Jermaine Griggs – Hear And Play

Jermaine started HearAndPlay with only $70. Eight years later, over 2 million aspiring musicians download his online lessons every year and over 200,000 loyal students receive his regular newsletters. Now he makes millions!

About Jermaine

• At 10 years old he went door to door selling products for kids through Olympia
• By 12 years, old he was selling Avon, cosmetics and perfumes and also sold prepaid legal services and ran his own stationary company
• At age 15, he started giving piano lessons for $10 per lesson and created a 30 page manual with his specialized knowledge
• Music was his passion, he could play the piano by ear (without reading notes)
  
• At 16 he launched shop2x.com
• Now he is a minister, musician, entrepreneur and public speaker

HearandPlay.com

• On August 6,2000, he borrowed $70 from his mother and registered the domain name HearandPlay.com
• He started the site to sell the 30 page manual he created for learning to play the piano by ear
• The first sale was made in the first month. The only thing that was on the website was a picture of the book (which was taken with a disposable camera), a brief message and a PayPal button which was X.com at the time
• Made posts about the site in bulletins and online forums
• Managed to get about 500-1000 visitors to his website per month and would only get about 5-10 sales per month
• A sale was about $55-$60 per book. When he made a sale, he would go print out a copy of the book  and ship it out
• From 2000-2001, he made $200-$500 per month
• In 2001 while he was a freshman at the University of California-Irvine, he began to study internet marketing because he knew that more people needed his book
• Found Corey Rudl from Marketingtips.com and purchased the course for $200
• Learned about headlines, sub-headlines, how to open up a sales page, how to open up to your customers, how to relate to your customers, how to introduce the problem, etc.
• He changed his site from a pic with four sentences to a 20 page newsletter and relaunched on March 1, 2002 and went to bed
• When he woke up the next morning he had $550 in sales and by the end of the day $1100
• By the end of that month he made $8000
• By the end of the year made almost $200,000 and the next year double!
• With all the success, he created an office and started hiring people; a team of ten both locally and remotely. By 2004 they were making $45,000 a month and launched the second product

NittyGrittyMarketing.com

• With all his success on the internet, people began to ask Jermaine to speak on marketing and this inspired him to create the site
• NittyGrittyMarketing takes you step-by-step behind the scenes of his business and shows you exactly how to get started
• It covers a wide range of topics; traffic, conversion of visitors, building a list, following up with your people, community building, and web 2.0 traffic strategies
• there are four main areas

1. Videos- actually get to see his screen step-by-step
2. Audios- you can listen to interviews
3. Live trainings- Q & A through webinars
4. Documents-PDF’s, presentations and powerpoint slides

Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

• People buy for 2 reasons; Gaining of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The longer they stay, the more they pay; the more they read, the more they need
• Use the four P’s when trying to find a niche

1. Passion- Is there a passion in the niche?
2. Patience- The customer knows its going to take time to master the skill or information so they keep buying and investing in themselves
3. Progression- They know they will get there over time, there’s a natural progression
4. Positivity- Products help customers to be something positive. Make it something you would do regardless of whether you made any money. Things that people ask you for advice for regularly may be a good niche for you

• There a three types of people

1. Those who make things happen
2. Those who watch things happen
   
3. Those who are wondering what the heck just happened

• You’re not an exception; you’re an exemption. You can make things happen. There’s nothing that can stop you
• Vow to be no one less that somebody who’s going to make things happen!

Staying Focused

• Take test at Kolbe.com, its an instinctual test that will show you how to better yourself
• Keep a notepad with a To-Do List and write down ideas and goals as they come
• Imagine where you want to be in the future and you will naturally do things that keep you aligned with your goals
• Create a Vision Board. Get a picture of everything you want in life and post it on a board and look at it everyday
• Make your screen saver the same thing, that way if you begin to drift you will be reminded of your goals

Suggested Reading

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• The Secret: The Law of Attraction

Side Notes

• Jermaine is has a net worth of over $5 million
• 27 years old, lives in Orange County
• Wants to be a Senator later in life
• On his first internet venture he joined Linkshare.com. They paid him $.50 per click for every visitor that he sent to a certain page. In his first three months he directed 1600 visitors and made $800
• He always knew he was going to be a successful businessman from the time he was a child
• Driven by his desire to change his family’s situation

Connect With Jermaine