I was talking to Judith the other day about wanting to share a stage with the “big dogs” of internet marketing and she asked me why I had such a huge burning desire to do that.  I hadn’t really stopped to think about it much, but I know there is a real lack of female internet marketers, although there are no shortage of successful female entrepreneurs and executives in the marketing and direct marketing world.  And everyone says they want more women on stage to encourage other women to get going.

I don’t think of myself as a feminist but I do believe we have as much right as men to do (and behave) however we want.  But I quite like to take my internet marketing boots off at the front door, I love male company as well as female and find Alpha Males very attractive indeed.  So being around the “big dogs” sure works for me, but I want their respect as well as their attention.  Perhaps it’s akin to wanting the approval of “daddy” eh?

Some of my early female inspirations in the internet marketing world were Sylvie Fortin, Donna Fox and Jenny Armato, and I really enjoyed Debra Thompson-Roedl on stage at the World Internet Summit just this year.  Actually the WIS boys are very good at putting women on regularly and Brett did not strike me as a sexist in any way when we hung out together recently.  And I’m really looking forward to going on an internet marketers cruise with 300 internet marketers where I know a large percentage of the delegates will be women.

Come to think of it. Joel Comm’s “Next Internet Millionaire” reality TV show was won by a woman too…a very pretty but steely determined type called Jaime Luchuck, who looks like a lot of fun - you can read her story here.  Then there is the very famous iJustine on Justin.tv….

Looking back a couple of weekends, I know Brett McFall was surprised when he saw so many women in the audience for our live event…..So I was intrigued to read about Donna Fox’s visit to the invitation only Eban Pagan “Green Room event here on her blog

Donna says “I recently had the pleasure of attending Eben Pagan’s “Green Room” a secret gathering of 100 elite among the top internet marketing movers and shakers.  As I rubbed elbows with my old friends like mike filsaime, Stephen Pierce, Ben Mack, Alex Mandossian, Dave Lakhani, Jeff Walker, Jason Moffatt, Ryan Kaltman, Joel Comm, Harris Fellman, Tom Beal, Keith Wellman, Gary Ambrose, Brad Fallon, Tellman and others you’ll no doubt recognize…

…and even more people who I’ve never heard of, like one guy who’s spending $150,000 a DAY on his adwords ads (so I think he probably knows a thing or two)… or a call center owner who has an amazing close ratio…

something became glaringly obvious to me…

I was the only girl there.

Yep, in a rush to get 100 of the top marketers to the event, Eben had forgotten the women.

it’s important to note, I wasn’t originally invited by Eben directly, my friend Ben Mack weaseled me in with some strong words of suggestion.

Ok, before I go further,I’ll confess to two things.  First, I don’t know if Eben invited any women that chose not to attend.  If so, big mistake on their part.  Second, I wasn’t the “only” women there.  There were 4 more.  Two Ebean employees, one bartender and a wife.  Which may go to explaining a little bit of the reception I got at the event.

“Who are you here with?” was the most common first question I was asked by a stranger.  Yep, as if I couldn’t have possibly been there on my own, like they were expecting me to be a wife or employee… or cocktail waitress

But mostly, they just ignored me.  They would say hi or introduce themselves to all the men in a group I was standing in, then with much discomfort and pointedness, their eyes would just float over my head, never making eye contact, to go onto the next person.  It was surreal…..

READ THE REST OF THIS FASCINATING article here on her blog

Well, it’s back to school week and it’s been turbulent at Money Gym Towers, as Phoebe heads off to a so-called “better” school, Steyning Grammar.

She was happily not doing very well at her previous school, surrounded by her mates and in particular her best mate K, with her grades going down every quarter despite incentives and penalties.  She also managed to make very good friends with one of the “worst five boys in the school, heading for exclusion” according to her form tutor.  Ho hum. He looked after her, though, in the corridors.

Her father decided enough was enough and diligently hounded the Education Authority to get her into Steyning, though, and I sat by thinking “he’ll never get her in, the waiting list is too long and her record not exactly exemplary” but lo and behold, he did.  The new school is 7 miles and 30 minutes away across country, with two bus changes and a journey of an hour, while the old one was local, one bus ride and 10 minutes in the car.

So tears and tantrums ensued for a few days, while he talked her into trying it, and unfortunately the Open Day did not go well, with a bit of an incident with one of the naughtiest girls in the school putting her off, bigtime.  But her dad does not give up easily, and took her for another visit where the teacher managed to win her around to try it out.

