Garry Conn Interviews Jim Kukral

You may know Jim Kukral as the individual who created ScratchBack.com. To be honest, that is how I met him, but as it turns out, there is so much more to Jim than just his highly successful website. Jim is a very gifted and talented individual who coaches and teaches large companies on having a successful presence on the Internet. He is an individual who also teaches individuals and small business owners how to make their dreams become a reality within online business.

I had the opportunity to interview Jim Kukral today after seeing a small comment placed on his FaceBook Wall asking if anyone wanted to interview him. Needless to say, I jumped on that opportunity and below is a copy of the wonderful conversation we had together. There is much that can be taken from this interview and even more that can be learned from checking out his site at The Biz Web Coach.

Garry Conn: Hi Jim! Thanks so much for taking time to talk with me. I know that this interview will be amazing for my readers at GarryConn.com. The folks who visit my blog are individuals who really want more than ever to find freedom in being self-employed, free from working corporate jobs.

While I understand that a lot of what you do is represent small to large businesses, I’d like to focus mainly on tapping into your mind and gaining some advice that can directly influence and guide my readers towards finding success online. With that said, I really look forward to hearing what you have to say about some of these questions I have.

Let’s look at the typical single parent with a young child. They have a part time job, very limited in hours, either due to inability to work because of the demands of the child, or simply because the economy doesn’t have hours to offer.

They have an interest to do something online, they have a vision of what they want to do, such as creating a really cool online T-Shirt Business with crazy sarcastic slogans. Their idea is totally HOT, and it is something that totally will work. What is the first step they should take towards making their vision and their dream become a reality?

Jim Kukral: The first step is to realize that you’re going to have to work hard to make this a success. If you think you’re going to be able to put the kids in bed, then go watch TV for 3 hours as you fall asleep on the couch, you can forget it. Nobody gets to live a life without a boss by “just working sometimes”. There will be sacrifice. Now, once you’re ok with that fact, you then need to start doing something.

Get a domain name registered for your business. Start a list on paper or in a Word document about what problems your business solves for people. Write down a summary of what you think the business is going to be and try to write down some goals you want to have. For example, “I want to be able to make $5k/month with this in one year.” Whether or not you get this is not important. But if you have that goal, you can reach for it.

Garry Conn: Excellent advice Jim, with that said, I strongly feel that more people could find success online if there was much less garbage floating around on the Internet. Can you tell me some excellent (Jim Kukral Trusted) resources that I can share with my readers towards learning more about the best ways to make money online?

I know there are hundreds of different ways to earn money online, and start careers from home, but what are a few places that ultimately you would suggest ANYONE read regardless of the methods they choose to earn money?

Jim Kukral: Well, to be successful online you need to know the basics of how people do it. So sites like www.problogger.com and www.copyblogger.com offer excellent blogging and copywriting tips. Then sites like www.zacjohnson.com offer advice on how to make money through Affiliate marketing. But again, the biggest thing is understanding what your online business is going to be and how you’re going to profit from it. It may be different than you think. So you need to figure that out first.

Garry Conn: I personally enjoy reading Problogger, CopyBlogger, and Zac as well. Excellent references, Jim. So lets assume that our single parent has invested much time and energy into planning. Everything is set, domain name is up and running, blog is created, products are now able to be in process. Marketing is now needed. With that said, I see that you are very active in social networks. For example, our scheduled interview today was created in FaceBook.

Often I see many people using social networks in a way that turns people off, or away from the message and promotions being pitched. While so many people know that social networking is a very powerful form of marketing, I feel that many people just don’t “Get It.” What advice can you offer to people who want to engage in social networks towards creating a very positive buzz about their online business?

Jim Kukral: Well, I approach social networking like this. “Everyone is a business lead for me”. I’m not on Facebook to socialize. I’m not on Twitter to make friends. I’m just being honest, it’s a business opportunity for me.

So that being said, I use those tools to generate business leads for me. But I don’t “spam” people. I provide helpful, useful, or entertaining content through those channels that builds my brand. Social media tools allow quick word of mouth. This is how business works, you see your neighbor taking the trash out and he tells you about the mechanic he’s got that is fantastic. Same thing, but online.

Garry Conn: For me, I’ll be honest, I spent close to three years building a huge empire of sites geared towards earning passive income using programs like Google AdSense. Joel Comm had a very heavy influence on that coupled with watching Chris Pirillo. I taught myself all the needed elements to find and continue to have success with the Google AdSense program.

With that said, things are going very well for me, but often I wonder if going this route is best. Recently, within the last few months, I have started created my own products and publications, which in essence, recap my last three years earning money online. The earnings from these products have been amazing.

