EFP 83: Targeting Your Nemesis And Stealing Market Share

Justin Cooke February 20, 2014

So you want to grow your business? You want to have some of what your biggest competitor’s having? Well, you’re going to have to do some heavy lifting and perhaps a bit of dirty (but 100% legal/whitehat) work.

How to Steal Marketshare from Your Competitors

Today, we talk about how to target your nemeses and steal some of their sweet, delicious market share. That’s right, we’re going full on thievery here.

Please keep in mind that calling your competition your “nemesis” is a lighthearted way of describing a friendly rivalry. No cutting at people’s throats or trying to put people out of business.

Check Out This Week’s Episode Here:

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Topics Discussed This Week Include:

  • Targeting the right nemesis to tackle head on.
  • Putting on your SEO-hat and analyzing back links.
  • Stealing your competition’s social media followers.
  • Adding value to your nemesis’ platforms.
  • Reaching out to thought leaders that endorse your nemesis.

Mentions:

Quotables:

  • “There’s no need to antagonize your nemesis (competitor.) It’s not good for your business.” -Justin – Tweet This!

What are some of your strategies for chipping off some of your nemeses’ market share? Leave us a SpeakPipe message or comment below to let us know!

 


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Speaker 1:           Welcome to the Empire Flippers podcast. Are you sick and tired of gurus who have plenty of ideas but are short on substance? Worried that e-book you bought for $17.95 won’t bring you the personal and financial freedom you long for? Hey, you’re not alone. Join thousands of others in their pursuit of niche profits without the bullshit. Straight from your hosts, Justin and Joe from Empire Flippers.

Justin:                   Welcome to episode 83 of the Empire Flippers podcast, I’m your host Justin Cook, and I’m here with Joe “hot money”Magnotti. What’s going on brother?

Joe:                        Hello everybody.

Justin:                   We’ve got quite an episode for you. We’re gonna get down and dirty. We’re gonna be talking about how to target your nemesis and steal their market share.

Joe:                        Ooh my nemesis.

Justin:                   We’re going for it man. We’re gonna get hardcore in this episode. It’s gonna be a great one for you. I hope you dig it. Before we do that, let’s do some updates, news and info. First thing we’ve got a new five-star stitch review.

Joe:                        Hit me up buddy.

Justin:                   So Yodabog gives us five stars it says “pounding it out in devout, these two guys never stop, week after week they come to the table with some great stuff. I’ve learned so much about business and flipping sites. Wake up every Thursday to get my shot of Justin and Hot Money, these guys – the real deal.”

Joe:                        I do feel like we’re pounding it out sometimes, but I’m glad you’re still listening.

Justin:                   Appreciate it YodaDog. Also, got a five-star review on iTunes. It says David, at Authorityladder.com says “it just gets better and better. Justin and Joe give it to you straight and are always down to earth and informative. Really respect these guys for motivating all of us regular guys running an online biz.” Appreciate it David.

                                So, we’ve got a couple things coming up. First thing is this weekend. We’re running a focus 55. I first heard about the concept in a membership group called the dynamite circle. And basically the idea is this, it’s like a start up weekend, but it’s for established businesses that are looking to build out a project. So, we’re gonna be working on a project, and I’m gonna be working a project this weekend, along with a few other people. Basically, we’re taking over my house, so, we’re gonna have our maid here doing some extra duties, some overtime, we might have a developer/designer come over and help us out a bit. But, we’re gonna have five or six guys in the house just working our butts off this weekend to knock some stuff out.

                                So, there are like accountability breaks, and a little one on one beating each other up about what we’re working on, stay in focus, so it should be interesting. The next thing we’ve got is a strategy meeting that we’re running on Thursday. We do this once a quarter, and every three months or so we get together, sit down and kind of look at our long-term goals. We work backwards, so we say where to we wanna be in three years, two years, one year, six months and then what are we doing this next quarter to get to it. And we basically adjust our strategy as we go on every new quarter, because things change. Things change in our business. And it’s a great time for us to kind of trim the fat. So we cut out some of the projects that we’re no longer focused on or that were kind of side projects that weren’t great for us and really get down to the nitty gritty.

Joe:                        Yeah, we were doing this before I read The Advantage, but that book really pushed me to say an offsite should be done every three months, where you kind of sit together with your leadership team and you bring in the high level managers and you kind of go over stuff. We haven’t gotten to that level yet, but maybe we should try that this Thursday.

