As some of you would have realized, from the previous WIS Dallas post, I went to Texas to attend the World Internet Summit. However, some may not realize that after I arrived in Dallas, I spent some time in Whitney with some alpha leaders, Stephen Pierce and his lovely wife Alicia Pierce. I will describe some of the details of my trip below.
I left Brisbane airport on Sunday the 18th May and detoured via Sydney so that I could share a flight with Alpha Leader Jennifer. We arrived in Dallas at night, via Los Angeles, and went to La Quinta Inn via a free shuttle bus.
La Quinta Inn was a great place to stay and I must thank Gary for organizing it for us. La Quinta provided a wonderful buffet breakfast included in the price and the staff was very friendly.
During the morning we were packing our belongings to go to a log cabin that Alicia had booked for us, when I noticed a tornado chaser van. Being a meteorologist, I was keen to talk to the guy about his tornado ventures. He did not have too much time to talk, but he mentioned that due to the sophisticated equipment in the van that they usually find at least one tornado in a 2-3 week trip. He also mentioned that many Australians go on tour with them. Go to Tradd Storm Chasing Tours for more information about these tours.
Gary drove a hire car to Whitney. Thanks again Gary for organizing that and also for driving. Gary is great for organizing things. He had the assistance of a global navigation system with Sean Connery’s voice (very entertaining listening to instructions from a Scottish voice, “turn right, keep left”). Veit also helped navigate and did a great job, as Sean was not always right. While travelling on the highways I was glad that Gary was driving rather than me. It was so confusing compared to what I am used to back in Australia.
We also noticed the amount of large cars on the road. I guess that people may buy smaller cars in the USA eventually due to rising fuel costs? We had a break on the way to Whitney and I took the photo below of Veit, Evgania, Jennifer and Gary in front of the hire car.
To get to the cabins we had to stop at a security gate in order to get permission to enter the reserve. Alicia told us later that Stephen and her stayed at one of these cabins before they bought the property that they now live in. The cabin had a queen size bed and 3 single beds upstairs, so it was cozy for us all. There was a golf course nearby too. I found it amusing that on the front door it had a sign saying “in case of tornado”. Apparently tornadoes are quite common, but luckily for us none got too close to us during our stay.
During the late morning we drove to Stephen and Alicia’s place. Alicia showed us around the house while Stephen was cooking a BBQ for us. The house was large, well presented and very clean and tidy. I noticed that the cielings were very high too. Stephen did a great job with the BBQ, and seeing that there were 3 vegetarians out of the 6 Alpha Leaders (Sern Yi stayed at the house), there was plenty for me to eat. It was very nice too.
During our stay, 3 days, both Stephen and Alicia offered us tips for progressing with our Internet marketing projects. I certainly gained some great insight from them both and I really appreciate their hospitality and assistance. We also got to use the facilities that Stephen uses for DTAlpha Talkback for recording some audio products. Jennifer, in particular, made great use of this.
On the second day, we all went for a boat cruise on Lake Whitney. Stephen seemed to be very content driving the boat. Some of us went for a swim in the lake. The water was fine.
We also watched a movie in their cinema. The cinema had comfortable reclining chairs that had popcorn and drink holders and they vibrated with some of the actions in the movie. There was also a massage chair available for us to use at any time. The Alpha Leaders spent most of their time in the training room.
I was fortunate to meet Alicia’s mother, Ilona. Ilona helps out Alicia and Stephen with their business and she also did much of the cooking for us during our stay. Not only was Ilona a good cook, but I loved her company. Ilona told me that she was born in Guyana and moved to Canada when she was 15. She loves the cricket and I am hoping that she visits me, as promised, in Australia some time so that we can both attend the cricket together.
It was sad to leave, but we had to go to the Sheraton Hotel for our next adventure. That being WIS Dallas. Below is a photo taken by Gary of Sern Yi, Evgania, Veit, Jennifer and me in front of Stephen and Alicia’s place before departing to Dallas.
