I threw my hat in the ring in the summer of 2008, declaring that I would win the Renegade University Challenge posted by Eric Graudins. Several months ago, I discontinued my RU subscription and admitted that I'd lost.

I haven't given up on my business; far from it. In my core business, I've made leaps and bounds since those days. However, I chose to discontinue using Renegade University as a training model for internet marketing. What I found, after extensively using the service and trying out a large portion of the training modules: there's too much information, and not enough of it is results-oriented.

Renegade University, in the state it was in the last time I went to it, would be accurately described as "social media for dummies." The long videos consist of incredibly dumbed-down information, geared primarily toward the computer illiterate. There's also no easy way to fast-forward through the 60-minute-plus videos and skip to the relevant content for those of us who CAN figure out how to fill out a form by ourselves.

So, here was my experience of Renegade University, at the end of the day. "Here's Facebook, here's blogs, here's Twitter, here's all of these other sites, and you have to do them all. Good luck!"

My conclusion: Renegade University is not an effective training model. So, there you have it, Eric. You were right. I have no long list of customers that I sell my wonderfully profitable products to. (Though I will still have such a list in due course - it just won't be through Renegade University).

I'll leave up the rest of my hub so that everyone can see what I originally wrote on the subject earlier.

Since I originally published this hub, I've been continuing down the path of creating written content and placing it on the internet in various places. Based on what Eric Graudins originally posted, I notice that most RU spammers seem to have high expectations of an immediate payoff,.and quit very quickly. Unfortunately, you encounter this sort of attitude in network marketing a lot. In the Renegade system, you run across a lot of distributors who seem to look upon it as a means of building an MLM business without doing any work. I think we all know where this leads.

I started out, at first, trying to get my business off with a bang. I realized that I was starting to fall into the same trap as a lot of RU students. I was being impatient and thought that if I were just aggressive enough, I could amp up the adrenaline and make it happen FAST. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work this way. But I think this is going to be a good exercise in being the slow and steady turtle who eventually wins the race. I've realized that the reason the turtle usually wins is because most of the hares have given up and quit by the time they get to the finish line.

So, the way that this looks for Renegade University specifically is pretty simple. It amounts to doing some work and some studying each day. Maybe an hour of content creation or external linking and an hour of watching Klingler's webcasts or reading his blogs. Klingler says that a lot of people either try to do too much studying with little work, or take too much action with not enough studying. I fell into the latter category at first. As a result, a lot of what I did took more work than it needed to and didn't produce the results that I could have produced if I'd taken things slow. Lesson learned: you just can't rush success.

Eric Graudins put up a challenge in his hub, where he expresses frustration with the over-abundance of RU hubs that say nothing new and add no value to the community. I'm not going to argue with him; I agree with his frustration and it angers me as a student of the University to see people misrepresenting what Mike Klingler stands for, and refusing to do the real work. But, in an effort to restore the University's good name, I am taking Graudins up on his challenge. I hope I'm not the only one. Here are the original challege questions, which I'll address one by one.

"Have you used the knowledge you've learned from this 'University' to do anything besides trying to flog the program to other people?"

Yes, I have. I've used the knowledge I learned from RU to quickly learn the ropes of Web 2.0 marketing in ways I hadn't understood before. I've created some Squidoo lenses, a SquareSpace blog, shot two YouTube videos, made my presence known on Facebook and Inside919, written some articles on Ezine Articles, and put together two hubs on here in the last couple of days. Much of what I've done on these communities is directly tied to Renegade University or Ann Sieg, but not all of it. And everything I've posted is 100% original, based on my personal experiences, and intended to give away real value. As a result, I've made some contacts in the local and national communities, and several people have mentioned to me that they were attracted to me because I didn't barf on them about my services. I was able to do this very quickly thanks to what I learned at Renegade University.

"If so, write a hub to tell me (and other hubbers) about what you've done, and how RU has trained you used Web 2.0 to build your massive mailing list to whom you sell your own wonderfully profitable products."

On this part of the challenge, I have to admit that I don't have a massive mailing list, as I've only been implementing the RU principles for about two weeks as of the time of this writing. It takes longer than this to build up the kind of necessary momentum to accumulate a sizable mailing list. I'm also not selling products or services at this stage of the game. I'm PRE-selling myself. That's a major distinction of Web 2.0, and Mike Klingler teaches it very well. Trying to sell this early in the process would actually be counter-productive to the pre-selling process. This approach is not about instant gratification. True, I've put up some affiliate links, but I'm not banking on any real results out of that any time soon.

