People who are new to online business – or wanting to convert a physical business to an online business – are often overwhelmed by all the different materials from the “Internet Marketing Experts”. An exasperated plea I hear often from people who’ve been on the lists of Frank Kern, Andy Jenkins, Jeff Walker, Rich Schefren, etc (and we all know how they cross-promote each others stuff, as they talk about what good buddies they all are ) is:

I’m trying to pick ONE educator, who can deliver an A-Z map for a successful online business, vs. continuous upsell. Help!

Well, IMC (Internet Marketing Center) used to do this – you would attend a weekend for $10,000 and you would come out with a website online and accepting payments. Now I think they’ve switched to some kind of business-in-a-box concept, but I don’t know much about it.

Mark Silver at Heart of Business also has some good products for getting your site up and going.

But then both have add-ons and other aspects/modules that you can purchase to develop various aspects of your business. Because, really, taking a business from an idea through to a completely successful business is a BIG task/process. Here are the steps:

1. Research your biz idea and make sure there is a market who WANTS your product/service. Then determine whether they have the money to SPEND on your product/service.

2. If yes, then get your website up. Have the design reflect the tone, spirit, energy of your biz. Present everything so that a 9 year old (literally) could navigate your site. Have a compelling freebie opt-in offer on your site. Make sure your site has a self-hosted blog.

3. Have an automated shopping cart and email marketing, newsletter system configured when you launch your site. You must be able to follow-up consistently and regularly with customers and opt-ins. Use 1shoppingcart if you are starting small. Use Infusionsoft if you are starting big. If unsure, you can always start with 1shoppingcart and then switch to Infusionsoft.

4. Use my guidelines from my previous blog post to drive free, organic search engine traffic to your site.

5. Continue to tweak, learn, experiment etc. to increase traffic, opt-ins and conversions.

So, if you want someone to do all that for you, in one easy-to-buy program for a couple grand – NOT gonna happen. It is a tremendous amount of work to do all the above, especially if you are writing the copy as well. And the only way to customize anything is to either do it yourself, or hire an individual consultant.

If  you want someone who knows all the above and can just implement the project/biz (with your guidance/input) then you need to find someone who has done it all before, has extensive experience and already has a successful online biz – that ideally does NOT involve selling IM (Internet Marketing) stuff!

If you find a consultant who is willing to put their money where their mouth is, then they should be willing to negotiate a partial fee/partial commission on sales – that way you won’t be out too much $$ up front. If they don’t believe in your biz enough (or they’re not confident in their own abilities) to accept part commission, then you’d just be wasting your time with them anyway. Or, they may be willing to accept sliding scale payment until you’re generating more money, or, guarantee results in your business or money-back. There are many ways to work with a consultant where you ensure the fee is tied strongly to RESULTS.

I don’t work as a business coach, but when a friend of mine asked me to help her re-do her website, organize her biz properly and take it to the next level, I charged her $325/hour – BUT I guaranteed every penny. i.e. after a 2 hour meeting, when she implemented my advice, if it didn’t earn her at least $650, then I would refund the money (which never happened). 18 months later she had quintupled her revenues and tripled her list. If you just copy everything from her site, you’ll do well – they are all tested techniques.

My last thought is: If you think you CAN do EVERYTHING in a business-in-a-box format, and you think someone should, then why don’t you do it? And that could be your business.

soar higher,

Jini

Okay, it’s only taken me NINE HOURS on Google to compile this information. So of course I immediately thought of sharing it so that others didn’t have to waste an entire day looking for:

The best holistic, eco-friendly hotel or center to hold a 2-3 day healing retreat or workshop that can accommodate up to 120 people.

And you see that number – 120 – that’s the difficult part. There are LOTS of eco, granola-cruncher style retreat centers (and even some more upscale ones) that can accommodate  20-50 people. But get into the larger numbers and all of a sudden you’re flooded with large, corporate-style hotels where you’re forced to sit in a window-less, air-conditioned ballroom for 2 days solid – no thanks! How could I hold a healing workshop in a space designed to make people feel ill?

I centered my search on California since the climate would work year-round and it’s also accessible to a large number of my readers/clients.