I have recently returned home to Australia after a long flight back from Dallas and wanted to share some of my experiences from WIS Dallas 2008.
The event was organized by Brett McFall, Tom Hua and Stephen Pierce. It was held at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas between 22nd-25th May 2008. As an Alpha Leader for Stephen Pierce, I was invited to help assist at the event. I accepted the invitation and was glad that I did so.
There were many speakers at the event. Apart from the 3 that organized the event, Ray Edwards, Debra Thompson, Armand Morin, Sean Roach, Mike Stewart, Christopher Guerriero, Joel Comm, Adam Ginsberg and Joel Therien gave presentations. They provided some excellent internet marketing content.
There were many wonderful and interesting people at the event and below are some photographs that I took of them. The audience had a great deal of energy within it.
Dr Stan Harris is a 10th dan black belt in Karate. There are less than 100 of them world wide. He was awesome in the audience by regularly providing positive feedback for each speaker. He also gave a demonstration on stage whereby he let 3 people punch him in the stomach, including a 3rd dan blackbelt. He did not flinch with any of the blows. Dr Stan then broke about 7 boards using various strikes, a kick and a head butt. The boards had differing types of fears written on them which he “broke through”.
I loved the energy Adele had at WIS. She was always smiling and pleasant to be around. Adele is involved with motivation skills, if I can recall correctly.
I met Rochelle while doing the networking session on Saturday night. Rochelle is in the wealth creation field. She was so sweet to me and lovely to talk to.
Raghu is involved with options trading and has a product that may be available for sale in a few months time. Raghu now lives in Texas, but came from India.
As you can see, A R Hurd is quite a tall man. He always came in a basketball style outfit and was quite a funny man. He made us flick our name tags over our shoulders for this photo. I enjoyed his company.
Before the event, I spoke to David Ciup while at Stephen Pierce’s house and he invited Julie Castleberry to attend. I spoke to David throughout the event and met up with both he and Julie at the Network Session. The photo taken here is one where they found the crew, Susan (Mike’s wife), Tom and Brett having some drinks after the event had finished.
The crew were invited to the speakers dinner after the close of the event. From Left to Right.. Sern Yi, Bryan, Jennifer, Kate, Gordon, Jason, Evgania, Veit and Gary. Kate, Gordon and Jason were part of the WIS. The rest of us are Alpha Leaders.
After the WIS event had come to a close and the speakers dinner had finished, Tom and Brett were more relaxed and enjoyed a couple of drinks with some of the crew. I really enjoyed it.
After UYMG Sydney had finished in March, Stephen Pierce offered the Alpha Leaders the opportunity to participate in an Alpha Leadership summit at his house in Whitney 19th-21st May, followed by the WIS in Dallas 22nd-25th May.
If you have not yet registered for WIS (World Internet Summit) Dallas, then do so now and I shall see you there. I got ”It is only $97 for 4 days of learning from 12 of the best internet speakers in the world!!! Only $97!!! Not to mention the $29,494 worth of bonuses you will receive.” in an email from SMCC. So you can see that there is some great value there. To register for WIS Dallas, click here.
I was excited about the idea but thought that getting leave from my work would be difficult, considering that I will be having at least 6 months off starting from July. I spoke to Alicia Pierce about my concerns, and she said something like “I am sure that you will use your charm to get the desired result”. I felt that I had used up all of my charm to get time off to attend UYMG Sydney, but Alicia was right. My boss, Ann, found a way for me to get leave so that I could go to Texas. Thanks very much for that Ann.
The photo above shows Joey and Jennifer with Stephen Pierce at UYMG Sydney 2008. Jennifer, the girl on the right, was the Alpha Leader team captain at UYMG Sydney 2008 and will be travelling with me to Texas. Jennifer seemed to be a lovely person, so I am looking forward to having conversations with her on the flight to Texas. Gary, Veit and his wife are the only other confirmed Australian Alpha leaders going that I know of, but they are going on an earlier flight.
