A Note From Marion

As we haven’t quite hit February yet, I think it’s not too late to start by wishing all readers a peaceful and prosperous new year.  Prosperity is of course about much more than mere money.  It means good fortune, abundance and riches and while we hear so many tragic news stories each day, I wish for all of us the good sense this year to notice and appreciate what we already have in our lives.

As the old year breathed its last, I had already decided that 2010 would be a well-fed, wide-girthed purring pussycat, yet it seems I’ve manifested a rather skinny spitting feline to transform into that vision of furry loveliness I had.  Good job I’ve a sense of humour, a strong will and a brilliant idea or two for 2010.

A few years ago, I learnt – does it always have to be the hard way, God? – to live within my means and therefore I get through the run-up to Christmas without loading up my credit cards with extravagant shopping lists.  The new year started then for me without a financial hangover, nor even an alcoholic one now I think of it

Instead, I sat down and reviewed and wrote out all my accomplishments from last year.  I listed over 30 without too much trouble and I strongly recommend this exercise as a starting point when planning what you want to do next, not only to give yourself due acknowledgement for your successes but also to get you thinking creatively about how very much you could achieve in the next few months. Second step was to list everything I wanted to leave behind – bad habits, limiting beliefs and people, followed by some ’stream of consciousness’ writing (ie without judging or editing my thoughts) about what I wanted in the future, leading finally to a list of 10 goals for 2010.

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Have You Taken Up Residence On Your Couch For December?

Sitting on my couch, among my new set of cushions, reflecting on 2009 and thinking ahead to 2010, I’m struck by how certain times of year lend themselves particularly to this kind of introspective thinking.

Easter, with the promise of spring and new life, September with the start of the new school year (and even us grownups still remember that feeling!) and of course Christmas with the impending New Year.

Funny old days, in early December, are they not?   It’s very, very dark, at both ends of the day, and recently it’s felt like it’s never going to stop raining.  One can hardly remember the sun or the sunny days of Summer and it seems an awfully long way off to next summer, that’s for sure!  The couch seems the best place to be, with Strictly or X-Factor on the TV and the heating on full.

The New Year is coming quicker than lightning but all we want to do is wind down to Christmas!

On the one hand some of the country go into a spending spree and Christmas decorating spasm, and on the other hand, some people are quietly emailing tales of woe, stories of quiet desperation and harsh self-criticism about another year gone by – wasted!  Months of procrastination, prevarication leading to …………….absolutely no results.

Do you secretly feel really cross because your 2009 has not progressed you to where you want to be, financially?  Perhaps you have been one of the pension holders or property investors affected by the credit crunch in some way or other and you rather hopefully had all your eggs in one basket?

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In Business? What Makes YOU Special?

Judith Morgan here and I’ve got a little story for you.

“I want to step up and play a bigger game”.   That’s what one of our Money Gym clients said to me today and that makes him just perfect for our Boardroom.   He’s not free to start until after Christmas and that’s cool too.

He was canny enough to ask me could he bag the 30% launch discount now but not start till later.   Since we teach financial nous, I’m glad he asked.   (There are only 4 days left to do that btw)

And I have been able to negotiate on his behalf that provided he pays deposit of £2437.50 now to secure his seat by the 31st October deadline, he can choose when he wants to start and his seat will be held for him.

Peachy!

My notes sat somewhere on my desk for the rest of the day and I kept coming back to this client in my mind.

What sets him apart?

I said, as I nearly always do, “how can we help?”

And he said he wanted “business support”.   This was useful because it meant our ideal client had worked out what was in it for him and that we are running  a special promo on price.   And I know he has ambition, and goals.

Is the cost of the Boardroom an issue for you?   Were it not for that, would you be taking your seat at The Boardroom table in the 007 room in London’s West End?   Would you be dining with Nicola and me and your Board the night before?  Would you be stepping up to the challenge of making an additional £10,000 in your first 90 days in the programme?   That’s £10k over and above your normal revenues.

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Effective Goal Setting – Or Setting Yourself Up For Disappointment?

Nicola says:  When I was just getting started in personal development and wealth creation, I diligently worked through every exercise in books like Colin Turner’s “Swimming With Pirahna’s Makes You Hungry” and Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” and I ended up setting goals for myself.

