Dublin, Direct Mail, Decimating Snails & Debbie Bissett

I missed writing the ezine last weekend as I was having a very hectic couple of weeks!  A week ago last Thursday was the Money Gym cashflow game, followed the next day by the Money Gym Business Surgery.

This was a lively event featuring “Gold For Life” successful business woman, Debbie Bissett and as well as recording the whole event, I’ve uploaded 10 minutes of Debbie’s slot to YouTube and you can view it here.

Back home to play some poker with the boys on Friday night, I won the first game and covered my entire costs for the evening which was nice!  I do like a hobby that pays for itself, don’t you?  Bit like when I built and rented out 18 apartments in Second Life to pay for my virtual shopping habit.  Must pop in and see how old Hermione is doing, and where on earth I left her last!!

** Now before you get all worried about a wealth coach getting sucked into the sleazy world of gambling, apart from the odd game at someone’s house, I play in a local league, we play for points, and the whole evening costs £12 for two games and your dinner.  Utter bargain and a great night out!  **

Saturday, lunch in Shoreham with sister Sarah (her video blog’s coming on nicely at http://www.Rawrrr.com) and back to the ranch to watch Britain’s Got Talent, where we found Liam from Faces Of Disco, who I met at the Brighton Property Event last month, going through to the next round.

Sunday, bit of gardening (the snails are decimating my red pepper plants but ignoring my tomatoes!) then off to Dublin, for Pampers Village Parenting Panel launch in Ireland, at the Four Seasons Hotel.  I stayed at the hotel over the road which was clean but a bit grim to be honest, next time I’ll pay to upgrade!  I met a lovely taxi driver called Malachy, who was a property investor and had shares in a petro-chemical company on a tip, so we had a great conversation!  I also had dinner in the “oldest pub in Ireland” the Brazen Head founded in 1198 – opened before licensing laws even came in!  I had a delicious steak and guiness stew and a half of guiness to wash it down.  They have a great website at with some cool music and history on it.

AFter the Pampers Parenting Panel launch, I was interviewed by Sybil of TV3’s “The Morning Show”, about what to do if you are made redundant, including a fantastic interview with David, the author of “Oh No! I’ve Lost My Job” a book he wrote in the first two weeks after being made redundant.  Watch the feature here

Back to Blighty late Monday afternoon, having very nearly missed the plane due to a VERY long walk from the terminal building to Gate 75 – endless and took about 30 minutes!!  Monday, a night in, then off to play poker on Tuesday at the new Tuesday venue in Brighton, The Royal Sovereign, self-styled as Brighton’s Funkiest Freehouse.  Nice pub, lively crowd, great music.  Pubs are so much nicer now people can’t smoke in them – I had pretty much given up going to them before the ban.

This was also the day that Steve’s laptop died on the train to visit Judith.  He can get it fixed, as it’s still under warrenty, but once lappies start doing that, it’s only a matter of time.  A new one is on the cards which means the joy of installing everything he uses – dull, dull, dull.  He’s off to watch the golf at Wentworth today, to take his mind off it.

I’ve just booked our next board meeting venue, for our meeting in June, where we are going to review our plans for 2010 and firm up our Money Gym activities.  We favour the Alexander Hotels, and this time we are going to the very lovely Elizabethan style Langshott Manor.  I do love a nice hotel and these are beautiful and very handy for Gatwick.

The Silver Elite group coaching programme pilot is going well although we had some techie challenges this week.  Turns out you can’t play streaming video while hosting a GoToWebinar webinar – the participants can see it alright but they can’t hear it.  Frustrating!  That’s me trying to push the boundaries of new technology again.

I went to London on Friday, for Martin Avis’ London Lunch, where about 50 UK internet marketers get together to talk techie, and a jolly good day out it was.  Then onto Heathrow, where Mark Anastasi and Pat Adams present their Break Free Seminar.  Sarah is coming along for company and we are particularly keen because Pat is a direct mail specialist who will be sharing some tips on using newspaper advertising to generate leads.  Mark interviewed me on the topic of Twitter and I look forward to a surge of traffic when he mails that one out – he has a very large mailing list!

Out with Kim tonight, my oldest mate, who is neither into wealth creation or internet marketing – although interested in property investing, but she doesn’t even have an email address!  What on earth will we talk about?  The usual old stuff I expect!  We have been friends for nearly 35 years and haven’t run out of conversation yet.

Cor, reading that back, I’m feeling quite worn out!

Have fun, we always do!

Nicola

Mums, Moms, Money Gym Allstars & Marvellous Myles Phago,

A lively week after a quiet weekend online, catching up with all those emails that came in over the weekend!!  I’m thinking of investing in RescueTime.com as seen over at Chris Barrow’s blog where it charts which windows you are using then produces a sexy little graph that tells you where you spend your time – scary stuff.  I suspect it would be too scary though.

He’s also got two, count them, two PA / VA’s, one for admin & diary type stuff and one for financial stuff.  Well done, Chris – at last eh?  And well done Philippa, one of his VA’s who has just won National VA of the Year Award (under 18 months in business).  See our testimonial/inspirational story box this week for what Phillippa had to say about that in Chris’s ezine this week….