I have been very busy lately, but the excitement is certainly building up for this Texas trip. Not only will it be great to catch up with Stephen, Alicia, Laura, Sern Yi, the Alpha Leaders and the rest of the crew, but there will be many new people that I will have a chance to meet. I have never been to the USA too, so that will be an experience in itself.
I will take my camera again. Hopefully I can provide some nice snaps for the readers of this blog.
I was searching through my mail recently and found an email, written below, with respect to a blog that my dad works on. At first I thought that it was some sort of spam or trick, but after investigating it further I realized that it was for real and there really was a problem.
We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be
infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page
to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.
Below are some example URLs on your site which can cause users to be
infected (space inserted to prevent accidental clicking in case your
mail client auto-links URLs):
We strongly encourage you to investigate this immediately to protect
your visitors. Although some sites intentionally distribute malicious
software, in many cases the webmaster is unaware because:
1) the site was compromised
2) the site doesn’t monitor for malicious user-contributed content
3) the site displays content from an ad network that has a malicious
advertiser
If your site was compromised, it’s important to not only remove the
malicious (and usually hidden) content from your pages, but to also
identify and fix the vulnerability. We suggest contacting your hosting
provider if you are unsure of how to proceed. StopBadware also has a
resource page for securing compromised sites: http://www.stopbadware.org/home/security
I checked out some information from stopbadware.com and realized that the static site was OK, but the blog had some problems. I now know why the traffic stats had dropped significantly. Google had dropped the blog posts from its index.
I contacted my hosting company. They were helpful as usual, but they told me that they could not really help me too much without any more specific information from Google.
I knew that dad and I had not deliberately put malicious content on the blog, so I investigated further by checking http://www.stopbadware.org/home/reportsearch with all of the external links that we had on the blog. All of them were found to be clean.
I used the clearing house tool with several of my other sites, including this blog, and they all came up clean until I arrived to another site with the same wordpress theme as the beatyourdepression theme. Therefore I thought that it was possible that the theme itself had been corrupted somehow. However, I found some other sites with the same wordpress them and they all were clear.
I then tried some of my other blogs and found a few more that were earmarked by the clearing house as having badware within them.
It then became apparent that there was a common denominator between the blogs that had badware and those that were OK. The ones that had badware had “Anyone can register” ticked in the membership section of the settings in wordpress. I unticked all of those boxes on the affected sites, although the latest wordpress upgrade (2.5.1) is supposed to fix this problem.
I then had to search through all of the posts for coding that was not supposed to be there. (Go to Manage post and choose html). Much of the bad coding had iframes and something like “<-traffic Statistics” and links to bad sites such as ringphones, casinos etc. It took ages to sift through all of the posts and remove all of the bad code, but hopefully it is all OK now. Note that all of the badware is not visible on your blog for the viewer.
I have asked for Google and stopbadware to check the site out again and I shall have to wait and see how it all goes. I really have to thank them for alerting me about the badware as the last thing I would like is having my readers being affected by it.
I have learnt my lessons.
So what do I suggest other bloggers to do right now???
Upgrade your wordpress (or other type) blog NOW.
Remove the tick from “Anyone can register” if that is not totally necessary.
As mentioned in a previous post, I planned to write a little about the guest speakers of UYMG Sydney 2008. Today I will write about Alan Forrest Smith.
Alan Forrest Smith is well known in the Internet Marketing world as an expert copywriter. Not only has he written for Stephen Pierce, but he has also written for the likes of Jay Abraham group, Marlon Sanders and Ted Ciuba.
Alan started used copywriting for his hairdressing business, but he read tons of books and attended many courses to perfect his skills. He now teaches others how to become great copywriters as well as some other Internet marketing skills. You can find more information about Alan Forrest Smith and his copywriting skills at his Orange Beetle site.
When Alan Forrest Smith got on stage at UYMG, he was wearing a kilt. He reminded me of Billy Connolly when he mentioned words to the effect, in a Scottish accent of course, ”Before I came up on stage a couple of people were asking me why I was wearing a long dress…. you can find them lying on the floor towards the back of the room”.
