[Text of Video] Last week we changed to a different web hosting service in the hope of finding greener pastures. It seems, though, that all we’ve ended up with is a pile of damp hay. Our site has been up and down several times and there have been gaps…in our service. We can only apologise to our customers for this. Rest assured that we will resolve this soon.
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Festival Previews.
Today I have great pleasure in interviewing Yaro Starak. I first came across Yaro’s website, Entrepreneur’s Journey when we began looking into setting up Festival Previews. As part of my research I wanted to know who out there was blogging about their entrepreneurial journey and what tips I could pick up, if any.
Entrepreneur’s Journey is a blog website aimed at those interested in internet business and blogging. I knew at the time that blogging was not for me, just too daunting a step. Yet somehow I kept coming back to this website dipping into the information which was both informative, well written… and most amazingly free!
Over time, I downloaded Blog Profits Blueprint which essentially summaries what blogging is all about. A good while later, I decided to join Yaro’s Blog Mastermind course because I wanted to know more about blogging and the nitty gritty detail of internet marketing. Blog Mastermind takes you step by step into content production, techie stuff and internet marketing. By way of a great addition to this course Yaro has now launched a new video tutorial website called Become a Blogger with Gideon Shalwick. This is a pictorial step-by-step series of videos to help those more technically challenged.
Currently in week 10 of Blog Mastermind, I wondered if Yaro would grant me an interview as a good number of performers out there are extremely interested in using the internet to promote themselves to a wider audience. I am very grateful to Yaro for his time in agreeing to be interviewed, which he submitted in audio, so let’s get listening…
Download click on the Audio MP3 button.
Textual version below:
Hello Elizabeth this is Yaro here. I am just doing an audio recording to respond to the questions you sent me. I apologise if these get a bit lengthy as I tend to ramble sometimes when I respond to question so hopefully whoever is doing the transcription doesn’t have too big a job to do, so I will jump straight into it.
Question 1, you asked…
1. What are the milestones in your life’s journey (both personal and professional) that have led you to be an Internet Marketing Expert?
I think in terms of business milestones I can think back to my teenage years when I was involved heavily in a card game I used to play called, Magic the Gathering. Before that I was pretty much into sports and playing console games so I wasn’t really that business orientated. But as you get into this card game - and initially it was a hobby - it eventually turned into a very business like activity for me in that it was a card game that traded and cards were bought and sold. So, I went off and attended tournaments and I would trade cards and even if I didn’t do that well at a tournament itself, I would often come home with a few hundred dollars in sales from selling my own cards that I won or purchased previously.
So I did buy and sell and trade an awful lot and that experience really helped me in terms of just being self-sufficient in generating revenue as I didn’t have a job and so forth. This led me to starting my first website about that card game and eventually it became a very popular site here in Australia as it generated about $500 a month in advertising revenue. It was certainly as a young adult and teenager that I found that experience very helpful and definitely set me on the path to becoming an internet marketing expert (that’s your words) [laugh] or a marketing personality who makes money off the internet.
Anyway, in terms of personal milestones, I don’t know if there is anything really I can really say that sticks out in my mind. Obviously a person’s mind is a collection of all kind of experiences so it’s kinda hard to single out anything my parents did. My father is not really an entrepreneur; he has always been more in the academic and teaching world so he has not necessarily been that much of an inspiration when it comes to starting businesses. My mother on the other hand has done quite a few different jobs in her life some of which were entrepreneurial but nothing really related that much to the internet marketing side of things. It’s more the other way around now as she is getting into internet marketing herself. So definitely my experience with the card game is the best example there.
Ok, I’ll jump to Question 2….
2. If I asked you to look into the future of internet marketing, where do you think it will take us?
Internet marketing is at an interesting point now already with the shift to social marketing and everyone you know is now talking about web 2.0, so I think there is definitely a shift that is happening right now. Where that will take us I think is an area of evermore increasing community participation with tools and software programmes that let us interact in groups and share our passions together on line.
I just know video is going to become a much greater part of everything we do online. I see the internet becoming a lot more like television, or should I say the television becoming more like the internet. The melding of those two mediums so that the computer becomes a very visual and auditory experience like the television and with the interactivity to connect personally with people through to a computer. So I definitely see that’s where the future is.
For some aspects of the internet, internet marketing plays a big part in that, we are already seeing people making use of video quite extensively as a marketing tool. It is on my sales pages and on my blog as video blog posts and it is just a very compelling way to form relationships with people which is ultimately the core outcome you want from any successful internet marketing, which is to build relationships. So I think that’s pretty much where I see the internet is going and where internet marketing is going.