I had never set goals before in my life….. oh, sure! I had some vague “wants” but I’d never set goals and when I think about it, there were two main reasons why.

1. I had no idea HOW I was going to achieve those goals – for heaven’s sake, I didn’t even know what the word strategy meant!
2. I was scared to write down a goal, fully expecting to NOT achieve it and then be disappointed with myself when I found the piece of paper later, in a drawer somewhere.

Essentially, I had no idea that you can set a goal, then make a plan to make it happen.  How funny that seems now….although I am now a great believer in setting goals with no idea of how to make them happen at first!

Judith thinks I’m a bit barking when I talk like this, because she’s set goals and achieved them, barring a few unforeseen exocets, all her life.

So all this said, when we launched our Money Gym Silver Elite programme this week as a pilot for the main launch in September, one of our main aims was to encourage the Silver Elite participants to create some goals for themselves, for the programme, and to encourage them to create a strategy (plan) for how they were going to achieve them – specifically how they were going to achieve them within the 90 days of the programme.

We hosted the first webinar and discussed the subject thoroughly (albeit with a frustrated Judith listening in, unable to contribute as much as she would have liked, due to techie issues) and we came up with the following goal setting process which I wanted to share with you.

Marian’s (Shorter Version) Goal Setting Format:

• Set your goal(s)
• Work out your compelling ‘why’
• How will you achieve your goal?  (Think, brainstorm, strategise…)
• What are the obstacles, turn ‘em around and make them challenges and blast through them
• What time will you commit to the goal (& is it more time than you spend watching TV or sitting in pub!)

Nicola’s (Longer Version) Goal Setting Format:

1. Think of between one and three goals you would like to achieve in 90 days
2. Run them through the SMART process – Judith, could you elaborate on that one?
3. Tell us WHY you want to achieve them – what difference will it make in your life?
4. Work out where you will need to be with each of them, to be a third of the way there in 30 days, two thirds of the way there in 60 days.
5. How much time per week do you have to work on your 90 day goals
6. When are you going to work on them?  Saturdays? Sunday mornings?  Tuesday evenings?
7. What steps do you think you need to take to move into action?
8. What is going to stop you?  What are your perceived obstacles?
9. What would be the outcome, if you turned those obstacles around into outcomes?
10. What are you going to do first?  This week? Before the next call (commitment in public via the Google Group to at least one action step please)

Judith’s (SMART) Goal Setting Process

A SMART goal, for what it’s worth, and it won’t suit all, is

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timed/timelined

Thus a goal like S posted yesterday “To attract 1000 Twitter followers within 30 days” is all of the above – if she has a plan to achieve it.

The point about this SMART process is… you know whether you’ve done it or not.

So tell me via the comments box here, do YOU set goals?  How do you do it?  What are your challenges around goal setting?

Love to hear what you think!

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

Goals -v- Projects: Three Important Business Questions

Michael Neill is described by Paul McKenna as being “the finest success coach in the world today”. I remember being ambivalent about the word “success” when I first started in coaching but Michael has always written about it eloquently. In fact, Michael was my own success coach in 2006 and we worked together for a whole year – A WHOLE YEAR – on getting me out of my day job. Why did that take so long? In a word, duty. In two words, misplaced duty. It’s a long story for another day.

Recently Michael wrote to me and sent me a free review copy of his new book, SuperCoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life and he asked me to read it, review it and recommend it to all my clients as a way of helping him sell lots of copies. Fair enough, the man had changed my life, it was the least I could do!

The book duly arrived about ten days go and I read the first 80 pages that night. This is quite unusual for me, I love to read and frequently have several books on the go at once (typical Scanner/Creator), but I just as frequently don’t finish books mainly due to shortage of time in my life right now. But despite the fact that I had an agenda here, the reason I was making such excellent progress through Michael’s book is that it is firstly his best, secondly very relevant to my own life circumstances right now, and thirdly pertinent to the work I am doing with colleagues and clients too. Oh, and its well written, pithy, short and to the point, bossy and directive. In short, I LOVE it. How fortunate is that, imagine it had been b*****s, what would I have done then?

What wonderful timing, what synchronicity!

