Top 5 Business Mistakes – Pt 5

We have been covering the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make moneyl

If you have missed any of these emails, you can read Business Mistakes 1-5 at the blog at http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/blog – just search using the little search box and the key words “business mistakes”. You will also find related articles suggested by the software.

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!)

So our final mistake is to secretly feel that we are not worth paying for our product or service, or certainly not worth charging enough.

Actually it’s a bit more fundatmental than that…we often don’t have a clue about what we should be charging, in order to make a great living, let alone whether we feel comfortable about charging that amount.

We often just price our product or service around the lowest level that our competitors are – and we have no idea if THEY are making any money!!

I have created a report called “Fee Setting For Lone Rangers” which I was going to drop in here but it’s too long.

If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s well worth downloading, as it will help you work out what to charge.

http://www.themoneygymmvs.com/mvs

(Login, or register to create a free account here)

Then, of course, the issue is around whether you think you are worth it.

Similarly, my free report “Natural Marketing For Lone Rangers” addresses the real world sales and marketing challenges, while my “Business Success 21st Century Style” report addresses online marketing and how to do that easily and inexpensively.

Feel free to download those too from

http://www.themoneygymmvs.com/mvs – login to your account and scroll down the homepage to find them.

YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:

1. Read the rest of the “Mistakes” this week

2. Do a quick search using the box – top right – on “business success”

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

THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:

1. Work out what you are worth and who can afford you

2. Help you reach those people

3. Deal with an issues that come up for you, when charging what you need to charge, to make a great life

Sound good?

Great!

See you there!

Nicola

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-22

• revamped website converting unique visitors to front end sales at the rate of $342 per 1000. If this was $34 ebooks that would be 1%… #
• So, time to turn adwords on again, as Analytics now working fine, goals set up….monitor …then learn to use Google Optimiser – eeek! #
• Visitor value on back end much higher, due to workshops, 1:2:1 coaching, affiliate commission, but self-funded marketing the holy grail eh? #
• watching ad campaign like a hawk, have good relevancy, split testing ads and destinations…nearing the 150 visitors mark….sale imminent? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Top 5 Business Mistakes – Pt 4

I’m sharing with you the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and businesses 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!)

Today I’ll cover Mistake #4.

1. We imagine we are doing things when we are actually just thinking about it

This mistake is even worse than the “Entrepreneur’s Trap of Busyness” as described in Joseph Jaworski’s excellent book “Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership”.

Jaworski outlined the challenge business owners and leaders have, of always having to be busy doing stuff, with the result that they never spend time just thinking about their business strategically, or spend time working “on” their business but always have to be working “in” their business.

Mistake #4 goes one step further and my realisation of it came about from personal experience. Let me tell you the story!

One day, early in my coaching career, I panicked about not having enough clients. I scheduled a call to my first ever coach, Rachel Turner of Kaizen Coaching, to discuss emergency measures I could take.

However, before the call, I heard Rachel’s voice in my head (sign of a good coach, note!) asking me, “well, Nicola, just what HAVE you done to attract clients?”

And I thought to myself, well, we discussed this, this and that, and I COULD have done this, this and that. But at the end of the day, what HAVE I actually done?

Not much at all, was the truthful answer.

It is almost as though we don’t take action because we have already convinced ourselves that it won’t work. And this moment of insight was all it required for me to think “well, I don’t want to tell her these things don’t work, because I haven’t actually tried any of them”. Is it an inbuilt cynicism, a bit like the cynicism that stopped me ever reading personal development or wealth creation books in the past?

So the coaching call was a bit redundant in the end, because it was all about me reporting in to Rachel on the actions taken since the day before (some of which were already working!) rather than me moaning on to my coach about all the things I hadn’t done, which weren’t working.

Interesting huh?

Whenever I speak to my clients and they are complaining that they haven’t got enough clients, I always ask them what they are actually doing, on a regular basis, to attract clients.

Not what they think they are doing, or what they think they could do, or what they have heard works, or does not work. But what they are actually doing day by day, week by week. (I also ask what has worked in the past, what they used to do that they are not doing now).

Not much is usually the answer, and certainly not enough of the things that work!

It’s all about comfort zones I’ve decided. We want to take the actions that we are comfortable with rather than the actions that produce results.

So what actions do the successful companies in your field take, that you are not taking?

