What Get­ting Den­tal Im­plants Taught Me About In­ter­net Marketing

From Willie Craw­ford.

Back when I first started us­ing com­put­ers in my Air Force job, in 1982, they had a strict rule against eat­ing or drink­ing around the ma­chines. I re­cently dis­cov­ered why eat­ing at your com­puter is so dangerous.

I was eat­ing a piece of lightly browned wheat toast, with some cream cheese on it, when I felt a dis­tinct lump. Upon closer ex­am­i­na­tion, I dis­cov­ered that one of my teeth had sheered off. The tooth had bro­ken at an an­gle with the miss­ing part go­ing fairly deep into the socket.

I quickly de­duced that „this could get painful” so I sched­uled an ap­point­ment with my trusty dentist.

He looked at the tooth, in­formed me that we needed to sur­gi­cally ex­tract what was left, and then maybe stick in an implant.

It all made sense to me as he showed me the den­tal x-rays. He showed me the thick­ness of the bone where he would stick the im­plant, and why he needed to build up the bone be­fore putting in the im­plant. He also show me how the bone had thinned where I had pre­vi­ously had teeth extracted.

He ex­plained that most peo­ple who have teeth re­moved don’t re­place them, and sens­ing that all that bone is­n’t re­ally needed, the body de­creases the amount of bone in that spot.

As we talked some more, I dis­cov­ered that the den­tist was re­tire Air Force - just like me. We had even both served in Hawaii. For some rea­son, that bit of info bol­stered my con­fi­dence in him, and I was ac­tu­ally ready to do what­ever he suggested.

As we talked about our post-Air Force ca­reers, I told him what I did on the in­ter­net. He and his as­sis­tants seem in­trigued. They re­al­ize that they were still trad­ing time for money… though the money was­n’t too shabby.

As we chat­ted I con­fided that I did­n’t re­al­ize that un­used jaw­bone at­ro­phies. We both com­mented that some­times we just don’t know what we don’t know… and that we are per­fectly happy not know­ing what we are miss­ing out on… un­til we know.

I re­lated to him that when I first started my in­ter­net busi­ness I was still fly­ing C-130’s as a nav­i­ga­tor out in the Pa­cific. One of the things that I did­n’t know back then was the power of net­work­ing, do­ing joint ven­tures with oth­ers, and at­tend­ing live events where you ac­tu­ally get a feel for who you re­ally want to form busi­ness re­la­tion­ships with.

I did­n’t know any­one who had at­tended a live in­ter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nar. I did­n’t meet any­one who at­tended sem­i­nars reg­u­larly un­til 2002. Prior to that time, I com­mu­ni­cated with other in­ter­net busi­ness peo­ple al­most ex­clu­sively by email. Prac­ti­cally ALL of the peo­ple that I chat­ted with reg­u­larly were air­crew mem­bers… plan­ning how they would land an air­line job some day.

My knowl­edge of what you should do for a prob­lem tooth was sim­i­lar. Back when I was a child, and on into young adult­hood, the an­swer to a toothache was to „pull it out.”

I sim­ply did­n’t know what I did­n’t know about al­ter­na­tives that made a lot more sense in so many ways.

When my den­tist en­light­ened me, I opted for an implant.

Then he ex­plained that he wanted to add some bone, give that time to grow, and then stick the im­plant in.

I paused for a sec­ond be­fore timidly ask­ing, „Where is this bone com­ing from?”

I sort of ex­pected him to say that they take it from some other part of your body, much like they do with skin grafts. In­stead he said, „We keep a sup­ply on hand.” He went on to ex­plain that it was real hu­man bone that had been treated in some way that make the pro­ce­dure „work like a charm.”

I did­n’t ask any more about where this bone came from - sat­is­fied in know­ing that I had learned some­thing use­ful that would serve me well in the future.

My first sem­i­nar was a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence. When I got there, many of the at­ten­dees and speak­ers gave me feed­back on my busi­ness model, and many of them also sug­gested do­ing joint ventures.

Of the at­ten­dees and speak­ers at the very first sem­i­nar that I at­tended, I ended up jointly cre­at­ing prod­ucts with Marty Fo­ley, Dr. Bob Sil­ber and Frank Garon. I also worked on projects with or was men­tored by Fred Gleeck, Ar­mand Morin, Ra­mon Williamson, and Jonathan Mizel.

I very quickly learned at that first event that I re­ally had missed 90% of grow­ing a re­ally suc­cess­ful in­ter­net busi­ness. I had com­pletely missed even notic­ing the ONE thing that would of­fer the great­est lever­age - net­work­ing with, jointly cre­at­ing prod­ucts with, and joint ven­tur­ing with other in­ter­net marketers.

As soon as I rec­og­nized what I had been miss­ing, and started re­ally get­ting to know other mar­keters who were happy to part­ner with me in jointly grow­ing our busi­nesses, my busi­ness lit­er­ally skyrocketed.

The other thing that hap­pened at my first sem­i­nar was that be­ing sur­round by so many re­ally suc­cess­ful on­line mar­keters TOTALLY en­er­gized me. A late night brain­storm­ing ses­sion with John Reese and Ra­mon Williamson showed me that my goals were WAY to small.

I left that first sem­i­nar truly un­der­stand­ing the power of be­ing in a room filled with su­per-achiev­ers. I was so con­vinced that ALL of my con­tem­po­raries needed to dis­cover „what they did­n’t know” that on my drive home, I com­mit­ted to host­ing a live seminar.

Four months af­ter at­tend­ing my first live sem­i­nar, I hosted a sem­i­nar in Pen­sacola, Florida. My speak­ers in­clude: Ar­mand Morin, Dr. Bob Sil­ber, Gary Knuck­les, Tony Blake, Ra­mon Williamson, Fred Gleeck, and Stephen Pierce… speak­ing for his very first time. John Reese, and a num­ber of other no­ta­bles, were paid attendees.

That sem­i­nar changed lives, and cre­ated many part­ner­ships, and many life-long friendships.

You are in­vited to join my friends and I in my In­ter­net­Mar­ketingIn­ncer­cir­cle.

To help you suc­ceed Willie has cre­ated The In­ter­net Mar­ket­ing In­ner Cir­cle, a mem­ber­ship site where he fre­quently brain­storms so­lu­tions to prob­lems such as those dis­cussed in this ar­ti­cle. Join that dis­cus­sion for your suc­cess at TheIn­ter­net­Mar­ketingIn­ner­cir­cle.