Tellman Knudson has created a multi-million business teaching others how to build a highly responsive email opt-in list and a key component to his success is teleseminars. However, for a long time, Knudson's main success lie in starting businesses. Over an eight year period he started no less than eight businesses all of which, in his own words, "failed miserably". He did not let this deter him.
One of his handicaps is that he is suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). According to Rich Schefren, this is something that is actually very common among Internet Marketers. In his "Attention Age Doctrine" he reported that 53 out of the 75+ marketing and business gurus he coached had ADD and so Knudson is in good company.
Knudson describes himself as being highly creative and having loads of wacky ideas. At the same time, he finds it difficult to focus on one thing. In the past, he always wanted to do his own thing and this almost led to financial ruin.
He achieved a measure of success with hypnotherapy. He describes himself as a "fantastic hypnotherapist" and built a business that saw him working with 12-14 clients a day, six days a week for one to one and half hours at $75 per hour. However, you can see the problem with this model. He was exchanging his time for money and there are only so many hours in a day. Ironically, even although on one level this business was thriving, he was still struggling to pay his rent and was $100,000 in debt.
Einstein said that it is insanity to keep doing the same things and yet expect different results. Knudson knew he had to make some radical changes to the manner in which he conducted business and turned to Internet Marketing. He also decided to focus on list building because he noticed that this topic was a recurring theme in much of the marketing material that he was receiving.
Bob Proctor says that if your goals do not excite you as well as scare you then you haven't set yourself a goal that is worthy of you. Knudson had no problem with this. He set himself the audacious goal of getting one million subscribers in six months or less. He felt this goal would excite his subscribers as well as get the attention of a few JV (Joint Venture) partners.
"I failed enough times to be really gutsy about what I was going after because I wasn't afraid of failing."
He identified a list of potential JV partners and offered them a proposal. The first prospects were not as established as those he would later approach and they just laughed at him and told him that it couldn't be done. Who could blame them? Knudson wasn't exactly approaching this challenge from a position of strength. Knudson had no product plus he:
~Didn't know how to put up web page,
~Didn't know how to edit audio,
~Didn't know how to write copy,
~Had never done a teleseminar, and
~Didn't understand the concept of a squeeze page.
He admits that hearing repeated rejections started to make him feel down but he persisted.
He was turned down 63 times before he received his first yes. When heavyweights such as Joe Vitale, NitroMarketing and Jay Abraham agreed to come on board others followed suit. His plan was no less audacious and it is ironic that those who agreed to support him were more accomplished Internet Marketers than those who originally rejected him. Perhaps they had more vision than the initial naysayers or perhaps the long string of rejections enabled Knudson to refine his pitch. No matter, he was up and running.
However, it certainly wasn't plain sailing. He persuaded seven other individuals to work with him on a percentage basis and work they did. They were putting in 30-50 hour weeks and bringing in about $10,000 per month of which 70% went to Knudson's partners and the remainder was ploughed back into the business to pay for items such as Instant Audio, Ask™ Database and further education, all of which helped the business to run more smoothly and efficiently.
A major turning point came when Knudson took Alex Mandossian's Teleseminar Secrets mentoring program. Halfway through the program he made $38,000 just by following through on all of the action points.
"I was going through one training program at a time, very, very thoroughly and implementing every single technique, every single tactic, every single thing that you had to implement."
This is a critical success factor. Many people attend training programs but do not follow through. They often blame the program rather than their lack of action for their failure to get results. Within one month Knudson's income made a quantum leap from $10,000 to $100,000. In his first year, after doing Teleseminar Secrets, he made $800,000 in sales and from the same size list. Yet for the first eight months he made next to nothing - a measly $10,000 per month.
An interesting footnote to this case study is that Tellman Knudson still hasn't reached his target of one million subscribers but do you think he cares? He is now a highly respected Internet Marketer known for his expertise in list building. His business turns over seven figures annually something which he attributes to the power of teleseminars.
When it comes to list building, it's not just size that matters; it's also responsiveness and Tellman Knudson has achieved the best of both worlds.
list building email opt-in list teleseminars success Tellman Knudson
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