Margaret Collins says:

It’s brilliant talking with the new intake of Money Gym clients and explaining what exactly they have joined. Yes, they know they have paid the price, joined the Money Gym Platinum group but, what exactly will they get???

What happens next is like playing pass the parcel - but where you, the client, get the present every time the music stops!

There are so many extra bits of information available through the one-to-one coaching and the teleclassess, the client resources and (my favourite) downloads of audio from the 1st Wealth C*reation Conference - it can be a bit overwhelming. As if that is ever a problem on the road to financ*ial independence!!

However, the bit that I find is the absolute best, cherry on the cake experience is the ….

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Nicola says:

Wade Winder sent me a great link to a page where he proves, quickly and visually, how much damage lack of focus has on your business.

Which distracted me just long enough to post it up for you, then I’m back off to focus!

http://www.profitwar.com/FocusProof/

Wade has a great little mini-course on Google Profits that distracts me from my focus on a regular basis LOL

Your clients lie to you. Regularly and frequently. Shamelessly. And it’s called negotiating.

The most common lie goes like this "I can get exactly the same thing down the road for less!"

OK… so that begs the question "So why don’t you go there and get it?"

And you’ll find there is one of three answers to this: they can’t, they can’t, or they don’t want to:

Believe me, if your prospect could get the same thing at a lower price somewhere else and price was all he cared about, why the hell is he still talking to you?

What he’s really saying is this: "I want your service, your quality, all the things about you and your business that make dealing with you easy but I want your competitors’ prices".

And it ain’t that kind of party, is it?

This is where you really want to be sitting down while you read because it’s not pleasant. Bear in mind also that the same scenario below occurs when you don’t increase prices and your costs are increasing……….

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Judith says: 

We will be increasing the price of the Money Gym Platinum programme with effect from 14th February, from £5754 to substantially more than that.   Here’s how this decision came about.

Steve handed over the accounts to me in November and after adding everything up, I was able to report to the Quarterly Board Meeting that we aren’t making an awful lot of money. Well, not an awful lot of post tax profit anyway.   

Not good news. Still we are not dispirited, far from it, we are learning every day how to make more money and it’s Nicola’s mission in life after all (and Steve and I have felt the benefits).  But we are determined to turn it into a MUCH more profitable business for the good of all concerned.   

Currently our price is £5754, by the time we have paid £857 of that to the VATman and taken off the coaches fees, the venues for the workshops, then if you multiply that by the number of clients we had during 2006, and deducted PR, hotel expenses, copies of Nicola’s book which we give away to clients and potential clients, to journalists etc., Nicola’s networking, promotional tables at the Yes Group, the ezine editing, telephone costs, travelling expenses, conference line charges, bank and PayPal charges, internet marketing expenses – there’s not much profit left !   Fairly de-motivating for the management team if it continues……

Of course, if we had ……

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Nicola says:

Brett McFall is a great guy – he’s a brilliant internet marketer and co-Founder of the World Internet Summit (an event I always attend).  He’s just written a brilliant and controversial blog posting about The Secret which we all love over here! 

Brett says:

You’re not being told the full story.

I don’t know if you’ve been caught up in the wave of interest and excitement over the “docu-movie” sweeping the world, “The Secret” - but chances are you’re going to hear about it very soon if you haven’t.

There is something about it which I feel I have to say.

Here’s why…

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by Nicola Cairncross

One of the most powerful secrets of the internet is that the more niche your site is, the better. The more esoteric your idea, the more likely you are to attract a faithful following.

I have a friend who is a successful business travel expert by day, but she creates the most amazing American folk art (Amish style) dolls by night. She buys the patterns and materials direct from the USA via websites advertising the products. We are trying to pursuade her that there may be a market for these dolls via the internet - she currently sells via craft fairs.

So if you have a passion, or a hobby, or something you want to learn about, one of the best ways to make a start is to create a website; you will start to attract people who are interested in the same things as you.

If you then go one step further, and offer a discussion group or newsletter about your chosen subject, you will start to build a reservoir of folk who are on the same wavelength. No matter that you don’t yet have a product or service to market to them, you will have a pool of customers or clients for the future, all of whom know other people with the same interests.

If you then think deeply about your chosen subject, especially if it is one that has inspired or affected you deeply, you may be able to come up with five, seven, eight, nine or ten key things that would be useful to other people interested in the same subject. Mindmapping is useful for this exercise.

Perhaps you may choose eight things of interest; for example…

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Nicola says:

So many people try to make money online and give up after the first attempt (saying "it just doesn’t work, it’s a scam" and there are still some in my own camp I’m trying to convince LOL…..

