I am deeply shocked to hear this morning that the powers in Burma has turned off the whole country’s internet connection to stop information getting out about the government’s activities. 

Apart from the atrocities presumably being committed, this affects everyone in Burma whose business depends on the internet.   “With the Burmese government restricting visas to foreign journalists, and all internal media controlled by the state, the internet provides one of the few routes left for getting eyewitness reports from inside Burma to the outside world. Despite rumours that the junta intends to close down internet access, a few brave bloggers continue to report their experiences” reports The Times Online and you can read more here, now they have actually done it… http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2539435.ece

I’m almost speechless about the ability of a country to do that….China making Google censor search results is bad enough….

On a lighter note, our Money Gym coaches, as well as Judith, Steve and I, are always on the lookout for great new Wealth Creation tools to pass onto our clients and Philly Richards shared this new property tool with us all recently.  http://ononemap.com/  - It’s another cool mashup! You put in the area and the price that you want to buy a place for and it shows you exactly what properties are up for sale on the actual roads!!

Another client Vanessa Bsirsky has become the Queen of My Space, and has just launched a new product, enabling people to be able to “Sex Up Your Profile” on any Web 2.0 or social networking site, to attract hot dates!  No more paying for expensive dating sites people, just follow Vanessa’s guidelines and you will be fighting them off.  Check it out at www.sexupyourprofile.com - It’s always so cool when we see a project that is born during someone’s membership of The Money Gym, come to fruition!

Are you watching BBC’s reality TV show The Restaurant?  As you can imagine it’s required viewing in our house, with me being endlessly fascinated by business success or failure and with Steve being an ex-chef and restaurant manager (he spends a lot of the show shuddering with horror at the memory of the long hours, the split shifts and horrid customers, which makes me laugh a lot, as I was one of them!). 

Raymond Blanc is great in the show, having put his own money into it apparently, with his restaurant Les Quat’ Saisons in Oxford being on my “must eat there before I die” list.  Last night the very nice, but very unimaginative couple Martin & Emma being the latest couple to have their restaurant closed.  I was surprised as the chef in the other couple is an arrogant git.  However, he does have a strong vision and knows how he wants things to be.

Watching Emma try to describe their packaging for their Marks & Spencer ready meal to the graphic designer was a particular treat from this week’s show.  Check out the site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/restaurant/

So as you may have noticed, I’ve been to Pisa, and Florence in Italy this last week – my birthday treat - and what a great time we had.  Four control freaks trying to get along and have fun and I’m proud to say, we largely managed it, although one lovely little bar is now known as “The Argument Bar” because it all kicked off a bit that afternoon.  I’ll be putting more little videos up on the blog at www.WealthStrategySecrets.com over the next week – interspersed with photos taken by Alex and Heather.

We tasted Chocolate and Chilli and Vanilla and Wild Raspberry ice cream in the best Gelateria in Florence, Vestri, and you can see it at http://www.vestri.it/en.html  – mmmmm.  We stayed in Pisa at the stunning Hotel Novecento http://www.pisaonline.it/hotelnovecento/ - just look at that garden!

In Florence, via train, we stayed the first night at two boutique places, Il Salott Di Firenze www.ilsalottdifirenze.it and then at Residenza A Giotto http://www.residenzagiotto.it/UnicoEng.html - imagine plonking Bond St in the Da Vinci Code and you will have an idea.  Our residenza cost about 120 euros a night per double room and we were next to the Savoy, Florence, for heaven’s sake.  Marvellous stuff.  Loads of lovely pink leather, and shoes to die for.

From the “Duo Andreas’” who were very handsome and terrific flirts, we bought whole pecorino cheeses, crema della balsamico, and salami and ham at their family stand, Perini, in the food market http://www.periniitalia.it/index2.asp?lingua=inglese

Notice how even tiny market stalls and internet cafes and tiny ice cream shops have amazing websites?  They are not stupid and realise that international visitors (like me) are more likely to mention them in ezines and blogs if we can SHOW you how fabulous these places were.  And some of them sell products internationally too by mail order.

What’s upcoming and new at the Money Gym?

We have now re-launched our Google email discussion group for Silver, Gold and MasterMinds.  You can find the signup box on your specific member homepage.