And so I took it to the Money Gym board meeting a couple of weeks ago and we worked with Michael’s three important (business) questions on page 86 and we talked about them in this week’s Money Gym Wealth Surgery and Nicola asked if I would write an article for this week’s ezine on this topic. Delighted. So now you have the run up to this.

These three important questions come in long-ish Chapter Three which is about far more than just these questions; its about The Problem with Goals. Those of us who have been coaching for a while now have come across the problem with goals before. Some of my closer colleagues and I are moving towards working with intentions instead of goals and Michael suggests we might choose projects instead of goals.

What’s the difference? Here’s what SuperCoach Michael says:

• Goals are always reached in the future; projects are worked on in the present
• Goals are things you work towards; projects are things you work on
• With a goal, your focus is on the desired result; with a project, your focus is on the daily action
• With a goal, you’re a failure until the moment you succeed; with a project you’re successful until the moment you fail.

I like that last one best, actually.

So here’s “all you need to do” according to Michael:

Go through the list of creative possibilities for your life and, for each item on your list, ask yourself a simple question: “regardless of whether or not I think I can actually have this, do I really want it?” If your answers is an unquestionable yes, you may take it forward to a new “yes” goals list which you then divide into two – a fairy godmother list and a project list.

“A fairy godmother list is made up of those things that you would love to be, do or have in your life but you aren’t really sure if you’re up for creating. However, if they fell into your lap, came to you out of a clear blue sky or your fairy godmother showed up, waved her magic wand and “hey, presto!” they were yours, you’d be all for them.

This is a powerful list to have because it keeps you in touch with your fondest dreams and warmest desires, even if the circumstances for their creation don’t seem to be slanted in your favour right now. Not only will you find that energy of desire a useful guide,but you’ll also notice that items on this list have a habit of showing up when you least expect them to.

You project list is made up of those things that you want to take responsibility for and make at least a part of your life about creating. Whether or not these projects actually come off as planned, you’ll feel good about having invested the time and energy into making them happen. This list will give you a way or organizing your efforts so you can get maximum reward for every action taken.

For each item on your “yes” list, ask yourself these questions:

• Do I want to make part of my life over the next year about actively creating this?
• Do I want to invest my time and energy into making this happen?
• If this didn’t lead to the result I wanted, would I still be glad I took the time to work on it?

If your answer is anything but an unquestionable yes to all three questions, put it on your fairy godmother list; otherwise it can go on your project list.”

Work on your project list. End of.

If you want more of this stonkingly good, common-sense compelling writing from Michael you can, of course, buy his book in all good bookshops, from Hay House or from Amazon.

If you want lots of wonderful extra resources for free, there’s a special link you can use – click here.

We will, no doubt, be including more of Michael’s wisdom at our Money Gym Business Surgery workshop in London on 15th May 2009.

You can see more of Michael in London here in the first couple of weeks of May with Change Your Life, Coaching Mastery and Effortless Success – cor, that’s a bit of a week for MN!

AND you can see Michael at Hay House’s wonderful I Can Do It in London in September – I’m going, so see you there.

I will be writing more about SuperCoach in the coming days and weeks as I re-visit its wisdom with my clients and use it to work on myself too.

Geysers, Goals, GPS and Going For Gold

I know!  It’s been AGES!  I have to hand my head in shame, as not since the birth of this ezine in 1999 have I missed so many weeks.

How has this happened, when I know that the ezine is the cornerstone, the bedrock of our marketing?  Especially while the world is going mad and the papers are full of doom and gloom….I should have been reassuring you!

Because there are not many people in the Money Gym camp who are not making more money in these uncertain times….our Gold and Silver clients are as ebullient as ever and finding more opportunities to make money, not less! And the supportive environment we create via the private email group is enabling anyone who is struggling to get help, support and resources/recommendations FAST.

Well, the first week’s ezine was missed because it was the week before our Brett McFall event and there was just SO MUCH TO DO.  I had no idea when we said “Hey, let’s do an event with Brett” how much we would be upping our game.

I have to say, he was a delight to work with…organised, professional, fun, calm, supportive, challenging in a nice way.  I would go there again in a second and I hope we can get him back next year.
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