Then a particularly nasty bullying incident, in the last two weeks of term, made her think that, perhaps it would be good to move schools after all.  Her old school handled it well I thought but it wasn’t great timing.  The summer holiday passed, and the excitement of going to France, then buying new school clothes and a handbag particularly, distracted her nicely.

She went in on her first day, as she described it “with a smile and determined to make the best of it” and came out silent, with a face like thunder.  Her friend (vaguely known via her cousin), who we were also giving a lift to, was quiet and unhappy too, having moved from another school too, and who has been put in a class with NOBODY she knew, but Phoebe….well the silence was terrifying.

Hours of tears and pleading followed, as she visited her father, then cried on me, and locked herself away in her bedroom (or mine) to endlessly text her woes to her circle of mates.

This morning she was trying to refuse to go, only the unspoken worry about being grounded (tonight is the monthly under-18 club night in Brighton)

So, how do I feel about all this?  I have to support her father, and we all agree she stands “a better chance in later life” if she goes to Steyning Grammar as it has an excellent reputation.

However, as someone who doesn’t believe in traditional education and even less in a job, or a single path career, I’m ambivalent.

The only things I learned, of use, at school were how to read, and how to type.  And I was downright cold, bored and miserable most of the time.

I was happy for her to go where she was happy-ish, nice and nearby, and to get as many O-levels as she could, then to leave school, take a boring series of jobs just to make her realise how grim it is, then for her to come to me and ask how to start the serious business of making money, probably either online, with her own business or via property.  She’s bright but not academic, artistic and entrepreneurial.

But now we are plunged into a warzone, and I’m not convinced it’s all worth it.

RELOCATION……….

My sister has had her flat in Worthing on the market for sale or rent and had it with a preferred local smaller agent first with absolutely no action whatsoever.  She isn’t so bothered about selling it as the valuations came in at something ridiculous, obviously priced to get the quickest sale (guaranteeing the agent’s commission) instead of what she knows the flat is worth in a normal market.

No action from the first agent on the rentals front either, apart from one woman on housing benefits - not ideal.  They were telling her all the usual “market’s dead”, “nobody’s moving” kind of stories.

Fed up, she called in the big boys, the biggest, most aggressive agent in town, the shark swallowing up the minnows as they go to the wall, and guess what?  Several viewings in the first few days with definite interest already.

Why is this agent thriving while all around him are losing their businesses?
Marketing, marketing, marketing!  There is no getting away from Michael Jones & Co, and love them or hate them, you bloomin’ well know they are there.

They even use email to send you property details and reply promptly to enquiries by email too!

RELOCATION……….

Brett’s here!  The McFall has landed in London from Australia and we are revving up the marketing for our “Money Gym Presents…Brett McFall” workshop on the 20th / 21st September.

Who should come?  Well, I think all of you!!  If only to donate £25 to Great Ormond St Hospital……£25 for two days?  c’mon.  But seriously for a moment…

Every time I go out to talk about Wealth Creation, especially to business people and property investors, the one burning topic that comes up again and again is the internet.  More specifically, how to harness the massive power of the internet and tap into the BILLION or so people online, on broadband RIGHT NOW.

Business Owners & Property Investors always want to know :-

1.  How to create passive income online to fund more property purchases

2.  How to create extra profit for your bottom line, without adding any overhead and with minimal investment

3.  How to find great tenants or earn money online to make up your rental shortfalls

4.  How to generate leads for your business, rentals or BMV deals, without having to pay £££ for them

5.  How to integrate your business, an online presence and your speaking activities

The rest of you just want to know :-

1.  How to replace their work income so that they can leave their day job

2.  How to use the internet to fill up rentals that holiday home that you thought would pay for itself

3.  How to look after elderly relatives or care for siblings who are struggling financially

4.  How to help your kids to get out of student debt, and create a future for themselves beyond seeking a low paid job (degree or not!)

BUT………..most of all, you say to me …..

“But Nicola, it’s all right for you, you’ve been doing this for YEARS, how do I GET STARTED, I don’t know what to do FIRST !!”

So, because I’m not that great at keeping my internet marketing workshops simple, tending to turn all nerdy and geeky, on the topic, I turned to someone who I have known for years, who has a brilliant track record at teaching BEGINNERS to get started online.

Brett McFall.

I begged him to help me, to help you….I pestered and I plagued him long distance to Australia…and it worked.

http://www.brettmcfalllive.com

He’s in London right now for a couple of more advanced events, which are pretty much sold out anyway AND he’s offered to stay over longer, to do a special TWO DAY event for The Money Gym.

