On Sunday we flew down to Sydney for the Australian Promotional Products Association (APPA) winter trade show. APPA are the official professional body who look after the Promotional Products industry.

We had an early start with a 6am flight to Sydney, from Brisbane. We got to Sydney about 7.30am and caught the train into Sydney. When we got to out hotel, the Hotel Ibis World Square, we discovered that we had (meaning Rheanna) booked the wrong night! We had booked for Monday night, but we needed accommodation for Sunday night. They changed it for us at a cost of $30, although we never got charged in the end. Rheanna swears she booked the right day, so always make sure you check the print out of what you have booked as by the time you arrive with the paperwork it is too late.

Then we discovered we had to pay to have our luggage stored. Who does that? It’s the first hotel we’ve ever experienced making you pay to store luggage. We had to go to the basement and store our luggage in a locker. What a rip-off!

After what was a frustrating beginning we went out for breakfast. The area around the Sydney Entertainment and Convention centre has changed somewhat since we were last there, and we had a quick look around Paddy’s market first which is extremely junky. It was noticeable ho many Kiwis and black shirts were around obviously enjoying the result of the rugby the previous night.  We then made our way to the trade show for an 11am start.

Once inside, there were about 150 exhibitor booths. After cruising through the first 2 in about 1 minute, we figured we’d better slow down, ask questions and make the most of it. It then took us about 2 hours to get through another 10!

There were promotional products for everything. Bags, pens, diaries, compendiums, clothing, umbrellas, chocolates, golf equipment, electronics, conference supplies, notepads, novelty items, corporate gifts and the list goes on and on and on. There were also decorators talking about the different decoration methods – pad printing, screen-printing, embossing, debossing, foil stamp, embroidery etc.

We stayed until about quarter to 5, packed full with information and catalogues! Almost everyone gave us at least 1 catalogue, and then there were samples as well.

For dinner we went to the old Planet Hollywood restaurant. Planet Hollywood restaurants don’t seem to operate in the Southern Hemisphere anymore, and the inside remains the same, but it has a new name. They had a $7 porterhouse steak. You can’t get much better than that. It was one of the better steaks I’ve had in Australia.

Sunday night was a reasonably early night and on Monday morning we did it all over again. We finished off the booths we hadn’t visited, and revisited those we needed too. By lunchtime we had finished and spent the afternoon going to the North side of Sydney.

We had to store our luggage in the lockers again, and after going down to the basement we decided to change clothes. Out of the more formal wear, into something a little more casual. I didn’t notice there were security cameras on the roof, so I just changed there and then seeing as we had nowhere else to change. Only when we came back in the evening did I notice them!

Coming back to Brisbane we had the last flight, and got in after 11pm! It’s weird for people to say going “home” to Brisbane, as it never feels like “home”. Can anyone answer why pilots wear those silly hats and stripes on their uniforms? Surely they must get into the cockpit and take their hat off, saying “thank god I can take off this ridiculous thing now!” I swear the planes seem to be getting smaller and smaller in terms of leg room, and why do people insist on having to get up as fast as they can when the plane stops, trying to hurl everyone out of their way to get their luggage out first. Then they have to wait a few minutes for the plane to open its doors. Where do they think they are going to get to?

On Saturday we  went to the Millionaire makers bootcamp run by Pat Mesiti. It was a 4 day seminar, but we only attended  Saturday afternoon to see our mentor Jennie Armato, who is one of our business mentors and helped us get started in the world of Internet Marketing.

We got singled out for attention from Jennie, being her students (how embarrassing!) in front of a room full of a few hundred people. Jennie shared some great stuff to do with social engines eg Facebook, Twitter. They are becoming the new and most popular way for businesses to advertise what they do, as millions of people spend time searching these social engines. Whether we like it or not, it’s what the world is doing, and we have to adapt or get left  behind.

Afterwards we had a few people come up to us, asking us questions as they were very interested in the mentoring packages Jennie was offering. There are many people starting to think about their financial futures.