3. What is your favourite Festival(s) or Fringe(s) and why?
That’s a little bit different, not so business related that one! I don’t know if you know this festival, but we have one in Brisbane called the Woodford Folk Festival. That’s definitely one of my favourites I have been to. I didn’t go this year - unfortunately it rained a lot I heard, but I have been a couple of times prior. As music goes, it is an all round entertaining festival which is great. The only thing bad about it is the hot weather. I can’t stand how hot it is because it’s right in the middle of summer here in Australia when they hold it just around the New Year. It’s a great festival and definitely one of my favourites. I think the main reason is the variety of performers there, the general vibe and the fact that it’s sort of become an institution here in Australia. It’s something to do around New Year for a lot of people. People go there and camp as well as partake in the actual festival. So it’s really a massive event and I have had some great memories of that event.
4. What’s the best advice you could give to artists and performers out there who write a blog on their own websites?
For their own website probably….
Well I think performers as anyone who blogs needs to use their website or their blog as an extension to their creativity to demonstrate what it is they do as well as provide a little bit of information. I don’t think anyone has trouble providing information such as phone numbers and contact details and so forth, but the other side of the fence is when you want to actually demonstrate what it is you are actually passionate about, what it is you are so good at and let people partake in that passion, experience and so forth so they become not just entertained or learn something from you but they also become like you and actually want to see more of you.
This in turn will bring people back to your site and of course if you do decide to eventually try and make some money from your website or your blog it is so much more easier to sell to people who like you and want more of you. So, if you are a performer, getting videos of your performance and getting testimonials from other people who perhaps hired you or who worked with you in the past and getting as much proof as you can to put out there to demonstrate that you are great at what you do then this will enhance whatever their goals are or project they are trying to do. It is really a case of doing what you might do off line which is already participating in as many events as you can and just do it online as well. The great thing about online is that you are in control of it and you own it and you just need to get up great content, lots of video, lots of audio and lots of writing on that blog and then you get out there and find the communities where people are interested in the sort of thing you are interested in and make sure they know about your blog.
Ok, next question, question 5
5. What has been your funniest experience and worst experience being an entrepreneur?
Okay, well my worst experiences is probably easier to remember than my funniest experience. I am in the internet business so it’s not necessarily the most humorous unless people are using humour to market things with video.
In terms of my worst experience I think I can remember a few experiences test writing a blog and hitting a few controversial topics and even doing things that other people didn’t agree with. As a result you know you might say something or write something or censor someone or leave a comment as a result of that and you happen to get the wrong people angry at you and they don’t like the way you reacted to something. They become very vocal about it, then they will let you know and they will write on their website or leave very lengthy comments on your blog to that effect, so I have had maybe two or three experiences of that in the years that I have been blogging that have stuck out.
It’s frustrating mainly because you can’t actually communicate well in those environments, that is where the internet really does become limited as a tool for communicating because text will not relay your stance about something nor the person who has a gripe with you. You cannot really communicate on a clear level so it can all escalate into a traditional plane war, so I try and avoid plane wars by not biting into anyone who is looking for one. Sometimes you cannot help it but sometimes you do certain things that people don’t agree with and they like to tell you about it.
In terms of funniest moments, well……. I cannot really think of any off the top of my head. A friend of mine Gideon Shalwick is running a very new blog or video blog called Internet Marketing News.TV and it’s sort of a spoof on a CNN style of news programme about internet marketers. It makes fun of different people and it’s definitely funny. It’s a bit out there, a little bit of a different way of marketing on the internet. I cannot really describe it to you, you have to go and experience it yourself but if you want to check it out it’s www.internetmarketingnews.tv, that’s the address.
Ok…. question 6
6. What is your favourite place to vacation and chill out and why?
Well… you will be surprised, but my favourite place to vacation is actually where I live. I am not a big fan of going on holiday to relax because I enjoy the city I live in so much. I live here in Brisbane (Australia) and I like to spend time in cafes and go to maybe The Brisbane Botanic Gardens around Brisbane. For me really I like the environment I exist in so I don’t ever feel the need to have a holiday. I enjoy my work so much that often holidays that I do take are about sitting on my laptop writing as well as doing traditional holiday things. So if you ask me what a great day for me is, it is really writing a blog post, maybe interacting a bit on the internet, then to a cafe and seeing some friends and maybe playing some sport or doing some yoga in the afternoon. That’s the kind of thing I choose to do on a holiday so I don’t see a need to go anywhere else.
But for the sake of answering this question I have travelled a little bit in Australia, I haven’t gone too far but I do like visiting Melbourne. I was recently at Byron Bay which is a really nice place in New South Wales.