I spoke to Alan during the event and found out that he came from Edinburgh, Scotland. I noticed that he said the word “wee” a wee less than my Glasgow born girlfriend Maureen does.
I found Alan Forrest Smith’s girlfriend to be very nice. I think her name was Katherine, but please correct me if this is not the case. She was amused that there was a picture of Pavarotti at the Acer Arena because of the likeness between Alan Forrest Smith and Pavarotti. I should have taken a photo of Alan with the photo of Pavarotti in the background, but I did not think of it at the time. The photo below is a blown up version of the Pavarotti photo taken behind the photo of Laura and me.
As you are probably aware by now, my dad “John” was one of the Alpha Leaders at UYMG Sydney last month.
In the last post I wrote, dad made a comment “I am disappointed that you did not link to the video of the dancing on stage at the start of day 2 when that “Old Bloke” showed the youngsters a few steps. Anyhow the video failed to show most of the dance steps and focused mainly on upper body movements. ”
Well I have now included the video of dad performing and starring on stage along with some other Alpha Leaders. You can see it below. In my opinion, he really did dance very well and I know that some others agree with me. Unfortunately, I was at the door, so I did not get to see him or the other Alpha Leaders perform live. Thanks for taking the video Sern Yi.
UYMG Sydney March 2008 (Unleash Your Marketing Genius) has been and gone and I had a wonderful time again. I wanted to get this and some other UYMG posts out earlier, but I had some unforeseen difficulties that I had to sort out first, including computer PC problems. I will not get into that now though.
The attendance was good considering that the WIS (World Internet Summit) was being held at the same time, and there was a great deal of energy in the room. Thanks for all that participated in the event to make it all so worthwhile. The good news is that UYMG and WIS will be combined in Dallas, Texas 22-25 May. I will be there, so hopefully I shall see you there too.
Many may not realize that Stephen Pierce did not get his luggage until the day before he had to go back home. In fact both he and Alicia lost their luggage on the return trip too . Stephen and Alicia had to hustle around town to find suitable clothing for him to wear at the event. Alicia told me that she had previously bought some expensive clothing for Stephen just for the event. Despite all the chaos, Stephen provided a few days worth of internet marketing and related content in his usual professional and informative manner. Everyone seemed to pay close attention to every word he spoke, as they should have. I was quite amazed and impressed with the fact that Stephen sometimes did not know what he was going to talk about until moments before he went on stage.
Above is a photo taken of Stephen Pierce with me at UYMG Sydney 2008. Have a look at the size of his fist and forearm. I had better stay on the good side of Stephen… only joking.
Alicia was as lovely as usual at UYMG Sydney 2008. Every time I have been in contact with Alicia she has been very helpful and friendly to me. I know that Alicia has faith in me and I really appreciate the support she has given me. Alicia does a lot of work in the background to help support and promote Stephen and they complement each other very well. I loved the hat that she was wearing at the event. The hat can be seen in the photo below of Alicia Pierce and me.
Laura Remeselnik is well known within the SMCC community, where she works flat out. It was her first appearance at a UYMG event in Sydney and I was glad that I got to catch up with her in real person after receiving many emails from her in the past. Laura, along with with Sern Yi (The SMCC development manager and one of the nicest person that I have met), gave a hands on presentation about web pages and ftp. I found Laura to have a pleasant and unique personality. I enjoyed the conversations that I had with Laura and enjoyed working with her at the event. Laura is also mad about craft work, so we had some craft exercises to do in the pre UYMG training.
Above is a great photo of Laura Remeselnik and me at UYMG Sydney 2008. Don’t worry Maureen (my girlfriend), Laura is happily engaged to be married. Raymond, make sure that you take notice of that last sentence! Also notice the picture of Pavarotti in the background? That photo of Pavarotti will become relevant in a future post.
