Resources For Attraction Marketing And Networking

Ann Sieg, Rob Christensen and Mike Klingler at the Renegade Professional Live Event 2010

Do events like the Renegade Professional Live Event 2010 and training make a difference?

Have you ever gone to a live event, or live training and thought that the things that you were learning were great at the time… Then you come home and a few weeks later things are just the same, and you are back where you were, doing what you were doing before?

The Renegade Professional Live Event 2010 in January was not one of those kind of events for me.

It is almost a month since I went to Portland, Oregon for the Live Event. I had started interviewing attraction marketing and networking professionals for my book in December and had started posting on the blog for my book. I had a few ideas of other people that I wanted to interview and was hoping to meet some interesting people that weekend.

I walked into the hotel that was hosting the event and met Ann Sieg in the lobby along with several other people that I had heard of through the Renegade community.

It was a pleasure to meet Ann in person after having read her books and listening to her on webinars and recordings. I had come to think of her as somebody who was focused, a skilled marketer, but also someone who cared about providing real value to her audience. Meeting Ann in person, I was not disappointed.

I had first read Ann’s book “The Renegade Network Marketer” in late 2008 and listened to the audio version while driving around the Big Island of Hawaii in December 2008. There were things that Ann said in that book that resonated at a visceral level with me at the time, but I did not see how I could apply the principles that she taught in her book and a cynical voice in my head wondered if it wasn’t more about promoting her system rather than building my business. There was excitement and possibility, but also doubt and conflicting priorities. I shelved the book for a while, while others such as Mike Klingler found the book liberating and ran with it to produce the Renegade University, A free training site for learning attraction marketing using The Renegade Network Marketer as a coursebook.

In 2009, Mike and Ann joined forces to create Renegade Professional, a resource and community for attraction marketers, teaching people how to create a network and presence online and focus on building and providing value to their own audience.

Meeting Mike Klinger in person, and finding that he is personable and approachable, not just a marketing dynamo and trainer, was also revelatory. His presentation went to great lengths to show the value of giving value to your audience.

He talks about getting in there and doing things. Creating your own content online and allowing yourself to do it badly at first. I don’t recall whether it was Mike or Eric Walker who said that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, at least at first.

This is completely counter-intuitive to how I naturally prefer to work. I prefer to learn, and train, and practice in private and then only make my work public when it is a carefully completed professional grade product.

Mike calls this a “Grand Opus”. The best example of work that you are capable of using a particular tool or medium.

One of my big takeaways from the live event was not to try to create your “Grand Opus” on the first try with a new tool or product. Presenting yourself as a professional is not the same as presenting yourself as perfect.

If you try for your “Grand Opus” first time, you will probably never finish it. By creating 10 to 15 pieces of work before attempting your “Grand Opus” you allow yourself to become familiar with the tools you need to build it.

Meeting Mike and Ann as well so many, many other people whose material I have read and benefited from was also a humanizing and encouraging thing. To realize that these are all people who started somewhere. People who did not have all the resources available to them that they have made available to others. They aren’t perfect plastic personas. They are all real people who have failed, learned and moved on.

Didi Alcheva spoke about the importance of having your own “Internal Brand”. Knowing who you are, what you value, where your passion is in terms that help guide you in your interactions with other people in business and in life. This allows you to be consistent and put your own personality into your writing and marketing. It allows you to be real and attractive to those who resonate with your personality.

I cannot quantify the value of relationships and friendships that were started at the live event or the encouragement that these are real people who have been where I am now, and if they can create value for people through their work, then so can I.

One thing I can quantify is the amount of work that I have done since the Live Event. I have been editing interviews for my book and am scheduling new interviews and I have begun an eBook.

This blog itself used to be a parked domain name before the Renegade Professional 2010 Live event. Now, less than a month later, it is starting to take form. It is not a “Grand Opus” but a place to share what I learn about attraction marketing with the hope that my lessons learned and resources found will be of real value to my own readers.

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