I really need a VA just to take my email and only send me the stuff I really need to see / deal with – it’s such a distraction.  I have mine set up to only send me stuff every half an hour from my spamfilter, but I till click send and receive every few minutes.  Pathetic.

Wednesdays are now renamed Webinar Wednesdays as I like to cram them all into one day.  This is both a time management and a week zoning ploy and it works for me.  10am on Wednesdays is now for our 25 odd Silver Elite pioneers, 11am is either Silver/Gold members (1st Wed of month) or Gold (2nd, 3rd & 4th Wed) where they come and “get coached live” by Judith and I, in addition to working with their own coach.

Karen “Timebomb T-Shirts” Gilbert, one of our Gold clients, has done incredibly well in her first year in Gold (we let them stay for life remember!) and she has turned up to just about every one of her 52 webinars and she credits that with SOME of her amazing progress.  Her coach must also take the credit LOL.  Sometimes she has been the only one on the webinar pretty much, so got our full attention, welcome or not!

1pm is Membership Club Magic support calls, probably for the last time, as I’m recording the video presentations and discussions afterwards, for watching back by new MCM Members.  I will support them thereafter by email in their own Google group.  One of our potential clients was complaining that he had to watch the whole video to find out what’s included in our offer for that, but it’s selling so well from the stage, I’ve not had time to write a sales letter for it.

3pm is supposed to be the live Money Gym TV show, but I can’t get my Edirol UA microphone to work with my new laptop, in spite of Steve’s best efforts *sob, sob*.  I might have to ring the Roland helpline. Must be something to do with the 32 / 64 bit systems in my laptop.  Causing no end of problems that.

BABY / NEW MOM WEBSITE UP FOR AUCTION

One of my Money Gym clients is thinking of auctioning off his website due to the pressure of his other commitments – he just can’t give it the brain space it needs.

It’s set up to attract traffic and then funnel it through ebay and amazon affliate links at the moment but is producing minimal income due to lack of love and attention.  Averaging around 400-500 unique visits a month over the dot com and dot co uk versions.  Not many subscribers as yet because unknown to my client, the subscribe box wasn’t working right for a year (!!)

If you are in a baby / new mom niche, have your own product and would like to buy and develop this website (it needs a blog, regular communication with subscribers, ongoing promotion perhaps via Twitter and a Facebook Fan Page) and you have your own product to sell via the site, this could be one for you.  A ready made search-engine friendly front end for your product / coaching / membership site back end products.

You will need to move the site to new hosting and integrate the site with TotalBusinessCart to run the subscribe function, but if you have a tame techie they will know how to do that, or we can help you find someone.

The site is well indexed by Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Live, Ask and the top key phrases bringing traffic right now are “pregnancy books”, “pregnancy videos” and “good pregnancy books”.

Check it out at http://www.PregnancyBooksAndVideos.com (or .co.uk) and in the first instance contact nicola [at] themoneygym.com.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Pampers PR Company are flying me to Dublin on Sunday for a Monday morning launch of the Pampers Village Parenting Panel in Ireland, loads of journalists, mums and babies, what fun – I do love a nice baby!!  Sounds like an interesting new format for a launch too so I’ll try and take some video for the blog.

This week coming, we have our next Cashflow Game which I believe is nearly sold out.  If you have always wanted to play Robert Kiyosaki’s seminal game, book your place here http://www.themoneygym.com/events.

And then on Friday week, we are hosting our first “Money Gym Business Surgery”

But this weekend is the biggie – it’s the “2nd MYLES PHAGO APPRECIATION SOCIETY DEEP STACK INVITATIONAL TOURNAMENT” at the Royal Sovereign Pub in Brighton and I’m so excited

I love these days out, which pull marvellous and miscellaneous players from all over Sussex, with a wide variety of prizes including much-coveted Myles Phago mugs and all sorts of other lovely Myles-orabilia.

This is an interesting exercise in online marketing and branding actually, and it’s all the more interesting because Russ, the guy behind it, is not a marketeer by job, but is obviously a natural.

The Tournament was created by Russ Cochran, clever micky-taker extraordinaire, in honour of our Apple Poker area manager Myles Phago, who is the only person we actually all know, to have played in the World Series of Poker!!  (incidentally one of my “100 Things To Do Before I Die”)

Myles is rapidly becoming an immortal brand, thanks to Russ’ efforts, and now has his own Fan Page on Facebook  and is described there thusly:

“Myles Phago owns the greatest Poker Face of all-time. It helped him win the 1983 World Series of Poker despite him holding just a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game Uno!!!”

And finally if you play No Limit Texas Hold’em, join our new Twibe in order to be able to find a friendly game, via Twitter, no matter where you are in the world, right now.

Oooh, that’s just all given me an idea, a “wealth creation allstars” texas hold’em networking tournament….I’ll just create a Facebook page to gauge levels of interest…here it is!  Instant market research.

Have fun, we always do!

Nicola