Hawai’i is always a bit of a favourite, I drop by on my way to see family in Canada, so Hawai’i is definitely a favourite although I don’t stay there very long. Canada is great but the reason why I say that it is a great place to visit is purely because I get to see my family. I also experience a different side of the planet as Australia and Canada are very far away and that’s where my family is so I do go to Canada quite often.
7. Who is the person you most admire and why?
Okay! Well I have trouble answering questions like these and can’t say there is really any one person I most admire. I admire people in the humanitarian roles, certainly people like Gandhi in our recent history is someone I admire.
From a general point of view I admire anyone who works in health care provision. I think this is a very admirable thing to do; you wouldn’t find me working in that area. So anyone who goes to under developed countries and helps people there set up with basic needs and necessities is a very noble thing to do; I admire anyone who does that. So its really those kind of people - the self-sacrificing people who are motivated by purely helping other people, they are not doing it for money, they are not doing it for anything else but to help others - they are the kind of people I really admire most. Gandhi is a great example of that, he personifies that and he’s a type of person that stands out of the crowd in that regard. There are thousands of similar people who do similar types of things so they are the ones I admire most.
8. What is the best tip you have ever been given?
You haven’t given me much of a context here so I’m gonna assume you are asking me in a business context. So I will say I have good tips but I cannot single out one as the best.
But there is one in 2007. I kind of knew of it already intuitively but had not taken enough action to follow it through. It came from a good friend of mine here in Brisbane, another Internet Marketer named Andrew Grant, he’s part of the team, Andrew & Daryl Grant, and they’re very successful marketers.
He said to me “listen, your blog is great, you have so much free information but you want to start charging money for some stuff because not only will you make more money but you will get more people engaged in what you teach”. And he is quite right in that you give away so much information that people will love you for it but chances are that most of them never actually action what you teach. Sometimes you do need to charge money which creates a sense of pain and sacrifice but the sacrifice is there for a reason. It is there to motivate you to actually get a result from what you study. So that sort of advice triggered the impetus to actually start Blog Mastermind and get it out the door instead of actually just planning on getting things out the door that cost money and not going forward. I continued and built an entire internet business around that way of doing things so I definitely think that was one piece of advice that was very important and a lot of bloggers can learn from that as well and that it’s ok to charge money sometimes.’
9. What is the best book(s) you have read and why do you like it/them?
Okay, well I read books in three genres, or two more recently. I read the business books as you would expect. I love the stories about internet businesses that are coming on, some of these stories are getting quite old now although I still enjoy them. They are The Story of e-bay, that’s a great book, The Google Story that’s another great book about how Google came about and The PayPal Wars, that’s another great book, it talks about how PayPal got going and their battle with e-Bay before they were bought by e-Bay. Those are three great examples of almost autobiographical books about businesses.
Outside of business I enjoy a lot of self-development/spiritual types of books and some of these drop into business in the same sort of sense. I think The Richest Man in Babylon is a good example of a book that crosses into both worlds and some of the stuff on The Secret DVD which recently came out in 2007 was similar to self-development. But then I also select stuff like that Eckert Tolle and Paulo Coelho.
Actually, one of my favourite types of books is children’s fantasy books which I often read from my past. I recently finished reading The Never Ending Story for the first time after having seen the movie so many times but actually reading the book was a really enjoyable experience. The book has a lot more to it than the movie did. I love the movie and that was very enjoyable, so yes, general cross reference: business, self-development and children’s fantasy a nice mix there.
10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?
I think it would have to be the lack of food. I think as people we should all have our basic food and shelter needs met. If we could at least get that one knocked out then everyone on our planet would have their basic needs met - that would be a really good stepping stone to getting everything else that is a problem in the world dealt with. So, I think that would be a good first outcome I would like to see happen and I do think it is within our means. I actually think it’s kind of sad that we cannot meet as a group of people and make that happen; pool our resources to get that kind of outcome instead of pooling our resources to do so many other things that really don’t help us as a species. But you have to learn and go through these processes.
So anyway, Elizabeth, that ends the questions, I hope you can use that or transcribe that or if you want to use the audio only, then that’s fine I understand that. Do let me know if you need any more information.
This is Yaro, thanks, and bye, bye.
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Many thanks Yaro for the great interview!
[Text of Video] Ever heard of Max Headroom? He was a big hit in the 1980s and recently came “out of retirement”. Max is a computer generated talking head. To see vintage clips of Max, visit his website at www.maxheadroom.com. I’m not sure where they got the computing power from in the 80s but we all now have enough to create our own Max and here’s one of ours! The software is called CrazyTalk, which seems quite appropriate. We’re all looking forward to having fun with it.
Many characters and alter egos can be created and ours will evolve with time and requirements. Hope you all approve and enjoy them.
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