Justin:                   Well we’re doing it ourselves, and I think it’s good for us to get it settled and get it focused. I think it’s been good. We were gonna do offsite at the beautiful resort called Pearl Farm and Joe just gave me the bad news before the show saying, “I don’t know man, I didn’t book the tickets, so I don’t know if we can go.” It’s this beautiful resort here in Davaos. If you ever make it out here, make sure to check out Pearl Farm.

                                Last point I want to make is we had a chance to talk to Dave and Mike Hermansen over at Storecoach.com today. We just had a quick call with them, you know a buddy introduced us to them briefly. I started tweeting about their stuff, and we ended up connecting on a call. Those guys are super sharp, so they are, they built out 50 or 60 different e-commerce sites in the last ten years. And they build them out, and then they’ve sold a lot of them off. They’re keeping some of the sites now and actually building them out even further, but they build storecoach.com to basically walk everyone through the process of how they create their, how they find their niches, how they create the e-commerce sites, how they go about sourcing the goods. It’s really interesting. And it’s kind of a holistic approach to this, and they offer a lot of products and services around it.

Joe:                        Yeah, it’s similar to what we do with giving away the process for free and then offering some different products or services for people when they get stuck, or just don’t wanna do it themselves. They also have a really cool forum that’s free and that has some very interesting tidbits of information. If you’re in the e-commerce space I highly recommend you check it out.

Justin:                   All right man, enough about that. Let’s get right into the heart of this week’s episode.

Speaker 1:           This is the Empire Flipper’s podcast.

Justin:                   So, as we mentioned at the top of the show, this episode is all about how to target your nemesis and steal their market share. First thing we should do is talk a little bit about what nemesis means.

Joe:                        Yeah.

Justin:                   So nemesis isn’t the competitor you hate, it isn’t someone you wanna take down, it’s a silly way to describe a competitor that you are going after. You’re going after them. And maybe in a fun and friendly way, but you’re going to be going after them.

Joe:                        We use them as a little bit jokingly here. You definitely shouldn’t … should be more like rivalry almost. Where you look up to them perhaps and you just want to be able to bring them into your sphere of competition.

Justin:                   We did this when we were starting off when we were AdSense flippers. We were looking at Spencer over at Niche Pursuits and we were looking at Pat Flynn over at smartpassiveincome.com.  Those guys were our nemeses, right? We were going after them. Pat Flynn with his income report, he was crushin’ it. We’re like, God I wanna get there. We gotta do that too. And then Spencer with his amazing content that he’s able to put out and really be helpful to people and build audience. And so, those were kind of the targets the things we wanted to do. And now, it’s changing a bit because we’ve changed our focus. But here’s kind of the first step in finding your own nemesis for your business. You need to target competitors that are bigger than you. You don’t want to have a nemesis that is riding your coat tails or is trying to work their way up the ladder. There’s no margin in it, there’s no benefit in targeting someone who’s smaller than you. You want to reach on this one.

Joe:                        Yeah, you were talking about that before this show. I kind of understand it now. If you’re gonna take ten percent of their market share, you want that market share to be relatively large in comparison to what you have.

Justin:                   Here is the silly math I gave you before. Your competitor has 1,000 customers. You have 100. You can take ten percent of the customers away from your competitor or your nemesis, they can take 20 percent of the customers away from you and you’re still crushing it, right? You’re leveling the playing field because they’re so much bigger than you. And I think that’s a really good way to approach it. The other thing, the other point we will mention in terms of finding your nemesis. You can keep it friendly. So we were going after Pat Flynn over at smartpassiveincome, he didn’t even know, it wasn’t even a thing. It was something we would joke about and keep updated on his income reports and how he was doing and stuff, and it was like one sided battle, but it was motivating for us. So, it was motivating to look at someone who was doing really well and say I wanna do really well too. We’re gonna go after that guy, we’re gonna catch up to him as best we can.

Joe:                        Yeah, I think this is important, especially in the online world where there are so many trolls, and there are so many people that could be negative. You don’t wanna go down that road. Keep it friendly.

