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.

Read more..

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