Judith came down for a final run-through of our “Women Talk Money” Workshop day on Friday 5 October http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/Workshop and we discussed the possibility of The Money Gym Gold / Gold Express and Mastermind going “all women” from December 2007.   Talk about niche-ing!  The only woman-only wealth coaching and education company in the world, methinks!

There is a discussion thread about it on the forums at www.TheMoneyGymClub.com so why not login for free and have you say?  Would it make you more likely to join, or less, if you were a woman and thinking about it?

Second Life

While Hermione just gets cooler and cooler,with a great new hat, Steve has been battling on with trying to teach me the concepts of trading currencies so that Hermione can make money in Second Life with trading the Linden dollar on the www.SLExchange.com money markets.  We have worked out that you want to buy more Lindens to the US$ and then sell less Lindens to the US$ when you sell, ideally for more money than you bought them for. 

Took a while to work that one out I can tell you!  And I’m not sure I’ve grasped it yet. 

If you buy 10,000 L$ for L$276 to the US$1 (total cost US$36.23 ), then sell them for L$274 to the US$1, then you should make L$2 for each US$1 dollar traded.  I think.  It can’t be that you make L$2 per Linden $ traded……..

If you are trading 10,000 of them, and you sell 10,000 at L$274 to the US$1, you will make US$36.49, a total profit of US$0.26, which would buy you 1061 more L$ next time round.

That’s a decent outfit, if I’ve got it right.  For those of you who understand such things, there is no commission but there is a 45 pip spread, and a daily trading range of 273 – 281.  All greek to me at the moment but I’ll persevere.  I hate not understanding anything!

H’s love life is pretty good, with the lovely (but surprisingly young!) Venga still very much in evidence, albeit long distance, from Portugal.  Cunningly, while the rest of Europe is an hour ahead of us, Portugal seems to be the same time………..how that works I have no idea either.  Something to do with longitude and latitude.

He’s very keen on moving to Southern Portugal and owning a Ferrari (he’ll learn!) so he’s now got himself a copy of The Money Gym ebook and is diligently working through it.  H divides her time between dancing the night away in formal ballgowns (he’s very romantic even if he likes rock music) and discussing wealth coaching topics – how funny is that?

Have fun, we most definitely are!

Nicola

Mine is how to find the apostrophe on an Italian keyboard!  And to recover from misspelling Bueno the other day, so sorry Annie!

Annie is one of our coaches, who is Italy mad, and planning to live in Venice, another beautiful Italian city apparently.  You can live and work anywhere if you want to, you know?

After getting the train from Pisa, we are still in Florence and about to head to the market to buy presents.  That train, now how funny was that?  No lights, which was interesting as we went through the mercifully short tunnels (eeek!) and no loos, but only 3 euros each for a journey that would cost 20 quid in the UK.

Tim Ferris is right in the “4 Hour Work Week” you can live for much less almost everywhere else in the world, than the UK or USA.  Our boutique hotels are costing 120 euros a night between 2 of us!

Now, back to shopping, we are not talking about any old market here, it is a food market the like of which I have never seen before.  You do not eat breakfast before you go because they give you tasters of anything you are thinking of buying….

I have fallen in love with a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes, high red winklepicker stillettos……man, those shoes have my name on them.  And the pink leather handbags, gloves, briefcases….Judith would die of joy.

Yesterday we met a journalist friend of Heathers, who is mad for rock music, Berio and the Montiverdi Choir in equal measure, in a bookshop that also sells coffee (I am wired to the max you can imagine!) and he recommended a little Trattoria that is owned by the father of a friend of his little son, so we booked that for last night….marvellous, marvellous food.

Sarah and I are sitting in a teeny tiny newsagent, that also sells coffee and ice cream (bad news!) and they have converted their little back room to an internet cafe.  Six state of the art computers with all the software a girl could need.  Sighs with joy!

Because our boutique B&B, although above Gucci and right next to the Savoy, round the corner from the Duomo square, has NO INTERNET CONNECTION.  A cunning ploy by Heather and Alex (now known as Alessandro) to keep us off the internet, but we are far more cunning, us seasoned internet marketers, than that.

