£10k In 90 Days Challenge | Day 2 | African Travel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:26 — 6.0MB)

The Money Gym has just launched The Boardroom, an easy, quick, flexible way for your business to access a crack business team comprising 18 of your very own non-executive directors, plus Judith Morgan and Nicola Cairncross.  As part of the launch of The Boardroom, The Money Gym is offering a 33% discount on the 1st year membership (offer closes midnight 31st October) and Nicola & Judith are hosting a daily BlogTalkRadio show, where they help each business caller work out how to create an extra £10k in just 90 days from their existing business.

Today’s caller on The Money Gym “£10k In 90 Days” Challenge on our BlogTalkRadio show was Rob Heath from http://www.MudHutTravel.com. Rob is passionate about South Africa and has set up a fabulous travel business which he and his partner started last year, but it’s really only just got rolling in the last few months.

Quick bit of background: MudHutTravel.com is all about unique, boutique holidays in South Africa;  the website is gorgeous with lots of lovely pictures, and it’s getting about 1200 unique visitors a month, with 400 of those being returning visitors, or 33% – a very good return rate.  Some, but we are not sure how many, are coming from a Facebook ads campaign Rob’s been running, spending £200 over the last month.

(Rob can you remind me how many clicks Facebook are reporting for that spend in the last month?)

From 1200 visitors, they are converting 5 into enquiries, a 0.41% visitor/enquiry conversion, which is good and I think it could be improved if they are willing to take phone enquiries, which means making the phone number more obvious.  From 5 enquiries, they have converted an impressive 3-4 (or 70%) to sales with the average profit per sale running at around £450.

This means their front-end sale turnover was worth £1575, not counting any extra services or experiences they offer their customers, they are converting 0.29% of their unique visitors to sales, and each unique visitor is worth £1.31.

If their adspend was £200 for x number of clicks from Facebook, they can work out what it cost them to get X number of visitors to the website.

If you know what each unique visitor is worth on the front end, and what it costs you to get each unique visitor there, you can ramp up your adspend, providing you keep a check on conversions holding up at each stage of the process.

This is the first holy grail of most small, start up businesses – to know what your basic statistics are.

However, when I looked at Rob’s website, earlier in the year, drawn by the great domain name, I found it…..

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£10k In 90 Days Challenge | Day 1 | Champagne

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:07 — 5.1MB)

The Money Gym has just launched The Boardroom, a way for your business to access a crack business team, 18 of your very own non-executive directors, plus Judith Morgan and Nicola Cairncross.  As well as making a very special launch offer of a third off your first year’s membership, Nicola & Judith are hosting a daily radio show, where they help each caller create an extra £10,000 in just 90 days from their existing business.

Today’s caller on The Money Gym “£10k In 90 Days” Challenge on our BlogTalkRadio show was Yvonne Halling with her champagne related business http://www.MadAboutBubbly.com

Quick bit of background: Yvonne’s husband Jiles is an expert on Champagne and among other parts of the business, like corporate champagne tastings, they own a beautiful house in the Champagne region of France which is available for holidays, sleeps 12 and rents for £1500 a week or £125 pp if you have 12, or £250 for the week if you only have 6 of you.  Very reasonable and it IS lovely, having been Yvonne & Jiles’ home previously.

Their website is currently being overhauled by Marion Ryan, Money Gym coach and blog/web expert so that’s coming along and looks great.  This will give them the flexibility to add / change the site whenever they like and will be very search engined friendly (search engines love blog sites!)

Jiles has written an ebook which is garnering rave reviews, and they are working on a follow up DVD right now.  They already have a number of videos on YouTube which I found by searching “mad about bubbly” although their channel is called http://www.youtube.com/user/jileshalling (see below for my comments on improving their branding).

We established on the 15 minute radio show that their fastest route to making “£10k In 90 Days” was to get let their house in Champagne for 7 weeks out of the 12 of the challenge period, and we came up with the idea of an virally marketed, online competition, using Social Networking via Twitter, a Facebook page and ideally joint venture mailings, where people can win a week in the house as a prize.

I also worked out that, if they sold 5-10 ebooks a day, they would make an extra “£10k In 90 Days” especially if they pre-sold the DVD bundled with the ebook, and that I would be looking at a Google Adwords campaign to drive extra traffic to the ebook sales page…….more on this below.

As time was extremely limited on the radio show, we have decided to take the follow up onto the blog here, where I will outline our suggestions, and my proposed plan of action, Judith can contribute, Yvonnne can add her thoughts, and get coached over the next 90 days to make the challenge actually happen!

What fun!