I also did a quick scan of room reservation rates, just to give me a general guideline of what I’d be looking at in terms of general cost, before I got into the nitty-gritty with a conference liaison. The room rates listed here are for either a king size or 2 double beds (although some offered 2 queens) per room and they are just the regular posted rate that anyone would be charged (i.e. they are NOT a special, negotiated conference/group rate)

So here is my shortlist of conference / workshop hotels that also met a large number of my “healthy environment” standards:

Gaia Napa Valley Hotel (American Canyon, CA)

- salt water pool, fridge in each room, really gorgeous hotel, great spa. But the website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2007 (judging by the customer letters). And their online information is not well organized – you have to click on a lot of different tabs (some of which are in obscure places that you don’t even notice) and pull the info together from numerous different sources, which makes it difficult.  So while I got excited looking at the site, there wasn’t enough info for me to make any kind of preliminary “purchasing decision” so I kept looking. I will phone them later to follow up though and find out if any of their meeting spaces have windows, and whether we can open those windows. Also, I don’t know if the sheets are 100% cotton. And it only has wireless internet (radiation anyone?). However, after checking the room rate, I will definitely be going to the extra effort of phoning for more details! This looks like a luxurious hotel, I can’t believe the room rates are so cheap. Update: After phoning Gaia I learned that ALL of their meeting spaces have windows and natural light, so that’s great. The downside is the closest international airports (Oakland or San Francisco) are 1 hour’s drive.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $89/night

Miramonte Resort & Spa (Indian Wells, CA)

- Unfortunately, only the smaller meeting rooms have windows and even then, there’s not too many. But if you don’t need or like windows, then this one has a lot of amenities and a the rooms are nice (fridge, natural toiletries, but again, only wireless internet). This has a big, busy-resort feel to it (from the website), but they have a LOT of activities and special activities for kids, so if your conference is going to cater to families, this one is worth checking out.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $199/night

Terranea Resort (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA)

- Gorgeous oceanfront location. Great info on their website and a good variety of meeting rooms, including fabulous outdoor spaces. The hotel rooms are really nice. Only consideration is the room rate is fairly high. So if you were going to do a high-end, luxury conference, this would work splendidly.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $335/night

Estancia La Jolla Resort & Spa (San Diego, CA)

- Okay, this one has it ALL. Fully detailed info on their website, that got me so excited, I called and quizzed both the front desk and the spa. Their Grande Room looks perfect for my needs with lots of big windows. The pool and hot tub are both salt water (no chlorine!). They are the only hotel to offer both wired or wireless internet. The rooms have natural toiletries, 100% cotton sheets and every room has either a window or a balcony that opens – how can you be healthy if you don’t have access to fresh air? The spa uses only natural, organic products for both the facials and the massages, and their steam room has double-filtered water (so it’s like mineral water) to which they add essential oil of Eucalyptus. Can it get any better? Oh yes, it can, cause you get all this for a reasonable room rate. The grounds are also lovely.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $169/night

Now, during the course of my search I did find these two that – although not in California – they looked good enough to keep on file for future reference:

Emory Conference Center (Atlanta, GA)

- This one has the most glorious large meeting space – see the Silverbell Pavillion – and the forested grounds are spectacular. The rooms are really beautiful and like some of the others listed here, they offer rooms with 2 queen size beds, so if people wanted to room-share they could really bring the cost down (which is very reasonable to start with!). If I wasn’t stuck on California, I would definitely check this one out. The Silverbell Pavillion is the best workshop space I’ve seen yet. I would post some photos here to show you, but the Einstein who did their website programmed it so that virtually none of the photos can be saved or downloaded.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $155/night

Inverness Hotel (Denver, CO)

- This is also a nice venue with a large meeting room with windows overlooking the rural setting. Lots of greenery and rolling hills, trees, mountains. The guest rooms have a ski resort feel to the decor. Compared to the other hotels though, their room rate is a bit high for what you get.

Rate: April 2-5, 2 adults = $167/night

Okay, that’s it for now. The Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and the Estancia La Jolla are on my shortlist and I will research both further. If you know of a hotel, retreat or conference center that you think would qualify for my list of possibilities here (remember it has to fit 100+ people), please let me know!

Soar higher,

Jini

p.s. the fact that it took me 9 hours to find these hotels/conference centers means they know diddly-squat about search engines and keywords. I eventually found most of them by going through the certification submissions for a ‘green hotel’ program! So please, someone target these businesses and get their SEO going – and spare us this misery!