Under the guise of buying presents we have detoured to this clever little cafe, because I needed to send out the phone number for todays Gold & Platinum members wealth surgery, hosted by Judith.

I was able to log into our webinar technology, get the number, login to our shopping cart technology, and broadcast it.

I have also checked our orders for the “Women Talk Money workshop and guess what!!  Four more places have gone since yesterday!  Some of you took my “Pronto, Pronto” seriously and secured your place on this lifechanging day (cant find the hyphen either btw)

If you want to join us next Friday, 5 October, in Central London, you must, must, must book your place now as they really are going fast now.

Come and let me practice my appalling Italian on you, I have only managed to master “gracie” at the moment which has three, count them, three syllabels.  And the s sounds like a z.

All good fun though!

See you next Friday, and watch the ezine this week for more links to funny little videos from Italy.  If you missed the last one, it is on the blog

Ciou bellas!

Nicola

We are in Florence now, having moved on from Pisa, which was absolutely beautiful.  You may remember from the ezine that Heather (our singing sister) is doing Bach with the Montiverdi Choir and Orchestra, founded by Sir John Eliot Gardiner.   One thing we have discovered, Bach is very, very relaxing!

It’s boutique hotels all the way, usually for about 30 euros per person per night, using TripAdvisor to book - amazing website.  Watch out for a funny appearance of Tim Ferris’ book "The 4 Hour Work Week" which Sarah is reading and I have already read.  I really could work from anywhere, as you can see, as long as there is a good internet connection….

Here is the video from Day 1 - using just a FlipVideo hand held camcorder (as recommended by Mike Stewart on his excellent blog www.FromTheDeskOfMikeStewart.com ), and Windows Movie Maker;  a bit rough and ready but you get the idea.  Now I’ve been through the process once, I’ll be able to get the rest up this evening, during dinner on the terrazo - right next to the Duomo.  Then I’ll edit it with Sony Vegas Movie Studio, weaving in some photos too.

It’s like staying right next to Big Ben here!  The Gucci shop is right under us, and the Duomo is right behind our Residence, Il Salotto di Firenze (www.ilsalottdifienze.it ) - check it out!

I want to tell you the story of an ordinary woman (by most
people standards) who joined The Money Gym and who went
on to do quite extraordinary things. 

As they do, as they do….

Janet Swift was, by her own admission in a horrible place.  I’ll
let you tell you her story in her own words as one of the new
things we have discovered about Janet is that she writes brilliantly!

Janet says:

"I’d like to tell you about a person I knew. Crushed by debts accrued
without her knowledge, borrowing significant amounts on credit cards
to keep her husband’s business going ‘until it turned the corner’,
fighting to keep a roof over the family’s communal head, diagnosed
with a fatal illness, mourning the loss of much-loved parents in quick
succession, feeling duty-bound to use her inheritance to shore up
her husband’s business and to sell the shares her father passed to
her, she was emotionally exhausted.

Add to that a brave decision (she thought!) to dive off the ten-metre
board in a desperate attempt to protect the family, she borrowed
over £8,000 at 18% (oh, Money Gym’ers, be still your beating hearts!)
in an attempt to set up an Internet business, "outcome guaranteed",
she was told at the presentation!

All this while working, looking after two children (almost single-handedly)
and going into hospital for lumbar punctures to relieve raised intracranial
pressure at five-weekly intervals!

Then, to cap it all, she fell off a doormat (really!) and broke her …..

[Read more →]

(Doing ExtraOrdinary Things)

I want to tell you the story of an ordinary woman (by most people’s
standards) who joined The Money Gym and who went on to do
quite extraordinary things. 

As they do, as they do….

LC joined the Money Gym in one of our pre-Christmas promotions,
where we encourage people to think of themselves in the midst
of the madness of spending loads of money on presents for
other people.  You would be amazed at how many people join
The Money Gym in December, wanting perhaps to hit the ground
running in the next year, and wanting to make the next year
an truly amazing one.

LC started working with her coach and came to a couple of the
workshops, but didn’t seem to enjoy them much as they were
on topics that she was not so interested in or even fearful of. 

LC had a dream you see, to move to France to live, in a little
village she had visited often, to retire to a holiday home she had
bought with her husband.