This gives me mixed emotions, because I now see how profitable it is to create your own brand and products. What advice can you offer my readers in terms of making a decision between utilizing third party programs such as Google AdSense, PepperjamNETWORK, and MarketLeverage, compared to creating your own invention or idea?

Jim Kukral: Yes, it’s true, the very best way to make money online is to create your own products and sell them yourself. However, there are a lot of people out there creating content that they monetize with ads (the publisher model) that are doing VERY well. If you want to build something up over years and years, then try the publisher model. If you want to make money sooner rather than later, create your own products and promote them under your brand.

Garry Conn: And so, this leads to my thoughts about your huge success with ScratchBack. Personally I think ScratchBack is one of the most amazing concepts I have seen online. I love it! It isn’t often I go without reflecting back on the creation of ScratchBack. What was your ultimate goal with creating ScratchBack.com? I know it generates income for you, but was there more to it than just earning money?

Jim Kukral: Well, SB was started from me needing to solve a problem. PayPal tip jars were lame and boring and didn’t work, and text link exchanges were not too popular by Google. So I combined them together and created my system. My goal was to help small time bloggers, you know, 99% of bloggers out there, to find ways to make a few bucks.

Garry Conn: Indeed, is a beautiful system. ScratchBack.com is actually how I met you Jim. The first time I visited the site I thought to myself, “Wow… who ever created this is a genius!” While for me, I use ScratchBack to help promote my own blog, but I have to admit, that I was very intrigued with discovering the person behind the creation of the site. That in itself lead me to learning more about you and the wonderful things you help people with online.

With that said, ScratchBack.com is virtually self sufficient and completely runs itself. It is an automatic money generator for you and something that will totally stand the test of time. Knowing this though, do you have any plans on doing anything new with ScratchBack.com? If so, then what are some of the ideas you have been tossing around in your head?

Jim Kukral: Yes, our plans are to bring it out of beta with more flexible sizes for the widgets, as well as some other top secret features.

Garry Conn: It is my goal to help my readers make their dreams become a reality. In part of doing that, often I use my blog as a bridge to connect readers with excellent sources of information. I understand that you provide an abundance of services towards helping people. Can you tell me more about what it is you do online towards helping others? What can a GarryConn.com reader expect from you to help them with?

Jim Kukral: Well, I’m a teacher. I help people and businesses figure out how to live their dreams by running and profiting from their own Internet businesses. All of the information, well most of it, that I know can be found online if you spend a few years searching and reading. What I offer you is the guidance to know what to do right now, the right way the first time. That’s what www.thebizwebcoach.com is.

Garry Conn: In closing, can you offer some inspiring words to my readers? I really enjoy having the opportunity to speak with other people who I know have the ability, intelligence and resources to help my followers. What are a few things that you believe are needed from within someone in order to make their dreams come true. Again, I am all about helping my viewers excel in their education, planning, and vision towards making their dreams become a reality.

Consequently, and more often than not, I feel many of my readers tend to settle. In many cases, it seems that people are willing to throw away very decent careers that they hate in order to pursue careers online that they will hate equally as bad. To me that doesn’t make sense. I believe that any idea or dream can become a reality. Commonly though, it seems like many people, even ones with excellent ideas, often fail to execute and push forward. In closing, can you offer out some final words of advice and wisdom?

Jim Kukral: You either want to be the boss, or be the worker. See that guy/gal that owns your company that lives in the big house and comes in late and travels all the time? Yeah, they got there because they took a shot and worked hard. Believe it. Sure, some people get lucky and have success dropped in their lap, but that’s one out of a million.

If you want it, you will work. If you want to be the employee, dependent on the boss for the rest of your life, keep doing what you’re doing. So, how bad do you want it? It is possible. It’s not even that hard really. You just have to do it. Do something. Have passion and go for it. Or don’t, it’s your choice, but don’t complain you are being held back. Every success story starts with “I went for it”.

Garry Conn: Very true Jim… thanks for the inspiring words, and thank you for taking the time to speak with me and offer such quality information for my readers.

Every success story starts with, “I went for it!”

As Jim said, if you want to make a difference, if you want your dreams to come true, you have to work. So with that said, I am happy to say that over the last two months, I have been speaking off and on with a private company based out of Texas.

They have a huge interest in what I do online and really enjoy my ideas. This company has been trying to fly me down to speak with them which could possibly lead to me landing a very killer opportunity.

I will be speaking with this company tomorrow on a conference call and it is very possible that I will head to Texas and see what comes from it. I’ll keep you all updated in the upcoming posts.

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