This week I started to share with you the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make money?

What were those Top 5 Mistakes?

1.  We are unclear about what we offer
2.  We are unclear about who we are offering it to
3.  We keep ourselves a secret!
4.  We imagine we are doing things when we are actually just thinking about it
5.  We don’t believe we are worth it (and often undercharge!)

Let me elaborate a bit…..today I’ll cover Mistake #3.

1.  We keep ourselves a secret!

Many times, when talking to Money Gym clients about why they are not achieving the ezine signups and sales they would like, whether it be their own products or affiliate sales (where you recommend other people’s stuff and earn commission), I am shocked to hear that they expect to make sales from tiny trickles of traffic.

I tell them, over and over again, something that I was taught by my first business coach Chris Barrow, it takes getting in front of 1000 people to make a sale.

This formula comes from Chris’ background in financial services sales - a tough environment - where he reckoned that you had to call 1000 people to get 100 to talk to you.

You have to talk to 100 people to get 10 appointments.

You have to get 10 appointments to make one sale.

Let me qualify this as I think the word “sale” is misleading.  It suggests that if you are a “better” or more aggressive sales person, you can convert more appointments to sales.

I prefer to say that, if you can get 10 appointments to discuss whether your product or service is a fit, for that potential client or customers problem or pain, then one person will BUY.

See the subtle difference?  They will buy, rather than you will sell.  Takes all the pressure off you actually.

So, following this through, assuming that you get in front of enough of the right kind of people, with a great solution for their problem, then they will buy your solution.

He went on to say that you need to build a reservoir of potential future customers who know who you are and what you do, and more importantly what you can DO FOR THEM.

Filling the reservoir in the early days is hard work.  Imagine a little stream running along the ground till it meets a big hole, and starts, very slowly to fill that hole up with water.  Eventually it will, and then, for every new drop that goes in, a drop will spill out and those are your customers.

That reservoir is filled up out of the 100 people you talk to, out of the 1000 calls.  The 10 people are the ones that express at interest in your product or service.  The one person out of the 10 is the one that buys.

Tranlating that for a second to the online world, we say that you need 1000 unique visitors coming to your website, to be able to attract 100 potential future customers into your reservoir of people who know who you are and what you do, and how your solution can help them.

You need to ask yourself this burning question!

If I need to get in front of 1000 people to make a sale, how many sales do I want, and how quickly can I get in front of the required number

But what do we do, when we are new in business?

We keep ourselves a secret!

We take tiny marketing actions rather than huge marketing actions.

We put notices on boards in supermarkets and health clubs.  We give a few cards to our hairdressers, our garage, our friends.

In short, we do everything we can to avoid exposing ourselves to the large numbers of people that we need to expose ourselves to, in order to build our reservoir and make the sales.

So now you know that, what can you do differently?

Think about the billion people online, on broadband, right now.

Think about the huge overseas markets coming online and getting access to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and the other big search engines.

Think about the easiest, fastest, cheapest ways to get in front of thousands, hundreds of thousands if not millions of potential future customers.

Start with a blog, even if you haven’t thought of a product or service yet.

Tell your story, your story of discovery, your tale of venturing out into the big wide online world.

I’d love to read it!

YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:

1.  Read the rest of my emails this week

2.  Listen to Richard White and Daniel Wagner’s webinars on www.MoneyGymRadio.com - they were great!

3.  Join Money Gym Silver or come along to one of our “Money Gym Presents…..” workshops in Central London.

THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:

1.  Start a blog right now even if you don’t know what to sell - tell your story of discovery.  The search engines will come and then so will the visitors.

2.  Look for good products or services, sign up to their affiliate schemes and recommend them to your visitors.

3.  Think about your expertise, skills, knowledge, experiences and wonder if any of the billion people online could learn anything from you.  Create ebooks, how to manuals, camtasia videos, memberships sites.  Then go out there and find the people who need you and want to buy from you.

Sound good?

Great!

See you there!

Nicola

Tags: Highway #1 : Business Success, Highway #2 : Internet Marketing, Success Thinking by
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MYTHS

Check out the property report above from Peter Stanley which explodes some of the myths going round about property at the moment. I think I’m going to print it off and just hand it out at dinner parties when people start to talk to me about property.

I’ll just say “are you an investor then? No? Oh, well you might like to read what an ex-business bank manager and now owner of 30 plus investment properties has to say about it all. Chablis? Lovely!”