Unlike 2007, UYMG Sydney 2008 was held at the Acer Arena at Sydney Olympic Park. While the Acer Arena may have been difficult for some people to get to, I had the pleasure of dealing with some of the staff who ran the Arena and I found them to be very nice. In case you are reading this post, a warm hello to all, including the manager, head caterer and the cleaner.
My dad “John” was part of the Alpha Leadership group this year and we both shared accommodation at the Ibis. The Ibis was less than a 10 minute walk to the Acer Arena, so it was very handy for us. I only wished that they remembered to replace the towels when they took the used ones away for cleaning. My dad was suffering from a cold and was coughing and spluttering at night. You would not know it though as he was lively and very helpful at the event.
Below is a photo of Stephen Pierce, dad and me at UYMG Sydney. You can see dad and me propping Stephen up to make him look taller, well it almost looks that way.. lol.
UYMG had several guest speakers of which I shall write posts about in the future. Inanna Lawton and Melissa Hewetson both presented in the previous UYMG event too. Others included Allan Forrest Smith, Nikhil Parekh, Andrew and Daryl Grant, Janet Switzer, Ken Shimizu and Ben Teo.
Well, UYMG Sydney 2008 has finished and I am now home in Brisbane again. What an amazing time we all had there. I had loads of fun, learned a great deal and met many wonderful people with lovely smiles. I would like to thank everyone who attended the event. Stephen and the guest speakers gave some great content but the participation of all attendees made the event all so worthwhile. I shall be posting more about the UYMG event over the next few weeks with some photos included.
Before the event, the Alpha Leaders had 2 days of training. Part of the training included a game where we had to split into 2 teams and quickly write down as many things down about a member of the opposite team in 2 minutes. The team that I was in lost the game, but at least that meant that we received the most compliments.
Below are the compliments that I received, in the order that they were written.
Good family man, technical, knowledgeable, helpful, friendly, caring, loving, funny, supportive, expert in his field, honest, handsome (says Robert and Janet), happy, enthusiastic, tall, masculine, intellectual, gentle, sense of humour, good heart, strong, vibrant, loves the weather, amazing, ambitious, entrepreneurial, helpful and genuine.
No wonder the other team won…they doubled up on helpful, lol. Anyway, it was a good exercise to participate in. Too often people find the negatives about others when they should really focus on the positives. There were many very nice compliments, so thanks to all Alpha leaders who came up with them for me.
Below is a video of the Alpha leaders on stage with Stephen Pierce and Alicia Pierce at the close of the UYMG Sydney 2008.
It was also special to have my dad, John, as part of the Alpha leader team this year. I am sure that he entertained many of you with his dad like sense of humour.
UYMG Sydney 2008 is March 14th-16th, so there is not long to go. I will be one of the Alpha Leaders again. This time my dad shall also part of the group, which will make it even more special for me.
The event will be held at the Acer Arena at Sydney Olympic Park, which is very appropriate during an Olympic year. Unlike last year, Laura Remeselnik will be attending. I will be looking forward to catching up with her too.
UYMG events are not only good for learning matters related to Internet marketing, but also for building relationships that could be very beneficial for your business. Last year I recall asking someone what his passion was. He gave me his reply and then another person with a related passion overheard his response. They then got together to discuss how they could help each other.
Below are some photos of UYMG Sydney 2007 that I have not previously shown.
David Lakhani gave a presentation to help people gain motivation. I missed most of his presentation, but my dad was very impressed with it and told me that he caught the attention of everyone in the room.
Patric Chan gave a presentation about web 2.0. Patric certainly does have a great knowledge in Internet Makerting and dad and I were impressed how he remembered everyione’s names. I spoke to his wife, Emily, during the event too and found her to be a pleasant person.
I saw Jennie Armato give a presentation before, so I knew that she was full of life and energy. Jennie started the presentation sipping on a cocktail in a beach scene and had the UYMG audience in a trance. Janet Rundle was her “buddie” and she did a great job helping her out.
Deb and JP Micek gave a couple of presentations at UYMG Sydney 2007, but they were particularly focussed on new media. They also promoted their blog i360 software.
