No, my fellow TIP’s, I am not writing today about Matt Bisogno’s shed at the bottom of his garden. He may well have a shed; it may well be situated at the far end of his lawn; and perhaps it’s here that he is banished on occasion by Mrs Matt, having partaken in one glass too many of the black stuff of an evening. This is merely conjecture, and not the topic of today’s post.
No, today I want to recount my experience of the business building workshop Matt hosted recently.
I am in the business of marketing on the internet, and I try at least once a year to get myself some education in my chosen field of business, with the aim of becoming better at it, and improving the level of service I provide to my customers. Whatever you do for a living, I’m guessing either your employer invests in your personal training, or if you are self-employed you do the same as me, and invest in yourself.
The problem I found when I first started internet marketing, was who to trust, and who would give me the best value for money. Often I would turn up at a seminar only to find the information given out was vague, and it was basically a two day ‘pitch fest’ for the marketers on stage to sell their own ‘how to make money’ courses to a captive audience. If this wasn’t the case, then the seminar content was invariably generic, and often difficult to translate to my own business.
Over the years I have found myself following only a few key people. I can certainly count them on the fingers of one hand. Call them ‘gurus’ or ‘mentors’ if you like, but these select few are basically those who ‘teach’ on my wavelength, and who I best relate to.
So when I got the opportunity to attend Matt Bisogno’s seminar on building an online business in the horse racing and betting niche, I made sure I was there. Here was someone doing exactly what I do for a living, in the very same market-place, and willing to impart some of his knowledge to help others to the same.
I jumped on the train from Tring, bound for the smoke in London. Actually, it was a gloriously sunny day, and St George’s Day to boot. I took a few minutes in Trafalgar Square, basking in the morning sun and the pride of being, well, English on St George’s Day, before strolling off to the nearby Institute of Directors for 9 o’clock.
It’s an impressive venue, and I was guided downstairs to a meeting room. There were already several other delegates, and Matt greeted me warmly and invited me to grab a coffee. The day kicked off with Matt managing to compress his life story into 10 minutes, before we got stuck into the first main topic.
Matt Bisogno teaches Product Launches
We learned how to use a software tool called Racing System Builder to research and verify profitable betting systems. The thing that I found particularly appealing here was how Matt was keen to impress upon everybody the difference between a non-sensical back-fitted system, and one based upon logic. He explained that it is relatively easy to find a set of filters that produce a profitable, so-called ’system’ from a database of horse racing results. However, if a system is not based first and foremost in logic, then any profit is more likely to be coincidental.
At this point I mentioned a system I remember one of my readers sending in to me, just for fun. He called it The Bridesmaid System. He called it that because when he got married, in June a few years back, the bridesmaids wore purple dresses. So his system was to back any horse running in June, where the jockey was wearing purple silks. Although he could show the system had historically made a profit, it was a good example of a non-sensical system, not based on any sound horse racing logic. These are the kind of wonder betting systems we all see rolled out week after week by the scumbag systems sellers.
Matt did not want his students to be seduced by the Dark Side, but to use the power of the Force for good!
By contrast, when Matt proceeded to demonstrate how to create a viable betting system, he started from a logical hypothesis. Without going into detail, he first proposed that two year-olds making their second appearance, and after a reasonable period since their last outing to recover, could be expected to improve enough to win. Together we all then proceeded to check the results database to prove this could be developed into a profitable betting system.
We spent considerable time in this area, playing with ideas and databases for most of the morning. Having learned how to research and create a legitimate betting system, rather than tin-pot back-fitted systems, it was time for lunch!
Business building workshop
Following the morning which was aimed at developing a quality product to sell online, the afternoon was geared towards how to package that product (or racing advisory service) and market to a paying audience. We examined various business models, talked about pricing, membership sites, how to get help to create a web site, how to attract visitors to your web site, the basic tools of the trade needed to automate your business, how to conduct a successful product launch, and many other valuable topics. In conclusion, we saw for ourselves how the theory was put into practice as Matt showed us some live footage of several of his own product launches.
All in all, I have to say my day at the Institute of Directors was one of the best learning workshops I have attended. There was a considerable amount of relevent and actionable information for the delegates to take away. Indeed the main reason it has taken me until now to put my experience into words, is that I have spent the last two weeks putting a lot of what I learned that day into action myself, ahead of my own product launch at the end of this month…. watch this space for details of my new service ;o)
In an industry that is littered with nefarious sellers who remain anonymous whilst ripping-off unwary buyers, it was refreshing to meet with a professional marketer who clearly has a passion for his business, and the subject of his business, namely horse racing.
I know he does not conduct these workshops very often, but if your interest has been sparked by this editorial, you can visit Matt Bisogno’s GeeGeez blog and drop him a line to find out more.
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