Justin:                   The other thing we want to talk about, is that in general, this is a general statement. We have an abundance mindset, so we are … we believe in making the pie bigger, and we want to do that, and in every industry or every business that we’re involved in. But there’s no reason you can’t have a piece of your competitor’s cake too. So what we’re talking about here is actually continuing to build that pie, but also taking a few slices of your competitors pie for yourself and I think that’s a great strategy if you’re doing it a double prong attack where you’re building it and you’re also taking some from your competition.

Joe:                        Hey, zero sum games do exist, but in this case, try to focus on the ones that are not like that. Where you both can win, but you have a slight advantage, a slight bigger margin.

Justin:                   Another thing I wanna talk about is you need to understand your nemeses. Nemeses?

Joe:                        Nemesi?

Justin:                   Yeah. You need to understand the customer avatar profile for your competition. So, ask them. People that are customers of both companies. What do they like about your competitor. What do they not like. How can you improve? What are your value ads that make your product or service better than theirs? And these are things that especially if you chose a very large competitor, it’s very difficult for them to do that. You know, likely a much larger organization it’s hard for them to be as nimble and as aggressively targeting these customers and getting feedback from them as you’re able to do. So use that nimbleness, that small, start up, scrappy mentality and take advantage of it by being very close to your customers and their customers.

Joe:                        Yeah, I think this is especially true when you are looking to develop your business. You know when you’re coming out of the gates, maybe you’re really small. Looking to those larger competitors, slightly larger competitors finding out what holes there are and how you can pivot your business and make it a little bit better, it’s pretty important.

Justin:                   So, last thing we’ll mention is, this is a two-way street, so even though you may be doing this to your nemesis, you’re gonna have other people that are looking at you being their nemesis. So, you’re gonna have other people that are going after your market share, going after your customer base, you know opening up product services that are direct competitors to you. And that’s fine, that’s just the way that it works, you just need to be better than they are.

Joe:                        You know, I’m thinking about this, and I’m thinking is there like this middle ground where you could kind of get squeezed in the middle where your competitors are so far ahead of you that you can’t really be, your nemesi, or whatever that is, are so far ahead of you that you can’t really be competitive with them, you can’t use some of these tactics. But the people below you are seeing you have such good success that it’s easy to kind of nip at your heels.

Justin:                   You could. I don’t think so though. I just think that’s kind of a week position honestly. You’re laughing, but I think it’s kind of a weak, soft position. If you do find yourself in that position and you feel that way, what you can do is consolidate. You can take some of the people that are working their way up or that look at you as their nemesis and you can combine to take down the big guys. So that’s another approach you can take as well.

                                So enough about that.  Enough about finding your nemesis.  Let’s talk about some of the strategies and tactics you can use to steal market share. The first thing, the first point I want to make is follow the back links. So, this is nice, this is tricky. You can look at tools like Moz open site explorer.  You can look at the top back links that your competitor is getting, and you can follow those back links back through and see who is linking to them, who is talking about them, why they are mentioning them. Go ahead Joe.

Joe:                        I love this tip. I think that this one makes it really easy. This is like one of those kinda science ones, right? It is or it isn’t. You plug it into open site explorer, you see all the sites that are on there. You see the kind of conversations and what kind of stuff they’re linking to, what they’re talking about. It gives you an instant feed of places to go and stuff to talk about and go ahead and attack your nemesis.

Justin:                   Here’s one of these you can do. If you’re seeing that your competitors is being mentioned on TechCrunch or the NexWEB, whatever, you can see the author that actually wrote them or mentioned them and see if they’re writing those types of articles in that space. What you can then do is start stalking them on Twitter, start following them around and start to get connected with them so you can at one point reach out to them and say “hey by the way, here’s kind of what we do. We’re a competitor to blah, blah, blah.” And it gives you kind of an open door, and you know the right people to target because they are the people that are writing about your industry.

Joe:                        Better have a good way of communicating with these people though before you open that door.

Justin:                   Sure, no, you’re tweeting their stuff, you’re retweeting their stuff, you’re reading some of their content. And that’s kind of a great way for you to get in with them. Another thing you can do is you’ll see that sometimes your competitors are listed in directories. And so you can then reach out to those directories, especially if they’re strong back links. And say “hey, we’re in this space now, we’re doing this, this, and this,” and see if you can get included in those directories and get yourself some back links and some traffic as well.

