Michael Mindes is the founder of Tasty Minstrel Games, a relatively new publisher of hobby board games. Despite primarily dealing with a physical product, Michael is actively marketing over the Internet. Michael especially likes email marketing, blogging, and generating organic results on Facebook, and has seen great success in these areas.
Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been making money online?
I live in Tucson, Arizona and have been here for most of my 29 years of life. I am married and I have 3 children. During the day, I am a financial advisor/planner (no, you can’t hire me and I am not soliciting business) to pay the bills while I build up Tasty Minstrel Games.
I wouldn’t say I have been making any money online, but I have been actively gathering permission assets and building up authority in the board game publishing arena for about 15 months.
Do you have any experience with affiliate marketing? If so, to what extent?
My experience with affiliate marketing is very limited. Like many other people, I have read the blogs people like Shoemoney, John Chow, and Jonathan Volk for a long time. Like many of those people I gave affiliate marketing a try.
To me, affiliate marketing feels too much like being a transactional stock broker (which I opted not to be). Except that there are tons of people actively scouting and trying to take your best ideas. I would rather have a group of people trust me enough to take my recommendations.
What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
In life, I am most proud of my 7 years of happy marriage, my 3 kids, and Tasty Minstrel’s progress. In the realm of Internet marketing I am most proud of the following:
• Building a laser-targeted and responsive list of over 3,000 people.
• Having over a 9% conversion rate for people to buy out of my list.
• Building a network quickly within the board game industry.
• Doing all of the above in my spare time.
How did you become successful? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in the Internet? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I became successful as an online marketer by following through with the sales and trust building techniques that I learned by managing people’s life savings and constantly convincing them that their trust is well placed.
I chose to go into financial planning because I could go to work with my father, support my growing family, and have challenging and fulfilling work. I chose to publish board games, because I love games. Games are my absolute and fundamental passion in life.
Obviously any communication method as fast and inexpensive as the Internet will be incredibly powerful. But I did not really feel the scope of it, until I first started bribing people to join my email list. I gave away some games for free, and 545 people signed up for a chance to win in the first 7 days. That was with one forum post.
What do you think it takes to be successful?
Dedication, Honesty, Intelligence, Passion, OTHER PEOPLE (relationships are incredibly important)
What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Getting a shipment of 4,000 games with numerous manufacturing issues. It was significant effort to mitigate the damage, but sales were slower, product was lost, and hours have been spent sending out replacement parts.
What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
See above. The initial response is detailed on my blog. Being as transparent as possible on my blog has led to a small army of people that are dedicated to defending Tasty Minstrel Games online, which is wonderful.
What is the future of marketing?
Being able to directly reach people that want to hear from you, and turning customers into evangelists. Building quality relationships over time and email marketing are the solution here.
What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
In the past I have been distracted by a number of things. Which is why I have so many free eBooks available, including an 80+ page eBook about relationship building strategy and email marketing. Right now I am just working on improving Tasty Minstrel.
Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
The pressures of having 100% commission based compensation and convincing people to have me advise them on investing their life savings makes you learn fast. When compared to bringing in a $1,000,000+ account, selling some $40 board games seems easy.
What are your greatest strengths?
My stunning good looks. After that, my ability to sell stuff and generate trust through honesty and transparency.
What are your greatest weaknesses?
Project management and slacking off. Thankfully, when running a business you can find people to fill in for your weaknesses.
What motivates you?
It will sound cheesy, but bringing families closer together through games. Oh, and providing for my wife and 3 children.
What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do it and do it now. How long does it take to send a 1-2 line email? Fill out an interview? Make a phone call? Each item takes very little time, and the aggregate of all those actions adds up to some amazing results.
For example, I let these interview questions sit for 20 days. I could have spent the 1 hour to answer the questions and been covered on a popular blog that much sooner.
Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My father. He taught me probably 80+% of what I need to know in sales and marketing (in life too). The rest I have learned through reading the thoughts of great minds, thinking, taking action, and remembering what works.
What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
I would like to be involved with publishing board games full-time. Providing modestly for my family and having extra money for emergencies is enough. If money was no object, I would be spending time with my family, playing games with my friends, and helping to change the world.
Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Alive and married to my wife is sufficient for my needs.
How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I spend my free time working on building up Tasty Minstrel Games. Life is work, truly challenging and satisfying work is the basis of happiness.
If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would have started earlier. It would have been nice to realize I do not need an endorsement of any kind to start building a business or changing the world.
What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Again, cheesy… But my greatest achievement in life is my successful marriage for 7 years and my 3 beautiful loving children. While I am sure I have unfulfilled dreams, it doesn’t matter because I have them. They are awesome.
Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I like to use Facebook as a natural funnel for Tasty Minstrel, so we have a page for the company and for every game that we publish.
http://www.twitter.com/michaelmindes
http://www.twitter.com/tastyminstrel
http://www.facebook.com/tastyminstrelgames
http://www.facebook.com/homesteaders
http://www.facebook.com/terraprime
http://www.facebook.com/trainofthoughtgame
http://www.facebook.com/playjab
http://www.facebook.com/belfort
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