However, when I read this email I just had to share it.  It’s a guy known as SEO Diamond aka Ross Goldberg, to whom I’ve been introduced by George Levy and it makes one ashamed to give up too soon surely?

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

"I want you to know a bit about my history and what I’ve done and been through.

I spent 8 years in retail management and 6 years in the Army Reserves. Shortly after joining the Army, I became very ill with phantom pains all over my body. I was never meant to be in the military (I was the kid in High School that took 20 minutes running the mile [while smoking a cigarette :-)]) and my body reminded me of that fact quite often.

I was eventually diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (3 years later), which is odd because most effected by the disease are women (roughly 90%). The pain became so severe, that in 2005 I could no longer work outside of my home.

The Department of Veterans Affairs gave me roughly $1000 per month to go to college. This was next to nothing as I had 2 kids (3 now) and we were barely making it. My wife had to stay home to take care of the little ones, as I had moments where I couldn’t lift my infant daughter. We were living far below the poverty line and life was beyond miserable.

In June of 2005 I decided to start a business online. I sold a PSP (for about $400 when they were still very popular) to generate the income I needed to start and opened a store on Ebay. Two weeks later I went into a coma. My diagnosis from that was Encephalomyelitis (swelling of the brain and spine) and Pneumonia. I awoke roughly 10 days later paralyzed.

I rehabilitated quickly and was back home in a wheelchair 30 days
after the coma began. I checked my Paypal account to find roughly $1000
in profit there. Within 60 days I was walking again, but I still can’t
feel hot or cold from my shoulders down and have 50% feeling from my
shoulders down, 30% from my waist down, and 10% from my knees down. All
I can feel in these areas is pain.

My Ebay store turned into…

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Chief Happiness Officer Alexander comes up trumps again - you really have got to check this blog out >>>>. 

This post just brought memories of this last year, the year we discovered that our wonderful AMM Full Service was never going to be enough for some and we had to pull the plug on one of the best earners I’ve come up with to date.   

As Steve always says "chocolate isn’t love, you know" and similarly "lots of cash isn’t happiness, you know".

When the customer isn’t right - for your business

One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

* Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
* Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim - ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.

1: It makes employees unhappy

Gordon Bethune is a brash Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around “From Worst to First,” a story told in his book of the same title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, so he made it very clear that the maxim “the customer is always right” didn’t hold sway at Continental.

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people.

Here’s how he puts it:

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . . Read more now >>>>

You know by now that I like to start the sexiest segments with a few nice statistics - just to calm you down! While all of these statistics are from the UK, I would guess that the information is largely true of not only the USA but also most developed countries.

According to the Office of National Statistics in the UK, rents have risen on average by 13% since 1962.

Countrywide Estate Agents in the UK have over 80 branches across the UK and they say that the average tenant is

under 35
relatively new to their job
earn an average of #18,000 per year
pay an average of #524 per month rent (outside London)

What is the point of the above? Well, when considering buy to let, would you rather buy a property that is going to appeal to the most number of people, or the least? Why make things hard for yourself? The other thing to do, is to sit down and make a list of the things that would attract you, if you were looking for a rental property. Imagine yourself at 35, single, with a new job (sounds very attractive to those of us with children under 8, I can tell you!)

Look for some outside space, garage or off street parking, nice clean common parts, rooms that get the sun, a safe feeling about the surrounding area, local shops for the basics. Avoid noise in the form of traffic, neighbours, an airport or local night clubs / superpubs. Avoid low lying areas (flooding), parking facilities through gardens or dark areas and particularly flats above chip shops or other fast food outlets!

In 1996 in the UK, 10 million households contained married couples and 6 million contained one person only. By 2016, this is predicted to be…

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Nicola says: You may have heard about my daughter Phoebe - she’s 11 now and a born entrepreneur.  She wants a new laptop really really badly and would ideally like a pink one (just like Judith does).

She’s been fascinated by the internet for a while - the idea that you can make money online gripped her imagination and I’ve been helping her make a website that will make money from Adsense - it’s at http://www.ClobosRunescapeTips.com - Clobo70 being her Runescape character. 

Phoebe is really good at making money on Runescape - making Runescape Millions it’s called.  She  mines ore and weave flax and goes on quests and trades items like armour, and other valuables. Her website is where she is going to share hints and tips and warn other players about how not to get scammed.

We have also made her a MySpace profile (no, you really will need your sunglasses to look at this one) and it’s at http://www.MySpace.com/Clobo70.

Day 2 and no traffic yet;  she was hoping to make enough to go to Brighton’s Churchill Square with her mates but no joy yet………..

I can see that I’m going to have to manage her expectations a bit as well!