After the second or third workshop, we spent the day as usual,
going round the room, allowing each client time to update us
all on their progress, to tell us the challenges they are facing,
then we all coach that client for the rest of the time.  The
most amazing insights and ideas come from the other clients,
and the coaches, who often participate in the workshops.

The challenge for LC was that her husband was very risk
averse and wanted to use the money from the sale of their
house to …..

[Read more →]

Nicola says:

I get a lot of email as you can imagine but I’ve been cutting back on the lists I’m on recently, keeping it to only the internet marketers that I really like and trust, and that consistently deliver great content. 

So when I got an email from one, Mike Filsaime, telling me about a new product developed by another, John Reese, that is free, can get you great traffic - also for free, and works by using the power of the internet and viral marketing in effect, I read the whole thing, clicked through and signed up.

If you scroll down and look to the right of this blog, you will see a widget that looks like this, that is feeding in the headlines of relevent blog content, from other blogs. 

I am earning "syndication points" by having this widget on my blog, which gives me the right to have my blog shown on other users blogs, in the same way.

Somehow, they are using the power of network marketing and going 10 layers deep, so if I end up on 10 blogs who then show my headlines to another 10, who then show it to another 10…..you get the idea! Tried to work it out for you but my calculator stopped at 10 million.  And there are billions of people online with 51% of the UK having broadband now!

So cool!  Click the picture here to find out more and sign up in the early stages…..it took me literally minutes and didn’t cost a thing.

More traffic to your blog right now!

As soon as I started to learn about money management and wealth creation, my marriage came under immense strain, so I’m talking from experience and from the heart here.  I’ll tell you a bit more of my story at the end of this article…….

We recently noticed that a significant number of our clients end up leaving their current partner during – or shortly after - their time in the Money Gym. 

Why is that?

Is it that Wealth Creation is bad for your marriage?  Should we put an official  notice on our website that says:

** WARNING:  Joining The Money Gym Might Kill Your Marriage!  **

Actually no, the rather controversial title is there to grab your attention and it obviously worked rather well, as you are reading this now!

Seriously, many official surveys into divorce cite “Money” and specifically “Debt” as being in the Top 5 killers of relationships.

So many couples, when falling in love, don’t think to explore each others attitudes to money, debt/credit, investing, or even iscuss what they want out of life financially (beyond a holiday home in Florida perhaps!). 

You find out which music you like, what your favourite food and film is, you talk about whether you want children, where you want to live, or go on holiday, but rarely do you talk about money;  your attitudes to it, your beliefs around it, earning it, spending it, keeping track of it.

Who Earns It Anyway? 

When there is a main breadwinner in the family, they often think that they can spend it how they like.  After all, they earn it, don’t’ they? 

The second partner, because they are “not working” often feels then that they can’t spend money on themselves and this is particularly prevalent in people who have previously earned well, but stop working to have – or look after - children.  They will spend on the house or the kids, but feel uncomfortable spending on themselves.

The exception are those with ….

[Read more →]

Excellent blog posting by globetrotting ex-client Lea Woodward (pictured here on her birthday in Dubai) over on her business and technology blog about a conversation she’s had with a friend (one that I have had many times with friends and family over dinner tables - though not with clients as they are paying for your advice so tend to listen and take action LOL).

Interesting how this woman just wants to delegate responsibility for one of the core activities of her business - the marketing.  As Chris Barrow always says, if the marketing stops the clients stop, but somehow, this person has got it into her head that marketing is a 3-4 hour, one-off job.  Bless her.

Lea says "Last week I spoke to a friend with whom I haven’t spoken for quite a while. She runs a life coaching business but still struggles (despite being in business for 3+ years) to generate a decent income & attract clients on a regular basis.

She is convinced at the moment that if she could spend "2-3 hours with a marketer who doesn’t cost the earth", and will help her "distill her marketing message", all her business problems will be solved.

There’s a few problems with that approach…

1) Marketing is not what she needs - at least not yet. Having asked her a couple of questions about her business it is very clear that her problems run deeper than just marketing and before she does any ‘proper’ marketing she needs to sort out …..

Read more here >>>>