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How To Run A Great Little Business

There’s a man in my garden called Michael.   And he’s building my garden office.   Coming free with my garden office, and he doesn’t know this yet but he will, is a refresher course for me on how to run a Great Little Business.

At every step of the way, Michael has been the consummate professional, taking care of every detail.   He came to scope out the project when he said he would, on time, phoning first to check I was in and had remembered and that it was still convenient.   We decided what I wanted and it turned out I would need planning permission because I live in a flat.

Michael drew up the plans and charged me no extra for that service, and in order to do that he had to make another couple of site inspections, all on time, all when he said he would.   He is businesslike, delightful, polite and respectful to do business with.   I put in the planning application, the council asked for more information. Michael returned to site and did what was necessary, no extra charge, all part of the service, all smiles, all quick and on time and exactly to his word.

We got planning permission in early September, during the post strike.   Michael’s wife, Lucy, had been on the council’s website and let me know the good news as soon as it was posted there.   We scheduled the work to start on Wednesday this week, 14th October.   In that intervening month, contracts were exchanged, deposits paid and terms for the third and final payment were agreed to suit my personal financial circumstances.   All very neat and tidy.   He told me when the build would start and end, when and how I was required to pay the three instalments totalling £12,800.

I got up early on Wednesday knowing that workmen like to start work earlier than I do.   I anticipated them at about 08.30, they contacted me 48 hours earlier to remind me they were coming and to enquire about parking and access for their deliveries.

Michael arrived on site early at 08.20, his assistant not far behind.   I showed them the facilities, the bathroom, the kitchen and invited them to help themselves to tea and coffee whenever they wanted.   Michael already told me that he was self-sufficient with his own supplies and would only stop twice during the working day for breaks.   His assistant said the immortal words “that’s OK, I don’t drink tea or coffee!”   Neither do I, so that’s just grand.   I was able to instantly banish the thought of becoming their tea lady for three weeks.

They set about their work with relish, the first day was mainly about bringing in the tools, staking out the area on which they were going to build.   Yesterday was about concreting the base and I could begin to see the standard of Michael’s workmanship which was exemplary. I could also see he was one of those entrepreneurs I always talk about in my trainings, a perfectionist control freak, i.e. on top of every detail and here before his team, leading from the front.   Fabulous!   I instantly knew on Day One that my garden shed is going to be gorgeous as you can see anyway from the photo.   I could see from the way he was perfecting the concreting just exactly the measure of the man.

So I said to the lad when he came to fetch to two glasses of tap water “I see Michael is a perfectionist, what’s he like as a boss?”   The lad was effusive.   He knows he’s getting a great apprenticeship.   I heard Michael giving him free life advice too, as they worked.

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Business Success | Need A Dream Team Board Of Directors?

Is your business successful but you are working way too hard?  Is your business stuck right now and you don’t know how to take it to the next level?

Are you feeling a bit burnt out with your business and losing enthusiasm fast?  Is your business at a crisis point but you don’t have anyone to talk to?

Perhaps you have what seems like an insurmountable obstacle to success and you can’t see your way round it, under it, over it?

Well, we know just how you feel – because Judith and I have both been there!

Several times.

So get a cuppa, because I have a story to tell you…..time to read and digest, 5-10 minutes tops.

When I was at burnout with the Money Gym in 2006 and thinking of giving it up, what I really wanted was a business mentor or business advice that I could trust.  From a proven successful business person, not some time-for-money consultant from the government bodies.

Or – eureka!! a Board Of Directors to work with on an ongoing basis.  I didn’t need investment but I badly needed experienced advice on how to grow the business from something good that had sustained me (and the hotel!!) very well for three years but which I was trapped working “in” rather than “on”.

I loved the clients and the great results they got but I really couldn’t face going through the 10 Financial Intelligence Modules again with one more new client, lovely people or not.

Not good.

And worse, I felt ungrateful because most coaches would kill for a lovely niche business like The Money Gym with great demand, that captured people’s imagination and which almost sold itself .

I also wasn’t massively keen on giving up any shares which investment would have meant.

So I was researching and networking to find out how the whole non-executive Board of Directors thing worked.  Non-exec meaning that they didn’t do any of the work but advised me, coming to a board meeting once a quarter to hear about progress and make suggestions.

I was looking everywhere – both online and offline for them.

Then, bummer, I discovered that each Director (Sales & Marketing, Finance, Operations) would expect to be paid about £10,000 – £15,000 per annum plus expenses, unless they invested in the business and you gave away substantial amounts of shares.