MY VIRAL SPIRAL

I’m really getting into the MyViralSpiral system having been on the Freedom weekend, talked to Steve - the expert now - and read the massive manual about five times. Talk about slow learner, which I’m not usually, but this is testing my non-detail orientated brain big time! I can see the prize though and that’s wonderfully motivating.

The principle of the system is that you create a load of free, good value reports (or use the ones supplied) and in those reports, are links to what is known as “back end products” which can be yours (if you have one) or someone else’s (for example a relevent and related product you have found on Clickbank or Paydotcom).

Those free reports are like lots of little fishing nets out on the web, and attract a zazillion potential future customers (PFCs) into one autoresponders system, which then follows up your PFCs over a period of time.

You can have unlimited reports, unlimited follow up, and unlimited backend product recommendations.

Genius bit #1

When your PFC downloads their free report, they are offered the chance to give it away from their own website or ezine, and build their own mailing list, completely free of charge, via the system. This is very attractive to people just starting out in internet marketing.

Genius bit #2

The even more genius bit of it is, that when your PFC downloads the second report, they are double opted in to your main mailing list, if you have one, and when they download the third report, they are double opted in to the mailing list of the person above you (the person who introduced you to the Viral Spiral system).

That’s it, after that they can download unlimited free reports with no more opt in.

So…..they are building their list, and every second download they are building their external list, and every third download they are building your external mailing list.

EVEN BETTER…..they get the chance to rebrand the reports so that they earn the commission from the back end products rather than you, when they give them away from their site, via a simple online rebranding process.

[Read more →]

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Yesterday I started to share with you, the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make money.

To recap, what were those Top 5 Mistakes again? 

1.  We are unclear about what we offer
2.  We are unclear about who we are offering it to
3.  We keep ourselves a secret
4.  We imagine we are doing things when we are actually just thinking about it
5.  We don’t believe we are worth it (and often undercharge!)

Over the next few days, in the run up to our next “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop, I’ll be going into each mistake in a bit more detail.

(And don’t forget, you can hear what our two speakers on Saturday, Daniel Wagner & Richard White “The Accidental Salesman” think about the whole topic here)

Richard White - http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com
Daniel Wagner - http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com

So, Mistake #2:

1.  We are unclear about who we are offering our product or service to

One of the biggest mistakes I see is people saying that their product or service is great for “anyone” whereas we should actually be defining very clearly who our ideal potential future client or customer is.

This has three effects….you could have guessed that by now though, couldn’t you?!

1.  The first is that we don’t know where to find our ideal future client or customer (let’s call them our PFC shall we?)

2.  The second is that, because we don’t know who they are, we don’t know what their specific problem or pain is, or whether our service, product provides the best solution for them.

3.  The third is that we don’t know how to simply, powerfully and authentically communicate the fact that we have that solution for them.

We also need to identify some key qualities of our ideal PFC.  Sit and brainstorm as many as possible but think about at least these three for starters….

1.  They need to be experiencing this problem or pain - or you are educating your market they need you and that’s hard work.

2.  They need to be experiencing it now!  This creates urgency and helps that buying decision happen.

3.  They need to be able to afford our solution.  And you need to make it easy for them to pay.

In the Money Gym we know exactly who our ideal client is.  Because I know who they are, it makes it easy to communicate to them that we understand what their challenges are around money, independence, overwhelm, financial control, old age, overwork, responsibility, cashflow management, security, work/life balance.

There are many other types of people who need help with their finances, and we attract many of them too, but we write all our ezines, our website, our marketing material, our article, our reports, with just one person in mind.

Not one type of person, one actual person.

One of our most recent ideal clients in fact.

Could that person be you?

We will see.

Anyway….here are YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:

1.  Read the rest of my emails this week

2.  Join Richard White and myself tonight on the fr*ee Webinar
http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com

3.  Come along to our “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop on Saturday in Central London.
THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:

1.  Identify your ideal PFC and their specific problem
2.  Craft just three choices when offering your solution to their problem
3.  Communicate those choices in a simple, focused way.

Sound good?

Great!

http://www.themoneygym.com/mgpresents/business3.htm

See you there!

Nicola

<<< READ PART ONE HERE     READ PART THREE HERE >>>

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Would you like to know the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make money?

I have seen it over and over again and, believe me, in the early days, I’ve made all five mistakes myself!  And we wonder why we are not more successful!