Just this week I was watching a video from Brett McFall (another of our mentors) who has been in the United States running the World Internet Summit. He says that there are 100′s and 1000′s of foreclosures occuring in the United States and that is severely affecting the economy. If you aren’t already building your ark for the coming floods, you’d better start thinking about it. The best time is now, and we may only just be beginning to see what is truly about to hit us!

Last weekend was the “How to make money while you sleep” seminar by Brett McFall

So we travelled back down to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast.

We arrived fairly early as registration opened from 8.15am, and we managed to take a few photos coming into the Gold Coast from Brisbane.

View of Surfers Paradise from Southport

View of Surfers Paradise from Southport

Surfers Paradise buildings

We had a quick Hot chocolate from Gloria Jeans and made our way into the seminar. Once again it was awesome to hear Brett McFall speak, and we certainly learnt a lot. However the main thing now is to start putting ideas into action.

We had lunch at La Prochetta, ordering a spicy Mexican pizza. The hot salami and chilli were defintely spicy and it got a thumbs up from us! Service was once again quite average, and when we went to order our drinks we got told there was no juice available. Not any type at all. How can you run out? And why wouldn’t you send someone to the supermarket and get some??

Surfers Paradise beachfront

Surfers Paradise beachfront

Surfers Paradise beach

Surfers Paradise beach looking towards Coolangatta

This past weekend saw another seminar, this time Booming in the bust. It is all about how to prosper in these tough/exciting economic times, depending on how you view the world.

The first day was quite boring initially, as it took a while to get into the content. However later that day we got to see Joel Comm speak, who is a great speaker and very knowledgeable about how anyone can profit on the Internet. He spoke a lot about social networking which is storming the world, including twitter and facebook. the other speakers that day included David Bussau, Harry Dent and Loral Langemeier. Harry Dent spoke about trends and what forecasts he had which was very interesting.

Sanjay and Kerwin Rae

Rheanna and Kerwin Rae

Later in the day was Mark Victor Hansen, co-author and co-founder of the chicken soup for the soul series of books, and best selling author of the one minute millionaire. We also got to meet Mark and speak to him too.

Us with Mark Victor Hansen

 The last day saw Australian speaker Pat Mesiti, Tom McKaskill, Joesph Michelli and Ari Galper. The trick now is not so much what was learnt, but applying some of these strategies to make money.

Day 2 of Chris Howard’s ultimate marketing seminar was just as spectacular with a great lineup of speakers. We were fortunate to meet the first speaker, Internet marketing expert, Armand Morin. Armand is often regarded as one of the best Internet marketers, having been online since 1996, and having made over $76 000 000! Just last year alone he made well over $20 million so it’s no wonder he is highly sought after. He was very down to earth and it was great to have a few minutes alone to speak with him.

Sanjay and Armand Morin

There were some more amazing speakers later that day with sales expert Ari Galper, copwriting king John Carlton and Kerwin Rae rounding off what was a mind blowing day. There was a heap of information, the key now is applying some of it and starting to cash in off the Internet!

The past weekend was very busy for us with plenty of seminars on. I went down the Coast to see Andrew and Domenica of Exquisite Life Seminars which was all about energy being what makes us function and find the barriers to peoples dreams. If one is not living their dream life, Andrew and Domenica believe their is a barrier contained within the person’s energy systems. eg If you are an athlete and have an injury, some belief or energy (you don’t think you are good enough) eg is causing you to manifest that as a physical limitation. I can’t say I agreed with much of it, but interesting nonethless.

Rheanna meanwhile attended the first day of Chris Howard’s Ultimate Marketing Seminar. There were some fantastic speaks with Adam Ginsberg, the eBay expert starting things off. He is a fantastic speaker, who has made millions on eBay. He recommends everyone sell something on eBay, and you’ll fall in love with eBay once you have sold something you think is absolutely unsellable! Go on try it! Aaron Raymond sold a used pair of orthotics, Adam sold his used running shoes, just to prove you can sell anything on eBay!

Other speakers included Siimon Reynolds and James Schramko. However Rheanna really enjoyed search engine optimisation expert Brad Fallon from StomperNet. He had heaps of practical advice and is regarded as one of the best in the world at search optimisation.