I also had Steve to consider, as we were partners in our internet business by then, but he did loads of work in The Money Gym too and if I was giving away shares in the Money Gym then he should get some.

Remember the E-Myth way of looking at it?  I knew that, when designing a successful business, you need a director for each key area – and those are…..

The Five P’s

Promise – the marketing & sales
Product – operations / delivery / production
Pounds & Pence – the finance
Place – office, equipment, telecoms etc
People – customer service & partners / staff / freelancers

I wanted to do the Promise, was delivering the Product but didn’t want to anymore and didn’t have time to create other products, needed help urgently with the Pounds & Pence because while self taught, I didn’t know how to strategically plan our finances, Steve did the Place, and People, but wasnt’ massively keen on the latter LOL

I also knew it had to be someone I respected so that I would up my game.

So I outlined the qualities of the new business partner I wanted

1. Knew & believed in the Money Gym ethos (ex-client?)
2. Ideally had coaching skills so that they could do the coaching for me at least for a while
3. Good with people so we were forced to improve out customer service
4. Had PROVEN successful business background as most of the Business Link / Enterprise Centre advisors had no real business experience, and swapped time for money.

When I was driving along one day

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Neil Asher Gets Nicola’s Parts Out In Public

I was lying relaxing on the table at the local Shoreham beauty parlor (called Beachcomber which I always find quite funny for some reason) being tended to by the lovely Laura, when someone tweeted me to say I was being exposed in public in more ways than one!  That naughty Neil Asher (who organises the Financial Freedom Bootcamp that I spoke for recently) has analysed our marketing and taken apart our info page for the “Really Useful Internet Day” and he doesn’t pull his punches here!

Business Websites | Improve Performance Quick

Do you have a website for your business?   If so, would you like three quick ways to improve its perfomance?  Get you more traffic, make sales, make you more money?

1.  Check that you have a good Meta Title, relevent Meta Tags and a great, compelling Meta Description.

You would not BELIEVE how many expensive, corporate looking sites don’t have the basic information in the code of their index page, that the search engines need to list your site in the results, if someone is looking for a site like yours.  It’s easy to check, even for a non-techie.

Just right click on the background of the front page of your blog (the coloured area, outside the white page bit) and choose “View Source” or “View Page Source Code”.

Quite near the top you should see some words enclosed by the little chevrons which are tags.  I can’t reproduce them here as they screw up the layout of this email but imagine the word title had a chevron at each end.

title Your site info here          /title

Then, further down, you should see something that looks like this:

meta content=“money gym, nicola cairncross, blog, blogging…………..” with about 10-20 of your top relevent key words and phrases in.

Then you should also see your meta description, which is what Google shows the public, if someone searches on your key phrases and your site is shown.

meta description “Wealth expert & Money Gym Founder Nicola Cairncross shares the secrets about becoming wealthy, how to grow rich & become a millionaire, wealth creation, success thinking, the law of attraction, making more money, working from home, property investing, building a business to love and internet marketing.”

2. Add articles to your blog or website that contain your highest traffic keywords, to get more of the same.

Look up “entrance keywords” in your Google Analytics or on Alexa.com and make a note of the Top 10 or 20.

Write the article (or review someone elses!) but make sure to include the keywords in the Title of the article / blog post, and again in the first line of the article.  Sprinkle it throughout in a natural, conversational way.

Two of the biggest key phrases for The Money Gym are “how to be a millionaire” and “how to become a millionaire”.  When I posted my article “How To Become A Millionaire” containing the link to the report of the same name, using the guidelines above, and then, on the same day posted an article about “How To Be A Millionaire (Right Now” and tweeted it, which went onto Facebook too, our traffic tripled that day.  Now all I have to do is set that tweet to be sent out automatically every day perhaps, via SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) and that will continue to bring traffic.

3.  Put yourself & your website in danger of making some money!

One of the first things a visitor should see is a free gift which you give away in return for their name and email.

If you don’t do this, you are losing the opportunity to follow up with all the people who are interested in your product or service but who are not yet ready to buy.  This follow up can be automated, and spread over as long a time frame as you like.

You can decide if you are going to share these leads, or keep them for youself (and you can set up your mailing list accordingly).  If you are in an industry where your competitors buys leads you can make a serious extra income from renting out those leads (via someone reputable like Hilite DMS).  If you are buying leads at the moment, you could reduce your lead generation costs dramatically.

And we all know that a reduction in overhead is like a pay rise!

A great tool that is evolving all the time is www.Alexa.com and if you don’t have Google Analytics you should skoot over there now and put your website URL in the Site Info section.

You will be able to see the keywords and phrases that bring your traffic currently, the demographics and age of your visitors and all sorts of other useful information.