Would you like to know what those Top 5 Mistakes are? 

1.  We are unclear about what we offer
2.  We are unclear about who we are offering it to
3.  We keep ourselves a secret
4.  We imagine we are doing things when we are actually just thinking about it
5.  We don’t believe we are worth it (and often undercharge!)

Let me elaborate a bit…..over the next five days, in the run up to our next “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop, I’ll be going into each mistake in a bit more detail.

And on www.MoneyGymRadio.com with our complements, you can hear what one of our speakers on Saturday’s workshop, Richard White “The Accidental Salesman” thinks about the whole topic.

1.  We are unclear about what we offer

How many of you have more than one product or service? 

More than three? 

More than five? 

More than ten?

Or worse, do you offer a “bespoke” service, where you leave it up to the customer to tell you what they want? 

Big mistake!

Already you are starting to make it impossible for someone to make a choice, and even more importantly, a buying decision. 

Malcolm Bradbury, in his book “The Tipping Point” talks about the human brain really only being able to hold and decide between seven things at once…..ideally just three to five.

Or you slip into overwhelm and indecisiveness.

So it follows that you should only offer people three choices.  You can then offer them three more, once they have clicked on the first one, but keep it really, really simple.

So, if you look at the front page of our newly relocated website you will see just three buttons.

1.  Money Gym Silver Membership

2.  Money Gym Gold Membership

3.  Money Gym Events

Now, don’t get me wrong, it takes bottle to force your potential future customers to make a choice right away. 

But it works. 

It’s called a “Customer Journey” or “Marketing Funnel” and we have been busy simplifying ours recently, ready for a new Google Adwords campaign. 

Let’s use the Money Gym as an example…..

The front end of our Marketing Funnel is a series of Free Reports, which we are distributing all over the web.

Those reports encourage people to do one of three things:

1.  Give the report away from your site as added value for your visitors

2.  Rebrand the reports with your PayDotCom ID, and give them away from your website AND earn commission.

3.  Click on a link in the Report, to buy the ebook and give Silver Membership a trial.

There are also links to our main website which are NOT rebrandable. 

So people arrive at our site via a report, and see the three choices.

Keep it simple for your potential future customers and send enough of them to your choices page, and some will choose to buy.

Now if all this sounds like common sense, and you are feeling a bit of relief in the overwhelm of how to market your product or service, you need to do one of three things…..
ACTION STEPS:

1.  Read the rest of my emails this week

2.  Join Richard White and myself tonight on the fr*ee Webinar
www.MoneyGymRadio.com

3.  Come along to our “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop on Saturday in Central London.
THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:

1.  Simplify things

2.  Give you support to do so

3.  Give you honest feedback about how diffcult you are making it for your customers or clients to make that crucial buying decision.

Sound good?

Great!

http://www.themoneygym.com/mgpresents/business3.htm

See you there!

Nicola

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STREAMLINING…..

Sometimes, something great creeps up on you and suddenly the time is just right to put it into action.

We have just crossed our 2007/2008 end-of-year at The Money Gym and compared with 2006/2007 it’s almost unrecogniseable.  Together with the input from Judith and Steve, what I have learned from Ecademy and Rich Schefren and other mentors, we are finally within sight of the inspirational picture Andy Shaw painted for The Money Gym back in 2005.

In 2007/2008 we tried new marketing methods, introduced new products, bundled things together, got professionally written sales letters for our two core products, created and then finally ironed out most of the wrinkles on the membership site.  Hmmm, well nearly.

I got to grips with online video, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress blogs, I started a live TV show at Justin.tv (ok, so it’s been a bit on hold the last few weeks but it will be back) and we came across some GENIUS experts and some mind-blowing wealth creation techniques to share with our members.

So what’s 2008/2009 going to look like?  Streamlined, that’s what.  Judith sent an email prior to our quarterly focus meeting next week, that just made so much sense that we have put some of it into action already.

The product / marketing funnel looks like this….

FRONT END

1.  Various free reports upselling to….

2.  Money Gym ebook - bundled with 30 days Silver Membership trial upselling to….

3.  Money Gym ebook / paperback - bundled with 90 days Silver Membership trial

BACK END

1.  Money Gym Silver Membership - ongoing membership of our community, very affordable, including virtual / telephone wealthcoaching with optional workshops at a big discount

2.  Money Gym Gold - 1:2:1 wealth coaching with Year 1 workshops thrown in free, ongoing lifetime membership for free, which after Year 1 includes the option to purchase one-off wealth coaching sessions from any of the coaches.