Rheanna and Brad Fallon of StomperNet

Recently we’ve been going to a lot of seminars. They’re run by different companies, and as we get on their mailing lists, the number of invites increase.
Generally we go to financial education and internet marketing semianrs, but personal development ones also interest us. The latest one to come our way was for laughter yoga. This is definitely one of the more interesting ones to come our way!

My advice is to smile, enjoy life and have a laugh the natural way!

This week has been a frustrating week trying to register a business name. As with everything I try to do in this country, i’ve found it to be a time consuming process run by a bunch of morons! Everything seems to have red tape. I don’t think anyone operates on logic these days.

That aside, on Saturday we had a Warp Speed training session with Tim Thompson who is a South African. He may be a Sharks supporter but he was a hell of a nice guy and taught us many practical things. Tim teaches in a very simple, easy to understand manner and we got a great deal out of the day. The session was held at Surfers Paradise, down on the Gold Coast so we spent the day travelling down there early morning and back late at night. Then I stayed up for the rugby, firstly it was the Royal XV v The British and Irish Lions, before the main game, The Super 14 final, The Bulls v the Chiefs. Congratulations to the Bulls who made us very very proud!

The World Internet Summit, hosted by its founders Brett McFall and Tom Hua was held on the Gold Coast over 4 days. I attended the first 2 days alone, and then Rheanna joined me on the final 2 days.
They were full on, starting around 9am and finishing anywhere from 6pm, to 7.30pm. There were some fantastic, world famous, rich internet marketers who shared many of their secrets. Whilst they were all selling their education packages, they provided plenty of useful information that you could walk away with and implement immediately.

There was also the World Internet Challenge where the speakers promoted products/websites for sale, and 2 lucky winners won the businesses that were created. One person won just over $29000, and the other over $10000! This provided proof it can be done!

We purchased 2 packages over the weekend. One was Brett McFall’s Warp Speed program. A step by step program for learning how to make money using the Internet. Brett is an awesome speaker, who keeps things simple and genuinely wants people to succeed. He is an extrememly humble guy, and we’re glad to have him helping us out.

Us with Brett McFall

The other was the Monthly Mentor program from Raymond Aaron, which is a mentoring system, designed to help you achieve whatever you desire in life. Raymond mentors some of the world’s most successful people such as Jack Canfield (Co-founder the of Chicken soup for the Soul series).

Us with our mentor Raymond Aaron

We never thought about the fact that almost any successful person has a mentor. Obviously it’s something that I know almost all sports people have, but if you think about it, if you want to achieve something worthwhile, why not have a mentor? If there is one piece of advice i would give anyone, it’s get a mentor! Learn how to goal set. Be accountable. And get help from others to help you where you want to go. You deserve it.

If you’d like to learn more about World Internet Summit, get a copy of the video, or learn how to make money on the Internet, go to www.beaninternetmarketer.com/ukwis

It was extremely cold when we got there, so much so I had to go to Kathmandu at the lunch break and get 2 polyprops! I had figured being the start of March it would be cool, but how cold could it really be at that time of year? Needless to say I found out how spoiled we are in Brisbane.

It was a full on 3 days, with plenty of things to learn and make the head spin. We didn’t have a lot of spare time, after we exercised first thing in the morning, and went out for dinner afterwards. It was good to be back in Melbourne. The city is a lot bigger than Brisbane, with more industrial, warehousing and administrative buildings. It makes it feel a lot more like a city.

Saturday night we went out to the Spicy fish, a chinese restuarant in Chinatown. Boy is the spicy fish spicy! Even I was sweating and biting my tongue. Saturday night after dinner we had a pyjama party at the hotel. A little bit embarrasing getting into the lift in your pyjamas, but then again going down I don’t think anyone noticed!

Forward to freedom seminar - Pyjama party!

Sunday night we went to Gaylord Indian restuarant. Quite tasty and good service (for Australia!).

Monday was a full on day and ended with a flight home about 7pm.