Have you found this article useful?   I hope so, because I wanted to demonstrate to you the kind of knowledge we have and how easy it is to utilise it.

Because we are going to be sharing a lot more of this down to earth, practical, easy to use, yet dynamite information with you at our “Really Useful Internet Day” in Central London, on Saturday 10th October.

If you are a small business owner, or service provider, or solo professional trying to attract more clients, can you really afford to miss it?

I don’t think so!

http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/internetday/booking.htm

See you there!

NIcola

p.s. Don’t forget that all the ticket money is being donated to The Big Issue, who help the homeless help themselves.  I love that strapline, don’t you?

Financial Success | Run Your Money Like A Business

Here’s a quick money / personal finance success tip I was asked to write for a journalist, then they pulled the feature so I though I would share it here!

If you want to be more financially secure, or even become financially free, you could learn a lot about running your money from the model that a successful business would use.  If your name is Gemma Jones, think of your financial world as Gemma Jones Inc.

A successful business plans out how much money they expect to have coming in for the next year (turnover), then they work out what it’s going to cost to earn that money (cost of sale) then what it costs to run the business (overheads) and what is left is profit.

They pay tax on the profit ** then put part of that profit aside to cushion their cashflow for the forthcoming year and re-invest in the business to grow it, then the owners/shareholders draw out what is left to spend as they wish.

You are the sole shareholder in Gemma Jones Inc, unless you are working as a couple then you are Mr & Mrs Jones Inc, with a 50% shareholding each and equal voting rights on what happens with your joint money.  (If not, why not?  This is a whole other article!)

The business constantly looks for new opportunities to make more money and they are careful about what they spend, looking for the “return on investment” and how long that will take.

You can probably already spot some significant differences between how a successful business runs its money and what you do with yours – and those differences are what is making the difference to your financial success!

Taking that model and applying it to your finances, you can work out what you expect to earn this coming year (I suggest you look at your net earnings or what goes into your bank), what the costs of earning that money are (travel, clothes, lunches, etc) and then what the overheads of running Gemma Jones Inc are (rent, food, bills etc).

What is left is the profit the place most people fall down financially – they are simply not making enough profit!

Once they have paid the costs of going to work, running the house, then paying for all the bits and pieces that they think they need to be happy, there is just no money left for the important stuff.  And this is where most people go wrong , because they are not taught to run their money like a business.

I know, because I ran my money like that for about 40 years of my life too.   Even now, I know many business people who don’t run their personal money in the same way they run their business money.  You know who you are, Money Gym Club Members!

If you ARE making a profit after paying for your day to day life, then ideally some should be put towards cushioning your cashflow against potential changes in the market next year (savings) and some should reinvested in growing the business (you!) and creating new income flows.   Learning new skills, investing in property, starting a part-time business on the side of your day job.

Before you take any personal drawings, to have fun with, as a shareholder in your business.  For example, refurbishing the office (your house), or taking the staff (you) on holiday.

Like any business, you should always be looking out for opportunities to increase cashflow and profits, because those extra earnings can be put towards buying, what we in The Money Gym call “income producing assets”.  Similarly, you should always be looking for ways to cut overhead, without affecting quality and almost as important, quality of life.

Because you are your business, and you are your main asset.  You need looking after.

The more of those income producing assets you can invest in and accumulate, the quicker you can become financially free, as the income from your assets outstrips what you need to live on.

And that’s the day you never have to work again, if you don’t want to.

Because you are financially free.

Business Profits & Success | You Need A Website!

I believe that the ability to create an effective online presence is absolutely crucial for any business.  If you are in business and not online, then you are leaving so much money on the table it’s unreal.

Every business needs a website, and not all websites are created equal sadly.

I’ll go further, there is NO real world business that can not benefit from having a coherent online presence.

I have one for The Money Gym (this one!), for my speaking/writing activities at NicolaCairncross.com, one for my Greek Property business, and made one for my friends Rona & Adrian, who lent me their gorgeous holiday home for rent, in Casares, Spain.  In fact, have a business idea, I make a website for it.  It helps me think through the offer and test the market, via quick free traffic.

Just think about it, for a second.

If you were out and about, and met two interesting people who both had a product or service that solved a problem you had, but only one of them had a website URL on their card, which one are you more likely to check out online and then use?  The one with the website of course!

Especially if that website was simple, colourful, professional looking, let you know about the people behind the business, and outlined the product or service, along with giving you some useful information on the topic of interest AND gave you the contact details.  Or a free gift of some kind, in return for your name and email, if you are not ready to call or email them yet.