                                Second point I wanted to mention, and this is fantastic. This came out just today at the time of recording. It was a great article on Quick Sprout, talking about stealing Twitter followers. And so we’re gonna mention some of these points. I mentioned the article, we are gonna link to in the shout outs. I’d really recommend checking it out, it’s fantastic. But one of the things they mention is that you can start responding to tweets about your competition. So sometimes you’ll have a customer that says company X sucks, or they kind of screwed me, or whatever. Let’s say GoDaddy, someone’s complaining about GoDaddy. Host Gator could step in there and say “hey, is there anything we can do for you?” “Can we answer any of your questions?” And don’t pitch them. Oh, you should try my service instead. That’s not cool. But actually stepping in to kind of help them in their frustration is a great way to siphon off twitter followers and customers ultimately.

Joe:                        Yeah, I think, like you said, be very careful there, especially if you’re not very familiar with how Twitter works. Not like the technical aspects of how Twitter works, that’s not what I’m talking about.

Justin:                   Twitter etiquette.

Joe:                        Yeah Twitter etiquette. If you’re not familiar with that, I would get familiar with that first before trying any of these advanced tips.

Justin:                   That’s true. Next tip that I thought was great that was mentioned on Quick Sprout, was you can analyze your competition or your nemesis through Twitonomy. Basically, you can find out who’s retweeting them the most. Who’s the most engaged with them? Who of their audience has the biggest audience themselves? And basically you can use this to make a list of people that you want to target that you want to mention yourself too, make sure that you’re getting yourself in front of them and engaging them as well, and providing yourself as an alternative to that other company. To your nemesis.

                                Another thing you can do is find out who has your nemesis in a list. So lists are really important. A lot of times people will follow other people on the list, and it’s great for building Twitter followings. You can reach out to the lister and ask them to add you to the list after you’ve engaged with them for a bit. So once you’ve gone back and forth with that person you’ve been following, you know retweet some of their stuff, kind of tweeted back and forth, you can then say, “hey if you’d add me to those lists I’d really appreciate it.” And then they can add you to that list and you can get a lot of follows that way.

                                One thing about stealing Twitter followers is this works really well if the competition or if your nemesis is big and they’re not great at social media. So, definitely of some offline brick and mortars that are a larger organizations, sometimes they haven’t figured out that whole Twitter thing yet. They haven’t figured out the whole social media fad yet. This is a great opportunity for you if you’re a competitor of theirs. Especially if you’re just starting up. You can get on social media and start engaging their customers that are being left out in the cold. I mean, if they’re not handling customer service on Twitter, go after them. Help them out. In fact, help them solve these problems with the company.

                                So if you’re a small hosting provider, a WP engine kind of start up and people are complaining about GoDaddy or Host Gator, help them, help them walk through GoDaddy and they’re gonna love you. That’s the kind of stuff that people are gonna talk about.

Joe:                        Yeah, the brick and mortar example is definitely out there. There’s gonna be a lot of those in the space that just don’t do social media at all. But there’s also going to be plenty of online companies or online services, especially in the middle area that probably don’t do social media very well at all. They’ve got it automated and set up, and it doesn’t really respond to people and doesn’t interact and doesn’t use Twitter and Facebook the way it really should. And that’s definitely a thing you could take advantage of.

Justin:                   So the third point I want to mention is you could actively add value on their platforms. I mean you could do this through blog commenting, you could do it through guest posts, you could do it through forum interaction. We’ve actually seen people do this to us with ads they slip in as Empire flippers, you know, they’re just starting their niche site journey and they would want to be the first ones to comment, they would wanna make sure they are engaged in our commend section because they’re trying to get their blog some attention and they know that they’re gonna get some of the people that are in our audience, would be interested in following their story too.

                                And generally, I am really cool with that because we’re a cooperation kind of approach to things, so it’s cool that other people are up and coming and getting their stuff started up.

Joe:                        We’ve talked about this before. But when we first started out, we definitely did this. We made a spreadsheet, we analyzed targets. WE said you’re gonna go on this blog, I’m gonna go on this blog. You’re gonna have to comment x amount of times per week. You’re gonna have to start a new thread x-bound times per week. And not only did it get you involved in the conversation and adding value on their platform. But it also showed you what was out there and made you an expert in the area. You learn things that you would have normally never learned about.

Justin:                   Also, it can connect to their competition for JV opportunities, for all different kinds of things, ways you can work together instead of fighting each other.

Joe:                        Builds authority, right?  I mean if people are gonna see you and you have something good to say on other people’s platform, they’re naturally gonna say “that’s smart.”

