Natalie: Today on the show I share the down and dirty, what's in all, no make-up version of the mind movies success stories. So, stay tuned.

Natalie: Hi I'm Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. And today I am my own very special guest. What I wanted to do today is actually share with you the story behind the story about the success of mind movies and our company. I know I've shared the story recently at a live event and all the call that I get. And the payback that I get is like "I didn't notice about you and I didn't notice about your story. And your story's very inspiring, so I'm thinking maybe I should share this with all of my friends in the community here in The Inspiration Show as well. So for those of you who know the glossy story, basically in April of 2008, Ryan Higgins our business partner, Glen, my husband and myself, we moved here to the US, we chose to moved here cause we wanted to learn from the best of the best of how we can launch mind movies to the world. You see we set up our original website in March of 2007 and we really didn't know what we were doing. I actually didn't know anything about the internet. Let me just define what that means. My husband Glen had sent maybe three emails ever. And he knew how to do the banking but I would have to turn the computer on and log him in. Now on May I actually did use the computer for MYOB which is for bookkeeping and I knew how to use word and a little bit of excel. But I've never heard of YouTube, didn't know what MySpace or Facebook was, had no idea, didn't even know the concept of what a social network meant. And so when Ryan came to us with the idea of resetting up the website, we're like "Okay we'll try this but we're not really sure what to do and we sort of learning along the way." But within months we were getting so many emails from people saying "This is changing my life and manifesting is amazing thing," that we thought "Maybe we should pay more attention to this." So rather than just being a little project on the side, we started to go "What do we need to do to step this up to the next level?" And so we decided on April 2008 to come over here to the US to learn from the best of the best. Now we spent months and months of working from our bedrooms, for 9 hour days to really get this up and running. So let me just share a little bit about the actual story when we actually got here to the US. We actually come over here, we had no money. Basically, Glen and I have a couple of businesses still in Australia and thank god that Glen's brother stepped in to help us run those businesses. But of course we had mortgages and car repayments, and a life. So any profit that we were making is actually going back into maintaining that life. Now we had a small amount of money coming in from the mind movies website but that small amount of money was supposed to support Ryan, Glen and myself living over here in the US and to fund to the launch of mind movies. And then again it actually took us ten and thousands of dollars to do that. So, I'll share more about that in a minute. And so we came over here, we immersed ourselves in the internet marketing world cause we really needed to learn how to launch mind movies to the world. And our mantra during that whole period was that "Failure is not an option." Because we had everything working against us. So to start with, we never let the fact that we had no money to stop us from our success. You know I remember back in early days, our teleprompter that we use to used was these MacGyver contraption that Ryan and his father put together. So basically it was a microphone stand that they found at the local tip and what they did was they welded this metal, 10 by a picture frame just at the right angle so they can stick a piece of glass in it. And then what we did was we got a wire cord hangout, we unground it and we put it as a big loop and we sold it on each end of the metal picture frame and we put a black cloth over the top which we held in place with clothespins. And so what we would do is we put the camera on the tripod in behind the glass. But the thing is it always had to be sitting next to a desk because underneath that we would have the laptop. But on the edge of the laptop we had these candle stick holder that with just the right height and so we would glue tuck it to the laptop so that we could see a mirror that would sit at just a right angle, so we have the words coming up on the computer screen which reflected onto the mirror which reflected up onto the glass. And this is what we used as our teleprompter for the first eighteen months of our business because we couldn't afford to buy one. And I remember when we came to San Diego, we just arrived here at the beginning of summer. And so this is you know, when all the rents go up very high here because they will come cheaper for the vacation. And we found this great apartment, it was really lovely and it's apartment complex. And remember thinking well, "It's so cheap. I wonder why it's so cheap." And we were thinking how grateful and lucky that we were that we were able to find it. And I remember moving in, and Glen and I at the same time, we're unloading stuff into the bedroom. And we looked over we noticed that the windows were double glaze. And I'm thinking that to myself "Why are these windows?" and I'm only halfway through the thought then these big plane comes overhead and basically we were underneath the fly path to San Diego airport, and we had no idea when we first took up the apartment. And we ran to the flat path were the planes are taking off, so that's when they're really on the gas and it becomes really loud. So you have to picture out what it was like in the conditions that we worked in when we were doing that first launch of mind movies. So basically we had Ryan setting up a desk because remember the laptop had to be next to the desk so we could use the MacGyver teleprompter. And so he'll be sitting there and we were like "Okay, go." So he'd start filming and talking, and then as soon as we heard it playing we're like "Okay, stop." Now the other thing that this apartment didn't have was air conditioning. So as soon as we heard it playing, we turn off, we're actually using these lights on a hardware shop that we shopped that were hot as the sun. So basically we turn the lights off which open the windows, open the doors, turn some fans on. We get some powder; we pat Ryan down cause he was sweating like nothing else. And then as soon as the plane went we're like "Okay, so close the windows, close the doors, turn the fans off, turn the lights as hot as the sun back on. Go." And this is how it would take as twenty or more takes to do videos for this launch. Now we were very grateful that we had our copywriter, our JV managers and the techie guy that build our fill out tracking system, all agreed to work for a percentage of the launch cause we had no money to pay them. And thank goodness they had faith in us to do that cause believe me, who are we, we're these three crazy Aussies that came from nowhere with this quirky idea of creating this little personal digital video voice. And thank god they had the faith in us. And so we get, we're working for 9 hour days, we're