Selling doesn't happen this early and it's not reasonable to expect it. But, I'll be happy to post updates about this as they develop. In the meantime, I'll put up a summary of specifically what I've done so far in separate capsules.

The Ides of March are come, aye, but not gone. This challenge is not over. This is just the kick-off to my response. Thank you, Eric, for posing this challenge; it's added fuel to the fire and gotten me more motivated. I have only just begun my efforts with Renegade University, and I'm very impressed with how much I've gotten from it in this short time. Stay tuned and watch for more as events unfold.

First of all, I originally found the Renegade Network Marketer by Ann Sieg about a year ago. I read her book, liked the ideas, and dove straight into analysis paralysis mode for over six months. I scratched my head and couldn't figure out how to implement what she was talking about. There was never a doubt in my mind that it could work, but I just didn't see where to start. I told a few people here and there, tried a few things haphazardly, but didn't really make any progress.

Fast forward to three weeks ago (early July 2008). I met a local friend for coffee, and he told me about Renegade University. He told me that Mike Klingler teaches you how to market yourself with social networking sites. I took a peek at the materials and started reading. I mulled it over for a week, and then decided to take a crack at it. I signed up for a paid membership. I figured I would just pay my $1, sign up for a week, download all the materials, and then cancel my subscription if it turned out to be worthless. But, I was not disappointed.

I found that Mike Klingler created his materials in response to people like me, who saw value in Ann Sieg's approach, but couldn't break it down into a formula that could be implemented step by step. Klingler did just that, and put together a series of videos illustrating how to get set up on sites like this one, with specific screen shots and walkthroughs. I like to think of Phase I of Klingler's training (where I'm at as of now) as the lightning tour of Web 2.0. He took me through a number of social networking sites, but warned not to go nuts with any one of them, and that we were just getting a feel for each. He must have read my mind.

I created about 40-50 articles so far, and led a focus group on Meetup in Raleigh, with the intention of creating a Renegade community in my local area. The measurable results to date are admittedly small, but it's only been two weeks. I'm still excited about the results I have gotten, though; my YouTube videos have been viewed over 100 times, for example. That's paltry by the world's standards, but I compare it to me explaining the Renegade system to 100 different people. It compares favorably.

If you look at my YouTube account, you'll see two videos on there that discuss the Renegade Network Marketer. I created these videos after getting inspired into action by Klingler's tutorials. He says that you just need to get yourself out there, and not worry about whether it's perfect or not. These videos are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But, they still get viewed every day, without the need for any additional work on my part. And I have gotten some hits on my Renegade (Ann Sieg) affiliate links as a result of posting them.

Also, I've been able to e-mail them to my friends who asked me what the Renegade system was all about. Now, I only had to do the explaining one time. I took it further and starting posting links to these videos in other places. Eric Graudins points out that a number of hubs post backlinks to YouTube videos that, "surprise, surprise," promote Renegade University. Now, these videos don't mention RU, but they do mention Ann Sieg, which I'm sure Graudins has noticed all over the internet as well. However, I do feel that I took Klingler's general advice into account when creating these videos.

I created the videos in response to what a number of people had said about Ann Sieg: that her ideas sounded good, but that she took too long to explain them and that they were waiting for her to get to the point. They complained that they didn't see how it could work. These complaints sounded familiar, as I had said them myself. So, I decided to quickly boil down Ann Sieg's message to the bare bones, and put together some short snippets that just said, in plain English, what her system was really about. And I got a positive response. 15 people came out last week to my discussion group, and I have another meeting scheduled for tomorrow. I'm expecting only 10 or so this time. That's how it usually goes with Meetup.

Anyway, I'm digressing from my main point. My main point is that I would not have created these videos were it not from the insights I got during the first few trainings I watched on Renegade University. I also got the idea of boiling down the message from Klingler's approach; I saw what he did and saw the potential of further simplifying it. I realized that less is more, and that people want to be able to get the same amount of information with less time spent absorbing content.

Here are the links to my first video and my second video.