Justin:                   We’re getting dirty here Joe, man.  We’re gonna go to other people’s platforms and start snaking their customers.  Man, that’s hardcore.  So this is the thing we’lL mention here is you shouldn’t be pitchy, especially on someone else’s platform.  That’s just … that’s uncool man.  Don’t go to someone else’s platform and start pitching.  They’re gonna kick you off and you’re really a jerk.

Joe:                        But that shouldn’t be the goal.

Justin:                   That’s a douche move.

Joe:                        That shouldn’t be the goal. The goal is not to sneak their customers using their form. The goal is to become an active member of the community in general.

Justin:                   And actually help their users and customers.

Joe:                        Yes.

Justin:                   Because there’s gonna be some people that say “wow, that’s really interesting, that’s really helpful.” Maybe it wasn’t even that particular person. Maybe they’re just helped and their happy with your nemesis, your competition. But someone else comes along and goes, “I’m not happy, I love this guy. He’s explaining this so well, let me check out what he’s got going on.” So it’s a great opportunity for you to get some customers. But you’re helping their customers at the same.

                                Our fourth point we wanted to mention is that you can start to reach out to though leaders or third parties that are recommending your competition or your nemesis. So, you can basically reach out to these third parties that are connected to the industry somewhat and are driving kind of like a lead funnel or a sales funnel for your competition.  We were talking about before the show and an example I can think, especially I’m gonna offline example, would be let’s say you have a landscaping company, and you have a competitor that has a deal with a real estate development company> And so whenever they go in and they build these new homes, they recommend this other landscaper. You know they may do that because they’ve got an agreement or that landscaper took a deal. By throwing your hat into the ring by contacting them and letting them know “hey, I’m a landscaper as well, I’d love to work out a deal with you and throw in a competitive bid.” It gives you an opportunity or it gives them an opportunity to work with you as well.

                                So you’re simply just reaching out to these other people that are funneling leads and deals to your competition may make them think twice and may want them to split it up. They may want to just use you as a backup in case the other person goes away. Maybe they’re getting kickbacks, and they want to diversify their kickbacks a bit.

Joe:                        Yeah, I hear what you’re saying here Justin, but I say you have to be very careful with this method.

Justin:                   Why?

Joe:                        Because, I think if you go ahead and intersect yourself into somebody else’s third party deal, now you’re looking to go from friendly nemesis to active competitor and enemy.

Justin:                   That’s a little aggressive. That’s a little aggressive. I mean it’s cool though. It’s hostile.

Joe:                        Yeah. It’s like if you took away-

Justin:                   It’s hostile. Yeah. You’re taking food off my family’s plate. Right, yeah, low man.

Joe:                        So you gotta be a little careful-

Justin:                   It’s aggressive, but I mean that’s the way business works. If you’re looking to hustle up your business, it’s a great approach and everyone else is doing it. And remember this Joe, it’s a two-way street. So other people are gonna be doing this to you, so you might as well get aggressive in your approach and take down the market. But, either way, you know, it definitely can work. Let’s just say for example, just another example, an online example. You’re a hosting company and you provide great cheap hosting for niche sites. You reach out to Ed Dale, previously Ed Dale 30-Day Challenge and offer them a deal they can’t refuse. A couple of years ago they were absolutely crushing it in the space. They offered a free 30-day course, get everyone up to speed on building sites, and kind of making money online. And they had a ton of visitors, so you know, putting yourself in a position where you can take on the hosting for those customers would have been a fantastic move. There’s other opportunities as well.

                                But yeah I think you’re right, man, now that you say it that way, it is a little harsh.  I mean you’re taking away someone’s leader of sales, but hey man it’s business.

Joe:                        Yeah, just be aware that they may react back. And I would say your first step shouldn’t be “oh how do I become the ultimate website provider for the 30-day Challenge.” No, it should just be, “hey, Ed Dale, I run a website company and I just wanted to let you know I love the 30-day Challenge, and if there’s anyway we could work together, just let me know.” And see if there is any opportunity there before trying to intersect yourself.

Justin:                   So let’s talk about some of the things you should avoid. The first one being bad mouthing your nemesis. There’s really no need for that. It’s gonna make you look slimy. Any sales person will tell you this. The good ones aren’t gonna be bad mouthing their competition and saying how good they are, it’s just not true, and everyone knows it.