stepping outside our comfort zone, we're learning new things cause remember we didn't have money to pay other people. So we would have to learn how to build websites and how to edit videos, and do a whole bunch of other things on the fly because we couldn't afford anyone else to pay them to do that. And so we go through months and months of all this work and we finally get to the launch time. Now we have two weeks, the first week is pre-launch and this is when we're sending out content and our affiliates are sending emails to their data bases and this is where we're building the community. And that community actually went from eight thousand to eighty thousand on that first pre-launch week which was a massive success. So we were using a company called Webber to do our email, to send out the emails and everything that click the data. And they actually decided to close our account halfway through the pre-launch week because we were taking too many optins. Go figure. But see failure is not an option. And so we might show that we actually got on the phone, we went to our friends, we did everything we could and look to the resources around us to make sure that we can get the account reinstated and which we did. Thank goodness. And everything was going smooth sailing until we got to the morning of launch. And so, the second week is when we actually open the doors or open the shopping cart to the people who can then purchase mind movies, the mind movies creation kit back then. And so the morning of launch, we're concerned because we have like eighty thousand people now. We didn't want everyone going to the website all at once because it could crash the server, so we want to stagger the traffic. And so what we did is we timed emails to go on different times so we can actually you know, manage that. And when it happened was that Webber with any kind of notification decided to closed down for maintenance the morning of the launch. Now what I meant was, we can't stagger the traffic but that was okay because we didn't crash the server. Thank goodness. None of their -- could get their e-mails out but even worth still no one was getting their confirmation e-mails that their purchased had gone through. So, by the time we got to launch time, On the first day of launch we had over 3,000 e-mails on customer support, I am was customer support. No, I'm not a crier but I did cry for 30 seconds but then, I remembered that failure is not an option and we had so much in the line. You see, when it happened, we had dug ourselves into a $120,000 and credit card debt because we had their money. We had the next big thing, which was credit card. And so, decided that those little bit of pressure to make sure that "This was a success" was an understatement. And so, here I am faced with 3,000 e-mails, "What am I going to do?". Of course, again, you look to the resources around you and the support around you. We had a whole bunch of friends coming in to help in Webber and to clean their e-mails from there. We get to that, and the thing is the other parts of this equation is that we're Australian and don't have social security numbers. We couldn't open a bank account here which meant we can't set a merchant facility. Which also meant that we have to use PayPal on merchant. Now we heard some horror stories about Paypal and so, we made sure that we were on the phone to them, leading up to the launch. During pre-launch, we were over exaggerating the mannered, e-mails we had collected we were over exaggerating the amount of money we were expecting to take because we have to make sure that every thing's going to be fine and we kept being reassured that everything is fine and everything is fine. Halfway through launch week, Paypal decided to close down our account because we're taking too much money. Again, most of the guards we were speaking to but someone in that bizarre phone department over here saw this activity and went "What?!", closed down the account. So here we are, we have traffic coming to the website, no one can purchase the product. We have money in the account but we can't get to it. And so, what happened. Again, we're on the phone, we keep going to the people around us, people going to bet for us. We finally get the account we reinstated. And, Paypal reinstated it to the point that we can accept money but we can't take money out. So, we get to the end of launch week and it's a massive success. We collected around $700,000 in that week and really built up the foundation of the business we have today. And, the only problem is that Paypal decided that we are not allowed to get the money because we could possibly get some refunds and seriously, that was the reason that they wouldn't let us take the money. And now the problem was, at that point in time, Mind Movies is a physical product and so, we had $100,000 in postage that we had to pay. I needed to pay the team, the copywriter, the JV manager and the techy guard. Because, they also worked their bums off as hard as we had leading to the launch. And so, we were able to negotiate and get them release enough money for us to pay postage, of course pay the team what they deserve. And then, they froze about $500,000 and they kept saying that, "It's alright. Next month we'll release it. Next month we'll release it." But, they kept moving the goal post. And 6 months later, 6 months later when we finally get an attorney involved, they were able to release the funds. And we still make the minimum payments, on a $120,000 on credit card debts. So, we are like this, trying to keep our head out of the water and we're this close to being bankrupt. But again, we have to... failure is not an option. We had to look for resources around us and the attorney that we got involved actually was a friend of ours, was part of the mastermind group that we're in. I'm telling you this story because when people look at Mind Movies business, they think that "Ohh, It was great. They moved to the U.S. and they did this successful launch. And now, they're a multi-million dollar business. And they've reached over a million people.", which is exactly right. But, it did take us a while to get there. We did learn a massive amount of lessons along the way. I'm hoping that by sharing my story with you today that it will inspire you to step forward and stepping to your greatness. I acquired from my friend, Greg Reid's Facebook page the other day and he said, "I'm not telling you that it's going to be easy, I'm just telling you that it's going to be worth it." Now, our journey wasn't easy but to say that it is worth it, is an understatement. So, I hope that this story inspires you to step in to something greater for yourself. Now guys, I encourage you to share this video and all the information in it. And, you can do that by clicking the Facebook and twitter share buttons above and if you haven't done so already make sure that you put your e-mail in the box above there. I would love to send you my Manifesting with the Masters Video E-Course. Includes, Masters like Bob Proctor, John Assraf, Joe Vitale. Its valued $87.00 but I would like to send it to you for free. Until next time, remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. We'll see you soon.