Posted: 27 May 2010 07:59 PM PDT

Buying a $47/month membership in Third Tribe Marketing is an investment. (If you don’t buy it before June 1, it’ll be $97/month for new subscriptions). It’s not an impulse buy at the checkout counter at your local grocery. It’s much more obvious when you pay money to attend a conference. If you wait til the last moment to attend a premier blogger conference like BlogWorld Expo, you’re paying $1195 plus your airfare, plus hotel, plus meals.

We all get twitchy justifying things. Heck, even buying a $24 book sometimes puts us in this spot where we’re asking ourselves whether it was worth it (it’s sad how many times the answer can turn out to be “no”).

Simply, if you want value from your investments, enter into them seeking something.

I recently bought the book How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets (amazon affiliate link) by Felix Dennis (the guy who founded Maxim, amongst other things). It’s a GREAT book, and a very entertaining read. I love it almost as much as I do Sir Richard Branson’s Business Stripped Bare (amazon affiliate link). In both cases, I read these books with a pen and paper out, writing little notes to myself, and running my own business ideas through the books’ filters, to see if I can glean something more from my effort.

In both cases, so far, those two books have made me tens of thousands of dollars with ideas that sprang from them (no, I’m not going to share which ones, because they pertain to me and not your business), so I’d say the ROI on the $40 or so I spent on both books was quite worth it.

In the case of Third Tribe, many people are saying they had ideas and questions, they bounced those ideas against the forums, tried a few things, went back to the forums, and got the help they needed. Lisa Johnson said today that she tripled her bookings at her pilates studio since executing things she learned about from Third Tribe. So, she turned $47 (or maybe even less) into thousands of dollars a month more because she had some ideas and some questions, and she worked them out.

At conferences, I keep my eye out for opportunities that will fill one of a few buckets:

Professional speaking
New Marketing Labs
Potential new sales opportunities for my new projects.
Things that will help out my friends.

I usually can justify attending an event if one of the first two buckets gets filled, especially since they usually pay a multiple of the cost of attending the event, plus the hotel, plus the time out of pocket, etc. Meaning, if I find a professional speaking gig while attending an event, it’s more than paid for my time to get there.

But even that requires that I work for it, that I pull the value from my investment.

My point in all this is to say, you have to work to pull value out of your investments. It should go without saying, but sometimes, we think what we’ve purchased are blueprints. That’s rarely the case. What we’ve purchased is access to ideas that should spark something in our own.

The beauty with things like conferences and Third Tribe, is that you can ask people things, and work to shape the ideas around your own. It’s not like a book that stays static and requires you to do even more work. Events and communities can walk part of the way towards your goal with you.

Is that how you see it?

Never Miss a Post of ChrisBrogan.com

Posted: 27 May 2010 11:30 AM PDT

I’m so glad you read this blog. You might be picking it up via Facebook, clicking in from Twitter, or landing here after someone told you to swing by. In all cases, thank you. I’m glad that you’re here.

For those of you who’ve been subscribers for a while, thank you very much. I write for you.

If you’ve not yet subscribed for free, here are a few fast ways to keep up to date:

Get the Blog Sent to You Free Via Email:

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Subscribe via your RSS reader.

And thank you. I’m so glad that you’re part of the experience here. I’ve got some great stuff planned over the next handful of days, including a brand new logo for me, and lots of free actionable ideas for you.

Make Your Own Business Cards

Posted: 27 May 2010 05:35 AM PDT

Lately, I’m a bit burned out on business cards. I think they’re important tools. I don’t think we can manage our identity transfer ONLY online, but I’m just a bit tired of handing them out. The reason? Every time I give someone a business card, I have about a 70% chance of receiving someone else’s dumb email newsletter that I didn’t opt into receiving. Or, I’ll get a pitch. If you’ve ever done this to me, please reconsider before doing it to someone else in the future. Please?

A business card is the start of a relationship, not permission to sell to me.

Lately, I notice that lots of people use various online services to make digital versions of a business card. That feels like you’re giving away an opportunity. That’s like buying the store cards they sell at Staples or OfficeMax or wherever. Instead, why not make your own business cards.

Want to see mine? Chris Brogan’s business card.

Well, that was easy.

In person, I hand out paper cards. When I’m not being cheeky, my cards have the following traits:

My name is the biggest element on the card. Why? Because in a meeting, when my card will be sitting on a table in front of someone who’s trying to remember who I am, they will see my name and feel less embarrassed.
My PREFERRED method of contact is what I put on the card. In my case, I’ve stopped handing out my phone number. I loathe the phone. I opt not to give it. Is that limiting some times? Sure. I don’t care.
My idea on how I can help you. Most cards talk about how awesome the giver is. I want you realizing how awesome I think YOU are.
Space to write. It’s amazing how important it is to have room to write on the back of a card.

What’s not there? Every social media platform I ever joined. Every URL in the world. It’s not a phone book. It’s a card. It’s a marker.

A business card is the start of a relationship.

Your mileage may vary. That’s just where I am right now. You?