Drew Perry, her son, shared his story of how he became a real estate entrepreneur at the age of 18.  By age 21, he had acquired enough income to help bring his Dad home from corporate America.  Drew's story is very inspiring, and it shows parents the importance of making home schooling relevant to actual skills needed in adult life.

Mauricio Martinez of Online Small Business Consulting was supposed to talk about how to get out of debt.  The actual session involved more of his personal story and less actual steps that a familiy or business owner can take to reduce or eliminate debt.  Additionally, he spent too much time selling his product.  This one needs work.

Bob Circosta of the Home Shopping Network spoke Friday afternoon.  This session was simply delightful.  Bob is extremely gifted at what he does, and in his presentation, he provides very practical advice on how to change your perspective in marketing your product or service.  Group interaction and video examples help drive home his point.  He also offers information on how to determine if your product or service is something that would make a good fit for the Home Shopping Network.  (Did you know that they reach 85 MILLION homes???)

John Taylor Gatto, author of numerous books which rip the veil off of American public education spoke.  John wasn’t really there to sell anything, and the crowd consistently encouraged him to continue speaking past the time allotted for him.  It was very enjoyable to hear the stories of various children whom he had the privilege of helping to develop from troubled youth to serious business entrepreneurs.  You should read his book Dumbing Us Down.

On Saturday, Adam Ginsberg spoke on Finding Success on eBay.  His session was entertaining, informative and motivating.  Simply hearing the many different types of items which do sell on eBay encourages one to at least try.  (At the Nashville conference, there was one family with eight children who make their living selling rare and/or out of print books on eBay.)  Adam gives practical tips for improving your eBay listings.  If you are interested in learning more and can’t make it to the conference, you should consider purchasing his book.

John Dessauer gave a presentation on how he got into the business of buying multi-family real estate units.  If you’re like me, real estate is something that I find interesting and want to do more with, but finding the right entry point can be a challenge.  John shares how he has leveraged debt for purchasing units, how to do a basic analysis of property value and creative thoughts on how to take an existing multi-family unit and create greater value with a few minor changes.

Chris Howard and Heather Kirk spoke on the topic Branding for Success.  Their company’s work is in high demand among a number of Internet marketers.  I was really looking forward to this session.  However, the gist of what I took away from this session is, "Branding is a good thing, and you should do it."  Well, I was already convinced of that.  I was hoping for some practical guidance on how to begin to brand my product.  This session along with Mauricio Martinez and Chris Verhaegh's sessions were the ones that left me feeling "sold to" the most.

Chris Verhaegh‘s talk on The Basics of Stock Market Options was one of the biggest disappointments of the conference for me personally.  Chris is a big success story of someone who started with a little and developed it into a whole lot.  He has traded well over a billion dollars in the stock market.  The website stated that he would share how to analyze businesses to determine value along with talking about the stock market in terms anyone can understand.  What he did was share several stories of people he has met over the years who have been successful in stocks and business.  While the stories were interesting, I left with no practical steps to take to begin — except to consider buying into his training group.  Perhaps a reflection of how the other speakers gave good tips to the audience would be helpful for the next time Chris speaks. Either that, or change the website description to say, "Chris will share stories" so the expectations are different.

After being put on the emotional ropes, I was delighted to listen to Matt Bacak talk about the Secrets of Internet Marketing.  Matt is a down to earth guy who doesn’t beat around the bush about what to do and why to do it.  For sheer content, this was one of the best sessions at the conference and well worth the price of the conference just to get his information.  He listed numerous tips on how to market to people on the Internet and gave URLs of sites, services and software that he himself uses.

The dinner provided on Saturday was top notch.  There was live music, and afterwards, there was live entertainment.  I won’t spoil it for you if you are going to the Los Angeles conference.  But I will tell you DON’T SKIP THE DINNER.  They also hold drawings for people present.

On Sunday, Rhea Perry spoke to all the women.  I can’t give a review on this because I wasn’t invited.  If you attended this session, I would LOVE to post your review of this session here.

There was a non-denominational service led by Ken Pounders.  Ken is a "go get 'em" kind of guy who has a message that you need to hear.  You will be inspired.

David Hancock of Morgan James Publishing gave an excellent talk on the new opportunities in Entrepreneurial Publishing.  I was elated to attend this session since he gave plenty of information for someone who is thinking about writing a book.  While he would love for you to publish your book through his company, he gives advice on other ways to go about it.  As a successful New York publisher, David’s company has a great system in place for taking people like me and you and turning us into published authors with very little investment.  If you have EVER considered writing a book of any kind or know someone whom you think should write a book, DON’T MISS THIS SESSION

The final speaker for the day was Morgan Westerman, the author of the popular "An Interview with God."  He shared the story of how this incredible success story happened.  Then he also gave steps on how to go about developing buzz or viral marketing for our own products.  Don’t get an early flight and miss this session.  It is a MUST.

Things you should know BEFORE atending the conference.

• You will be given a ticket for drawings.  Keep this inside your pocket or notebook at all times.  Drawings are held often.
• If you want to have lunch with a particular speaker, ask them upon arrival.  These people will be happy to eat with you and answer your questions or just discuss life.  I had lunch with one of the key figures at Morgan James Publishing on Sunday just by asking.
• Bring a box of business cards.
• Children are welcome to attend.  There were a good number of home school students at the Nashville conference, and their participation was actively encourage.
• There are chess boards in the lobby area for use by children or adults.  This provides great fun as well as networking opportunities.
• Register early to get a hotel room.
• Many speakers give away items during their presentations.  Sit up front and participate.

If you are interested in more information, please visit the Entrepreneur Days website. If you have benefited from this review, we encourage you to use our link when you register, as we will receive credit for the referral.

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Joel took time to get to know a little bit about each participant.  He wanted to understand what each person was looking for from the workshop in order to better tailor it to meet our needs.  This tied in directly with the first part of his presentation which was related to finding your passion in order to develop a focus.   There is money to be made on the Internet, but Joel’s admonition was not to follow the money.  Find out what you like to do, what you are passionate about sharing, and then the money will follow.

Part of the course involved looking at practical tips to more fully utilize the Google Adsense functionality.  I won’t spoil it for you by listing those here.  If you want to know that, you can purchase his book.

We also spent time reviewing key ways to develop traffic to a website.  I’ve been doing Internet sites for over 10 years, and some of the ways he mentioned were new even to me.

Joel also shared numerous resources he has discovered online which he has used over the years to outsource some of the mundane aspects of website development which are too boring or too technical for the average person.  Do you want to learn to code, or do you want to share your content?  If the latter, then use the resources that are out there.

Additionally, Joel shared a number of other ways to develop revenue streams that can augment your site’s overall profitability.  He shared some of the better affiliate programs which have performed well for him.

The workshop concluded with live analysis of several workshop attendees’ websites followed by open questions and answers.

Interesting fact:  Did you know that during the Internet bubble burst of 2000, Joel had to lay off his entire staff including himself?  When he shared some of his failures along with his success, it was apparent that monetary success is not the driving force behind the man.  Joel’s passion drives him to do what he is doing, even when the going gets tough.  And that is what separates the entrepreneur from the wanna be.

Visit Joel’s website for more information.