What are the critical success factors in your industry? Which are you missing?

YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:

1. Do a search here on the blog for other articles on “business success”

2. Download another free report here

http://www.themoneygymmvs.com/mvs

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. Establish what the critical success factors are, for your business

2. Work out how to get the ones you are missing or don’t think you can afford

3. Work out what works in your business and what doesn’t, and support you to do more of what works.

Sound good?

Great!

See you there!

Nicola

Women Great At Property!

Emma Wright built a mansion and made a £1.2m profit. She’s now investing it in 30 buy-to-let homes

When Emma Wright’s husband handed her £1m and asked her to invest it in property, she vowed to try to double the money within three years.

The 34-year-old housewife used it to snap up nine acres of land near Sevenoaks, Kent, and borrowed £2m-from the bank to build a palatial seven-bedroom luxury mansion.

The ambitious project was Emma’s first venture into property development but it has been a resounding success. She managed to sell the house to a foreign investor two months ago for £4.3m.

‘It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like it, but no one who knows me is surprised I pulled it off,’ says Emma, a former sales manager for a credit-management company and now a full- time mother of two young children.

‘I approach life with a lot of confidence and I thought this was really no different from any other house transaction – you buy as cheaply as possible, don’t skimp on making improvements and sell as well as you can.’

Now she is ploughing her £1.2m profit into building a buy-to-let portfolio. Emma plans to purchase up to 30 houses near her home in Wadhurst, East Sussex, on a 60/40 split with a neighbour and friend Jacqui Hollie, 36, who wants to invest with her after they met at the school gate and started talking about property.

Her bank has offered a £1m loan facility at 1.5% above base rate and a maximum of 70% on each property if she wants to use it.

‘I realise house prices may still have further to fall,’ she says, ‘but I’m a cash buyer so I can negotiate hard. No one can predict when prices will recover again, but as long as I spread my purchases and buy one new property every couple of months, my portfolio should benefit from any further price falls and I won’t miss any opportunities.’

READ MORE HERE >>>

Top 5 Business Mistakes – Pt 3

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

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-20

• Taking on just three internet marketing mentoring clients to work with over 6 intense weeks – http://www.tinyurl.com/nicolamentoring #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-19

• uploading video to various sites while adding autoresponders to http://www.themoneygymmvs.com/mvs – ought to get a life really LOL #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-18

• upgrading my wordpress blog – it’s gettin easier to use but still buggy! #
• Loving the new look of the website http://www.themoneygym.com and the blog – so crisp and clean looking! #
• @robocallaghan – hi! how are you? what do you mean? I’ve been uploading new reports like a virally spirally madwomen…..LOL #
• @garyvee – you are so RETRO…I remember Billy Joel when he released Uptown Girl first time round…I know, I know…I’m wearing well #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Wealth Coach Diaries: Nicola’s Week

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..

Misconceptions: Is Disappointment Holding You Back?

Forgive me if this article is a bit “me,me,me”. It grew out of my Note From Nicola” and actually outgrew it, so bear with me and see if it sparks anything off in your thoughts. If so, I would love you to make a comment below there…tell me your story.

A bit of background….there is a right old furore going on in the coaching world at the moment with an internet based reality tv show happening, called “Britian’s Next Top Coach”.

It’s turning the coaching world upside down with two main camps developing, for and against.

Those who are “against” are largely anti-competition and anti-marketing, and those who are “for”, are thinking that this is going to raise the benefits of coaching and personal development – something Joe Public is woefully ignorant of – and this can only be “a good thing”.

The “for” camp are also eyeing the winners packages, which include a lot of very nice prizes including a promotion and management deal, a potential book deal with a mainstream publisher, and much much more.

I’ve largely ignored it all until Judith emailed me a link saying that I should go for it. In her words “you’ve got the balls” and it would be great for the Money Gym.

Not to mention my Star/Creator profile. I am drawn to telly and while this is internet video, it’s nearly the same thing and may lead to telly.

But I found myself finding lots of different reasons – misconceptions – not to enter, from “oh, they will insist on us giving up the ebook rights and that will kill our marketing” to “oh, the whole coaching world will despise me for the self-promoting limelight seeker I am” and loads of other rubbish gubbins as well.

Then it struck me, I didn’t want to enter because I didn’t want to compete with other coaches, and especially not so publically!

Read more..

« Previous Page — Next Page »