So why don’t more businesses do it?

Because they think it’s complicated and expensive – but of course it’s not.

So, today I want to talk to you about how easy it is to do just that, and which elements you need to concentrate on first.

Nicola’s Quick 15 Point Step By Step Plan To Get Your Business Online & Making Your Money

1.  Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and put in the key phrase you imagine your visitor would use to find your product or service

2.  It will show the results for the country you are in and the Global Search Results – click the column headers to sort by biggest numbers first on local or global.  Make a note of the top 10-20 relevent key phrases.

3.  Remember that these results are per month – this is the size of your potential market and customer base (even if you are usually very local, you can sell them SOMETHING surely!)

4.  Talking of local, while you are there, Add your business to Google Local www.google.com/local/add

5.  Buy a domain name which includes one of the most searched terms in your niche

6.  Get some decent, cheap hosting at someone like FunkyDomainNames.com or Hostgator.com

7.  Look for the link in your Control Panel to install a Wordpress blog on your hosting (it usually takes just one click – you will be amazed)

8.  Choose a theme you like and start adding information of interest to your ideal customer

9.  Find out how to enhance your blog website for customers and search engines alike with plugins

10.  Create a Facebook Page with the same name as your blog website and hook them up so that your Page shows on your blog/website and your site updates your Page

11.  Create a Twitter account in the same name as your blog website & Facebook page and hook them up with the TwitterTools plugin so they update each other

12.  Go create a profile and list your site at Technorati, StumbleUpon, Digg and any others you can be bothered with

13.  Create a YouTube channel in the name of your business and start “Favouriting” videos that would be of interest to your ideal customer and hook it up to your main site with a URL in the channel description.

14.  Hook up your blog/website to some sort of List Manager, we recommend Total Business Cart if you want to sell things or aWeber or GetResponse if you want to just recommend other people’s product or services

15.  Start selling stuff or recommending stuff and put yourself in REAL DANGER of making some money online!

Then just keep adding useful information to your blog website, which will update your Twitter and Facebook page, the search engines and blog directories.

As soon as you start making some money, invest a certain % of it into hiring the professionals to take your brilliant foundations you have built and take your business stratospheric.

How simple was that?

So why are you not doing it then?

If you did just those 15 Steps, you would be way ahead of MOST if not ALL of your competitors, I can guarantee you that!

HOWEVER!

If you STILL feel you need help and encouragement on getting going with making your business work online, then come along to our “Really Useful Internet Day” on Saturday 10th October 2009.

One day, just three experts, no bull, no hype, just down to earth practical stuff that you can put to work for you, making you more money from your business, or creating a second income for you, right now!

Seats are already flying out to our Silver, Silver Elite, Membership Club Magic and Gold clients, and the only way to make sure you get notified before the info page goes live at 12 noon on Friday, is to get on the VIP Priority Mailing list here

http://www.themoneygym.com/internetday

See you there!

Nicola

p.s. Tickets are only £25, it’s all going to the Big Issue and they are tax deductible if you have a business.  Don’t muck about, this is a day that could change your business life.

http://www.themoneygym.com/internetday

Key Success Secrets – Part 1 | Introduction

In the early days of my wealth coaching career, I was always very focused on the practical, the down to earth, the “how-to” of becoming wealthy.  I’d read all the books out there on the market on the principles of wealth creation, becoming rich, the power of belief and focus, attraction principles and I was angry and frustrated!

Because none of them told you how to make money!  None of them laid out a step by step plan of  HOW TO ACTUALLY DO IT!

So my first book The Money Gym – which started as an email programme, I was not arrogant enough to think I had a book in me – was written out of that frustration;  I wanted to give you a step by step, logical plan for how to make money and even become rich.

I wrote it as I wanted it, simple, easy to understand, with pictures.  I tried to include (and credit) the best bits of all I had read or heard, from Robert Kiyosaki to Napoleon Hill, from Steven Covey to Mary Hunt, from Gill Fielding to Robert G. Allen, especially where it was helping me and making a positive difference to the way I thought and particularly to the way I acted.

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A Link & A List – How To Get Started Making Money Online

People who are very experienced at making money online always tend to forget the fact that most of the population don’t have a clue about the internet, beyond buying items on eBay or Amazon and using Facebook occasionally.

They certainly don’t know the potential for making money online, not as a full time job but as a second income.  And they certainly don’t know the basics of how to go about it.

All the infomation is available online, if you go to YouTube you can find a video to show you how to do just about anything, but the sheer enormity of the information is totally overwhelming, you don’t know who to trust and so nothing gets done.

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