Joe:                        It’s an extension of the interview policies that we’ve had. I mean, if someone bad mouths an old employer, there’s probably something there about the person.

Justin:                   I don’t want you bad mouthing me when you go to the next company, right?

Joe:                        Right.

Justin:                   Yeah exactly.

Joe:                        So this is the same kind of thing, when you do a business deal, you have to be a very wary about bad mouthing your competitors, and your nemesis especially.

Justin:                   Well, this leads into the second point too, is that you can’t be dishonest. And when I say dishonest, obviously you can’t lie about your nemesis. But more importantly, I think you can’t lie by admission. So, you know you have to have some intellectual honesty and say you know my competitor is better in this area. In this arena, they actually are better than me. And you should point that out. And then point out where you’re better and argue, make the case why yours is more important. Why it’s more important for that client.

Joe:                        I think that is so great, because the customers that are not your target customers, are gonna go to the competitor, and the customers that fit within your box are gonna more likely come to you.

Justin:                   Yeah, because they’re gonna appreciate the fact that you’re straight up about it. And ultimately, it’s a defensible position. Right? When you approach it that way, you’re taking the high road and it’s a position you can defend. You can say “look, you know, I did absolutely explain the benefits and downsides to both, if you choose to work with me, it’s just a better fit.”  That’s it.

                                And the last point we’ll make on things to avoid is there’s not really a need to antagonize your nemesis.

Joe:                        Yeah.

Justin:                   Even if let’s say things went south. Let’s say you started targeting the hand that feeds them, you went after the third party or thought leader that’s sending them business and things went a little south. There’s still no reason to antagonize. You don’t want to go into their house and start throwing glasses on the floor, throwing temper tantrums, like kind of like making it really bad. You don’t wanna do it on their platform, you don’t wanna do it in the comments on their blog, that’s just not good. It’s not good for your business, it’s not good for their business, it’s just not good business.

Joe:                        Yeah, originally you know I was saying no need for conflict. In business, there’s always going to be a little bit of conflict. This is probably not something you can avoid. But antagonizing, especially when you’re in a position of a little bit of power. Things like that can come back to haunt you.

Justin:                   All right man. So that’s it for the this week’s examples, I hope you got something out of this one. Let’s move right into our tips, tricks, and plans for the future.

Speaker 1:           You’re listening to the Empire Flippers podcast with Justin and Joe.

Justin:                   All right man, so our tip and trick come from Joe this week. Since we’re talking about being fairly predatory, why don’t you talk about this next project.

Joe:                        Yeah, it’s called thepreyproject.com. It’s tracking software for your laptop, your phone, your PC, whatever you might need, it can track it electronically. It’s a free system that can track the three devices for free, after that you need to pay. It’s really cool, it’s open source. Great, great system for tracking, hopefully, knock on wood, I never have to use it, but it’s installed in my laptop and phone now.

Justin:                   See, I’m a big fan of free, I love free. But I also wanna know, what’s the deal man. So how are they making money off of me?

Joe:                        Yeah, so how they make money is, number one, three devices only for free. So if you want more devices on one account, you have to pay for it. Then, you get ten reports for free. So, if you want more than ten reports.

Justin:                   What’s a report. What do I get on a report?

Joe:                        A location, different little services, about what your device is doing, that kind of thing.

Justin:                   So let me say I’m in my car, I’m trying to chase down my laptop, and I’ve gotta pull out my credit card and pay them to get it?

Joe:                        I think it’s easier than that. You may not need more than ten to track a device down. So the free version is gonna be good enough. There are some other advanced features, I don’t remember them off the top of my head that you also have to pay for. But the normal stuff like alarm, lock screen, that kind of stuff, those are all part of the free. If you want like wipe, remote wipe device, that kind of stuff, I believe that’s paid for.

Justin:                   I was with, I’m not sure I should say his name or not, but I’m gonna say it anyway, I was with Cody, Cody [Mckibbon 00:25:04] when we were in Cebu.

Joe:                        I was there with you.