3.  Money Gym Events - face to face wealth coaching / experts at specialist workshops

That’s it.  Nice and simple.  Works for us, certainly works for our clients.

SEARCH ENGINES

Our Google Analytics across our sites / blog is finally working properly thanks to the lovely Caitlin and the sterling techie efforts of Steve who somehow seems able to interpret and implement the incomprehensible (to me!) instructions of said Caitlin.

Next step to set up “goals”, so that Google can track how many of our unique visits actually do what we want them to.  This is click to the upsell page, and then actually buy and ebook / ebook upsell.

I want to know, definitively, if we get 1000 unique visits, how many click to buy, and out of those, how many buy the upsell.  Then how many take up the free trial at the membership site, and out of those, how many stay past the first month, second month, third month, six months, one year….etc etc.

Good info = good decisions.

Then we restart our Google Adwords campaign, to drive traffic to our ebook sales page again (now the complete product / marketing funnel is in place) and then the next step is…..

Google Website Optimiser.

This is where you use the might of this free tool from Google to test hundreds of versions of your sales pages to work out which one of the many combinations sells best.

I have NO IDEA conceptually how that can work but I trust Google enough to know that it can.  I can’t wait!

SLEEPOVERS

Somehow I have been inveigled into letting my kids have two back-to-back sleepovers - two friends each.  No idea how that happened, as Steve and I had previously said “no more!”.

Friday night is the 13 years old girlies, coming here to get ready for Snap @ The Honey Club, a police run disco at a proper grown up nightclub in Brighton.  The mums & dads take it in turns to drop off / pick up, and somehow…I agreed to let her have her two mates over afterwards.  They want chinese to eat afterwards so I’m heading to Tesco for some ready made meals - marginally better for them than take-away!

Tomorrow night it’s Nelson’s turn, with two little boys he will be taking over the lounge so they can have fun with the Playstation and a couple of movies.  The boys are marginally more bearable than the girls, whose incessant giggling does my head in!

I can’t remember ever giggling that much!

Tags: Wealth Coach Diaries by Nicola Cairncross
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When we arrived at Tim Brocklehurst’s Freedom Class last week, at 8am on a Saturday morning, imagine my surprise when we bumped into Marcus De Maria from Investment Mastery and his team!

Tags: Highway #4 : Stockmarket, Money Gym TV by Nicola Cairncross
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Over at the ever excellent Mark Forster’s blog I found a reference to a blog my Yaro Starak (another favourite of mine) on how to keep going when you really feel like giving up. Excellent, I thought, so here it is….

“Like most people, some mornings I wake up and feel less than enthusiastic about working. Sometimes, this feeling doesn’t stem from laziness or apathy, it’s a stronger power, a sense of futility and helplessness.

I know a lot of people look to my story of success as a source of inspiration and that is one of the greatest benefits I enjoy as a blogger, but - and I’m not afraid to admit it - I don’t always feel energized to pursue business and sometimes in my darkest moments, I even consider throwing in the towel.

This feeling is not so common for me now as I have lifestyle flexibility, a more stable income and a better mindset about work, but earlier on, it definitely was a problem. I want to explain how I overcome these moments (and still do the same thing now on occasion) to stay on track and how you can even have a productive day when you are not really feeling the mojo on the inside.

I expect you have felt similar feelings of despair or a lack of motivation at different stages of your business development, especially if you are yet to establish an income stream online that is sufficient for you to live off, or if you are right at the beginning and you have not seen one cent of return for the work you have put in.

Inspired or Dejected
Depending on your world view and personality style, when you hear of the success of others you may either feel inspired or dejected, and while it’s obviously more fruitful to look at other people achieving what you desire as motivation, as a fallible human, jealousy, depression and anger may be your initial responses.

Your mind is your greatest asset for success in business, but it can be just as strong a force of hindrance, sabotaging your efforts, destroying your work ethic and leaving you with no option but to return to the soul destroying job you promised yourself that you would never go back to.

How To Work When You Don’t Feel Like It

One of the characteristics I believe is at the heart of my success and the success of most entrepreneurs, is an ability to keep working in the face of failure and an ability to force yourself to be productive when you don’t feel like it.

