buy a skyscraper than a small house. If you’re going to think, think big. If you’re going to live, live large”

Particularly, I like the last three sentences e.g. “In some ways, it is easier to buy a skyscraper than a small house” … which is absolutely true. There are only 3% of all people that would truly understand that powerfu statement.

I would actually say (for now assume) that it is almost always easier to buy a skyscraper because those who buy it think big and they make decisions at a speed of light, while those who think small always have hard times making decisions … yet it happens much more slowly.

There is nothing wrong with either type of people. All people themselves decide what life they want to live. Not to think big or not think large is also a big decision.

Hope you are on the side of big and large to experience the abundance of life both in material and in spirit.

I just got additional pictures from the Underground 4 Online Marketing Seminar - Day 3.

Thought would be nice to share some of them here.

1) Underground 4 attendees all together
2) Picture with Hollywood actor Carlos Bernard
3) LA in motion
4) Hollywood

In case you wondered what I was up to this weekend.

Well, lots of fun things like eating yummy sushi (Tatyana made), looking for a new appartment in Odense (because we are relocating and moving in together with Tatyana) and (WOW) fishing in Middelfart (although no fish was caught it was a lot of fun).

See the photos.

By the way, on the way back to Copenhagen (from Middelfart) I was listening to the teleseminars by Jerry Clark. He was interviewing two of the most successful men of time: Les Brown and Tom Hopkins. Here are few things I took away from them:

* The key to success is really an ability to become self-motivated.

* Success recipe: Learn More > Serve More > Earn More > Save More > Give More

* Desire alone does not account anymore. Desire backed up with discipline is the way to success.

* “Desire without discipline you end up being depressed” (I think it is very powerful and true)

* Do what you fear most

* “Fearing to fail is worse than failure itself”

* (from interview with Les Brown) MIT research has done a study that proved that a negative comment has 16 times a more powerful effect than a positive statement. This means that if somebody tells you something negative or if you’ve heard/seen something negative on the Radio/TV, you have to hear/see/read something positive for 16 times to compensate that ‘damage’.

We live in the world of negativity, we talk about it, we hear and see it everyday. We are the product of negative thinking. We are raised that way. No wonder that 95 procent of all people on the earth will not fulfill their dreams and thus lives. They may “live full but die empty”. Les Brown referred to another successful man who says that the wealthiest place on this earth is not the place with lots of oil or gold or any similar sort of things but the cemetery where people are buried with zillions of dreams, genius ideas, thoughts that they never put in place.

Think about it!

Day 2 of the Underground online seminar is over and as usuall tons of unforeseen surprises for me. First of all, the second day of the seminar is again full of quality content. Speakers, Mike Faith (CEO of Headsets.com), Mike Hill, Hal Oates (Porthos.com), were great. I especially enjoyed the last speaker, Andrew Lock, whose resources and content blew me away. I still can’t believe that he shared such valuable information.

I was also a winner of the Yanik’s DVD products and Internetlifestyle workshop (a box of about 12 kg. full of content).

And of course the last part of the day was a lot of fun. See below some photos at the Minikiss concert and of course a photo with Yanik Silver, the founder of the Underground Online Seminar.