Justin:                   Yeah, he had his MacBook taken, or misplaced. He left it in a taxi, it wasn’t stolen. It was left in a taxi, and he was able to track it down. So he ended up telling some of the Filipino police officers in town and they were all fired up because he’s got this crazy tech where he’s able to track it down via a map, and they’re like hell yeah. So they get in the car and they go the taxi driver’s house, and he pulled it out and gave it back to him, kind of like “oh yeah, no it’s here” kind of thing. He got it back, but that’s nifty. Pretty cool you’re able to do that. I’ve seen some of those Tumblr sites where someone lost their MacBook in New York and they went to the bar and found it and crazy stuff man.

Joe:                        Yeah, they have some pretty good stories of using Prey to track down stuff. You should check it out.

Justin:                   And that’s it for episode 83 of the Empire Flippers podcast. Thanks for hanging with us. We’ll be back next week. Make sure to check us out on Twitter at Empire Flippers, and we’ll see you next wee.

Joe:                        Bye bye everybody.

Speaker 1:           You’ve been listening to the Empire Flippers podcast with Justin and Joe. Be sure to hit up empireflippers.com for more. That’s empireflippers.com. Thanks for listening. 

 

Photo Credit: Dennis van Zuijlekom – Flickr

Discussion

  • Zachary Strebeck says:

    As a lawyer, I’m a little bit hesitant to go all out poaching the audiences of other lawyers (then again, lawyers and their blogs don’t really have “audiences,” per se). I will definitely modify these techniques and get cracking!

    My problem is all the ethics and advertising rules that us attorneys have prohibit me from doing many of the tricks that many marketing gurus recommend.

    • Justin Cooke says:

      Hey Zach,

      Yeah, I can see how some of this might be…tricky…if you’re an attorney looking to pick up clients.

      That being said, I don’t see how applying SEO strategies and/or some co-operatition would be troubling.

      • I’m thinking more along the lines of how I can’t make any promises or guarantees of specific results. So no “Increase your legal protection by 150%” or great headlines like that. I’m sure there are plenty of things I could be doing, though! Still new to the whole entrepreneurial game! You guys are extremely helpful, though.

        You’ve got me thinking hard about some kind of productized service.

        • Justin Cooke says:

          Zach,

          I think a “productized services” approach to legal services could be fantastic. Sort of a “premium” LegalZoom with more personality and better service? I believe Jodi from http://www.legalnomads.com/ was setting up something like that. I know a bunch of expat entrepreneurs that could use a networked attorney for a host of international business issues.

          I don’t know what you specialize in, but helping others with Due Diligence on business purchases and deal structuring could be another idea.

          GreenbackTaxServices – http://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/expatriate-tax-services/ have productized services on the accounting side of the house.

          • Great ideas! I’m more of an intellectual property attorney, trying to focus on the gaming and software niche. Maybe the expat entrepreneur niche is a better one to shoot for!

            Thanks for your help. If you’re ever in Bangkok in the next few months I’ll buy you a drink 🙂

          • Justin Cooke says:

            Sounds good – I’m down for a Singha (or a dozen). I’ll be in/around BKK later this year…probably Oct or so. 🙂

          • Who knows where I’ll be? That nomad life. Love it! 🙂

  • Tung Tran says:

    I’ve been utilizing the blog comment technique very successfully to “steal” NichePursuits audience in 2013.

    There were some posts that I had left 10+ very long and valuable comments.

    And yes it worked. I got tons of traffic from NS.

    The key is provide real value and truly help your competitor’s audience.

    Excellent episode as always Justin and Joe 😀

  • InternationalReal EstateListin says:

    Hey Guys –

    Just a heads up this episode in iTunes needs to be re-uploaded – it’s only 1 second long.

    Taylor

  • John Gibb says:

    hey guys

    that was an interesting podcast.

    do you have any take on OpenExplorer vs. Ahfrefs.com – and other related services? which one do you prefer?

    P.S. Prey project is a hot idea, didn’t know there’s such thing!

    John
    http://healthywealthyaffiliate.com/

    • I’ve always found OpenSiteExplorer to be the best since Yahoo Site Explorer went away. The other Moz.com tools are extremely useful as well. However, Ahrefs makes some beautiful graphs.

      Glad you liked the Prey tip, now your laptop is secure!

    • Christoph Engelhardt says:

      Ahrefs’ data is more up-to-date than Moz’s.
      However, I find the other tools at Moz and the forums very very helpful. That’s why I prefer Moz over Ahrefs.
      Moz dedicated to making to make their data more up-to-date and I don’t care for the latest links.

      Disclaimer: I worked at Moz for 5 months.

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