READ MORE HERE AT YARO’s BLOG >>>

Tags: Wealth Coach Diaries by Nicola Cairncross
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This week has been an interesting one in the world of both business success and internet marketing.  The excellent Stompernet faculty has opened it’s long closed doors to a limited number of new students and what is rapidly growing into the “must join” membership site / online university has been following the classic “product launch formula” method of giving away great content before selling anyone anything. 

Attraction marketing at it’s finest.

One of the things that Stompernet have been giving away, is lots and lots of free videos on improving your rankings in the Search Engines.  Check out those and their fantastic new and totally free tool to find out what Google sees when it visits your site here >>>

Another is Brad Fallon, founder of Stompernet, together with one of my mentors Rich Schefren, discussing on some great videos on why you should stop thinking in terms of quick and dirty Joint Ventures (where you just mail for them and they mail for you) and start thinking in terms of value-adding strategic partnerships.

Think about who you could work with on a long term basis, that you

1.  Like - this is very important
2.  Respect - you have to feel happy recommending them and their company
3.  Know have unique content that you don’t have that your subscribers / members would enjoy/benefit from

We have long been a fan of this in The Money Gym, with our existing alliances with those who we consider to be the best in their field, such as our “Money Gym Presents….Our Favourite Experts” workshop presenters, but specifically Passive Investments, Tamkin Riaz, Marcus De Maria, Alan Forrrest Smith and now Tim Brocklehurst, Brett McFall, Claire Raikes, and Dave Lee, The Cashflow Investor (see Wealth Highway article today).

But it’s all been a bit informal and I’m starting to think about making it more formalised and also more reciprocal in some cases.

[Read more →]

Tags: Highway #1 : Business Success by Nicola Cairncross
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My ex-business coach, Chris Barrow just posted a blog post entitled “How Can We Be Expected To Work In Such Conditions?” and really, I have to agree with him! http://tinyurl.com/5wvbbe

I woke up at 6.30 this morning to another day of glorious sunsine - and the beach just over the road.

I’m tempted to just get my swimsuit out and grab my iPod and catch some rays while listening to a bit of Rich Schefren and swotting up further on the Rent2Own concept - perfect for these market conditions and a great cashflow generator!  But no, I have to go to London today.

After getting ready in a leisurely fashion, Steve will drop me off at our sleepy little station, and I’ll enjoy a largely empty train direct to Victoria.

I’m off to go to lunch at The Ivy, with Judith and Sue, Money Gym member and winner of our Women Talk Money Challenge, notably the person who increased her income by the most ££ in just three months.  Sue managed £25,000 plus - marvellous!

We always like to make prizes for clients at the Money Gym things that Judith and I want to do!!  Later this afternoon, we will be joined by Peter Stanley, of “Property Made Simple” fame, who is down from Manchester, and a member of my now defunct first mastermind team.  Not seen Peter for ages.

Then it’s off to the Rex Cinema in Rupert St, Soho, to meet my sister and enjoy the book launch for Michelle Magorian’s new book. 

My opera singing sister Heather shared a house in Walthamstow with Michelle back in th 80’s - they were so poor in those days they literally had to break the ice in the loo due to NO CENTRAL HEATING!  Now Michelle is an acclaimed author with tomes including “Goodnight Mr Tom” starrring the late John Thaw in the film of, and she has a film deal sorted for the new book already.

Home again on the train, and as it will be a late night, I’ll have a lie in tomorrow, as I dont’ have to get up till the 11am Money Gym Wealth Surgery webinar for our Gold clients.

Why am I telling you all this?

[Read more →]

Tags: Wealth Coach Diaries by Nicola Cairncross
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Are you in business?  Perhaps you are self-employed or freelance?

If so, do you know about Marketing Machines? 

These are automated machines that run all the time, marketing your business day or night, while you are awake or asleep, in the UK or on holiday.

And if you DID know about Marketing Machines, do you have one?  Would you like one?

And more importantly, would you like your Marketing Machine to be

1.  Totally Automated
2.  Working 24/7
3.  Running on pennies (less than £50 a month overhead)
4.  Break Even or Profitable

Yep!  That’s right, would you like your marketing to break even or even be profitable? 

Heresy? 

No!

Here at The Money Gym we believe that your marketing activities should …..

[Read more →]

Tags: Highway #2 : Internet Marketing by Nicola Cairncross
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