While writing this article, I had a very serious realization.  Working for StomperNet took me away from what I love to do.

I need to be in the trenches, figuring out new ways to attract visitors.  I need to be helping people with my software and my knowledge, because nobody “gets” traffic like I do.  I need to have the time to focus on my family and my customers.  Read the article and I’m sure it will make sense to you:

Your Inner Circle – Creating The Ultimate Group Of Your Best Customers.

By: Ross Goldberg

Before we dig into what this is about, I must issue a warning:  This idea is best applied to info marketers and consultants.  It will be difficult to apply for those that have physical product businesses, but I’d love to hear about it if you figure out a way to apply it for physical products.

While at a seminar in Vegas, I became a bit irritated with where my bank account was sitting.  I had a bunch of payments that I was owed and they hadn’t arrived on time.  With the economy in the crapper, late payments had become very common… Instead of chasing money, I decided to take it upon myself to do something about it.

A quick aside:  My main fault in building my business has always been list building.  My customer and prospect list is hovering right around 6,000  Thankfully, my customers love me and the list is fairly responsive due to my ridiculous nature.  Over the 4 years I’ve been teaching, I’ve lost about 40,000 subscribers, but the ones that I’ve kept seem to like me.  The bigger your list, the easier this is going to be to pull off.

I made just under $10,000 in 48 hours with no sales letter.

I know that’s not as impressive as some of the “million dollar days” that have happened in “Internet Marketing”, but there were some interesting pieces of what happened that make it pretty cool:

This came from a quick idea during a 5 minute conversation with some new friends.

It took 15 minutes to setup.

I didn’t even use a single web page, blog post, or tweet to make it happen.

I created something that helped me and a small group of my customers at the same time.

If that sounds appealing to you, please, read on.  I’m going to give you everything that you need to do exactly what I did.

The idea was to create my “Inner Circle”.  I would give my customers an offer that appeared to be totally in their favor, but actually would be of a massive help to me, too.

The process was simple.

1. Send an email describing what I was doing.

2. Request a response in essay/survey format to “apply” to my new program.

3. Send them a response with directions.

Here is the exact email that I sent:

Subject: Urgent – From Ross

Many of you have been asking for this for over a year.

A way for you to get personal help from me without a spending a fortune.

No need to beat around the bush here…

I want to coach you for the next six months.

I want you to get every product I create.

I’m going to help you DESTROY every barrier you’re currently facing.

Plus, it’s going to be for only 5% of my standard coaching fees.

The catch is that you must qualify and move very quickly – I’m only going to be able to take 10 people into this program, as we’ll have a lot of interaction.

If this sounds like something you’d like to find out more about, I need you to submit a support ticket to (my help desk link was here)

Here are the questions that I’d like you to answer:

What markets are you in?

How long have you been doing this?

Are you technically capable?

What kind of online presence do you have? (websites, blogs, social media)

Most importantly: Why you feel we would work well together.

I look forward to working with you!

Ross Goldberg

The responses that I got were amazing  I had 16 people apply and had only planned on accepting 10.  Two of the responses were ridiculous, so I sent them special custom messages pushing them away from the program.  I sent the rest of them this:

First of all, I want to thank you for moving fast.  Action is the most important part of this program and you’ve shown me that you’re capable of taking action.

You’ve been selected to join my Immortal Coaching Program!

You’ll be getting from me:

1 15 – 20 min. call per week.

1 group Mastermind call with other members where we all help each other every other week.

Every product I release in the next 6 months (I have a script coming out that will sell for $297 that is going to have a massive impact)

I’m excited to be working with you and will be giving you a call this weekend while I’m in Vegas to welcome you and let you know how this is going to work.

Please send $597 (one time payment, no recurring bills) via paypal to (removed my paypal email so you don’t try to sign up and respond with your phone number, so I can call you as soon as possible.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Ross

I had prewritten this response and outside of a few special people, I didn’t add anything to it at all.  All I had to do was select it from a dropdown window as a response in my help desk.

Out of the 16 that responded, 12 signed up for the program.  One of the people that signed up was one of the original two that I tried to steer away.  Out of the total people that indicated interest in the program, 75% of them ended up signing up and paying me as fast as they could to be a part of this program.

The original goal in creating this program was to create a “bug testing” group that would be able to go through my new software and info products to find any errors I might have made and improve them before I put them up and sold them to my customers.

However, something crazy happened immediately after I released this program that made it impossible for me to honor my responsibility with this group.  I met Brad Fallon…

Within weeks, I was working double time for StomperNet to help with the new version of the company and release to the public.

So… Instead of releasing a new product every month, I released only one new product in the last 6 months  I still opened up my toll free number to my group every Friday that I was home and not in Atlanta at Stomper headquarters.  The mastermind calls never did come together, but the group could have gotten on the phone without me pretty easily.

Out of the 12 people that joined the program, I never heard from 4 of them via the phone at all.  Another 4 of them called 4 times or less throughout the entire length of the program.  The other 4 contacted me sometimes just to say “Hi” and let me know that they were taking action and moving forward on things I’d told them to do or work on.

I setup a social network on Ning for them to interact and was impressed that 6 of the members were checking in on an almost daily basis and they all helped each other quite a bit.

So, this program ended just about a week ago.

I decided to test out something on this wonderful group of my customers.  Instead of letting them know how insanely proud I am of their accomplishments over the last 6 months, I focused on the one thing that nearly every one of them did wrong.

I gave them free reign to contact me once a week and after about 90 days of me letting them know that I was busy with Stomper stuff, most of them stopped contacting me completely.  The only time I heard from them was when it was an emergency and they absolutely had to get my help.

The truth is that I am lucky to have had this amazing group of smart people that were understanding enough to give me a break when I wasn’t able to fulfill each of my promises.  Did they get $597 worth of value?  DEFINITELY.  Did they get everything I promised?  Nope…

Their responses to my disappointment was (except for one of them) not angry at all.  They all stuck up for me to each other.  Talking up their interactions with me as if I was a saint.

The truth is that I dropped the ball more than once and they still said “Thank You”.

What they don’t know is that they’re getting a new offering of mine that’s valued at $997 to make up for me not being able to provide everything that I promised (I guess they’ll know now).

Any of you can literally swipe this entire program from me with the two simple pieces of it.  You end up with a group of your best customers that you’ll be able to interact with, learn from, and help more than you can imagine.

If you ever end up in a situation like I did, where you aren’t able to follow through on your promises, it’s your responsibility to go above and beyond to ensure that you make up for it 150%.  Your customers will love you for it.

If you’d like to get on the early notification list for my new one (coming out soon) – Become a Traffic Magnet