So you can see that there was plenty of talent at UYMG Sydney 2007 and there certainly will be more talent to see at UYMG Sydney 2008. I hope to see you there.
I have always found the Glass House Mountains a spectacular view while driving towards the Sunshine Coast from Brisbane. They are actually volcanic peaks that were created about 24 million years ago. I have often wanted to climb one of them and last Sunday I finally did.
As you may already know from the previous post, Maureen and I stayed at a log cabin at the Glass House Mountains called Crookneck Retreat. If not you can read about it and see some pictures of this lovely place here. We decided that we go on a bush walk while staying at Crookneck Retreat and we were advised that the walk and climb up Mt Ngungun was very nice, so long as it is not too wet. The added bonus was that the walk started about 2.5km from Crookneck Retreat, so it was easy to walk to it.
Maureen and I decided to walk to it. There were quite a few showers the night before, but there had been plenty of sunshine in the morning, so we hoped that the track would be suitable. Along Old Gympie Road we noticed Mt Ngungun to the east. The picture below was taken while walking along Old Gympie Road and it shows the highest peak that we will be attempting to reach.
Not far along Old Gympie Road we had to turn left onto Fullertons Road. Fullertons road was quite a narrow road, so now I knew why Brett suggested that I take Coonowrin Road to get to Crookneck Retreat rather than this road. While walking along Fullertons road we noticed a better view of the cliff of Mt Ngungun.
As we walked further along Fullertons road towards Mt Ngungun we were close to a farm house and we noticed a great view of Mt Coonowrin (Crookneck) and Mt Beewah behind us. The farm house had magnificent views of Mt Coonowrin, Mt Beewah and Mt Ngungun. They also had 2 dogs that let everyone know that we were walking past the property.
When we arrived at the entrance of the walk we noticed that there were about 5 cars parked in the provided car park, so it seemed to be a popular walk. The first part of the walk was a dirt pathway with a relatively gentle rise that snaked up the mountain. We were told by a couple on top of the summit later that there used to be a steeper walk in that section but they closed it for regeneration. We were walking in a rain forest environment with plenty of ferns and trees and the moisture from the plantation made the environment very humid and we were both perspiring.
Then the path turned into a rather steep rock climb. There was a slippery clay type substance between the rocks, so care needed to be taken while walking up. We were concerned with the return trip down, but that proved to be OK in the end. I can understand how this could be a little dangerous if it was too wet. Showers did fall while we were walking up, but that cooled us down a little. Also we noticed that others were successfully climbing down from the summit, so we continued our journey.
The photo below shows Maureen on the way down this rocky climb. To her right is a cave that is part of the scenery on this walk.
At the top of the picture above, there was a plateau followed by a further rocky climb. This section was not quite as rocky but had plenty slippery clay parts to avoid.
Eventually we arrived at the summit and enjoyed the spectacular views. It was very windy at the top and it was also cooler, which was pleasant after a sweaty walk to the summit. A French Girl and a girl from Chile were kind enough to take some photos of Maureen and me at the top of Mt Ngungun, including the 2 below.
I also took this photo of Maureen with Mt Tibrogargan and what I think is Mt Tibberoowuccum in the background.
After the trip we returned to Crookneck retreat where I had a nice shower followed by a relaxing spa with a glass of bubbly. The photo of me in the spa in the Valentine’s Vacation To Crookneck Retreat was taken after this walk and it showed that I did get sun burnt. So even if it is a cloudy day, I suggest that you protect your skin with sunburn cream and also wear better clothing than I did (a collar at least).
. Stephen and Alicia had to hustle around town to find suitable clothing for him to wear at the event. Alicia told me that she had previously bought some expensive clothing for Stephen just for the event. Despite all the chaos, Stephen provided a few days worth of internet marketing and related content in his usual professional and informative manner. Everyone seemed to pay close attention to every word he spoke, as they should have. I was quite amazed and impressed with the fact that Stephen sometimes did not know what he was going to talk about until moments before he went on stage.