He’s here to TEACH YOU how to get started online.  To give you his system.

http://www.brettmcfalllive.com

Have fun, we always are!

Nicola

Hi Nicola

What would you do, Nicola?

Hi there John…congratulations on being our first “Ask Nicola” burning questioner! And what a lovely one to start with……the quick answer is that you are financially free already, you just don’t know it!

I’m going to mainly deal with your own situation here as your wife and you seem to keep your finances quite seperate…is that right?  Do come back to me if you wanted a response bases on your joint finances….

You say that you would like to do more web design, and with some good marketing online, and networking locally, and I know that you could make a very good living at this.  Local business people are AT LAST waking up to the power of the web in generating leads for their business, and how efficient and cheap that can be compared with the traditional methods, like advertising.  They are happy to pay £500 - £1000 for a blog type site (great for SEO), and around £2000 - £3000 for a blog type site, with ecommerce / mailiing list capabilities.

You could educate yourself about internet marketing, including traffic generation, social networking and web 2.0, as well as web design (our about to be relaunched Internet Marketing Home Study System will soon be available via our very affordable Silver membership) and then you would REALLY be in demand.  I would envisage that, within a year, you would be outsourcing most of the work!

However, the issue seems to be time and energy, as your day job takes both.  Have you considered taking some of the equity in your house, and investing it in your new business, using it to

a) pay yourself a salary of £500 a month (£100 per week x 52 divided by 12)

b) pay for some teaching to bring your internet marketing / seo skills up to scratch - Silver would cover that

c) pay for a year’s worth of mentoring - our Money Gym Gold programme would be ideal for this and I would suggest you have a look at our coaches, and see which one you think would best be able to hold your hand through the year, to set up and build your business.

I would think pulling out £20,000 would not only cover the expenses as above, but also pay the payments on the money you would be borrowing so your outgoings would not go up at all.  If you apply before you hand your notice in, you should have no trouble getting a mortgage of 12% loan to value.

Your other alternative - if you don’t want to use your equity, is to use your £750 a month savings, to build a “Freedom Fund” to cover your first year in business, and in Money Gym Silver membership, we give you a blueprint on how to do that, step by step.

HOWEVER, if I were you, I would be pulling out all the equity available, and as well as investing in my new business, as above, I would be buying as many one bedroom buy to let flats (existing housing stock NOT new builds) as humanly possible.

This would ensure that you never had to work again, if you didn’t want to!  You could keep leveraging the growth in your property portfolio, again and again, tax free, to grow your portfolio further and to live off.

Again, this is something our experienced property investing Money Gym coaches could hold your hand through, via the Money Gym Gold programme as they are all very sound on this topic!!

Now, you know what you can do (and what I would do) the only question is “what’s going to stop you doing it?”

Keep in touch John and let me know how you get on?

Warm regards

Nicola

Okay, so I’m starting to think about the re-launch of The Money Gym Club - Silver Membership.

I’ve got a 7-8 week time frame and some great ideas about how to add massive value and make it irresistible - which it patently isn’t yet. We currently bundle Silver Membership on the ebook sale, and about 90% of people stay past the first month and most of those stay on past months one and two - so it’s good, but not irresistible.

Bit of background….Due to massive issues with the techie bits of the site, our first launch in May 2007 rather ran out of steam in the effort to get it all working right. I won’t go into it but there were SO MANY fundamentals that were not in place, despite early promises, that we rather lost momentum and enthusiasm for it, in the monster effort to get it just doing what it was supposed to.

We have ironed out issue after issue and now it’s all working, and is an awesome content management system, we are now looking at how to make it better. Steve has already made it much more intuitive to navigate and we have some more plans to make it better.

1. Creating camtasia videos to show people all the great elements of the site (gotta great twist for this too - thanks to Frank Kern!)
2. Completely re-doing the Internet Marketing Home Study System to bring it bang up to date with Web 2.0 - and then to give it away with Silver Membership
3. Finding a way to breathe life into the Forums, which suffer from the popularity of our private Google Group
4. Revamping our “Let’s Talk Money” days to be more live wealth coaching orientated and including….say two ( ? ) of those days with Silver
5. Giving away entry to say……three of our popular “Money Gym Presents…..” experts days

I also want to integrate all the payments into our shopping cart so that we can re-launch our Affiliate Programme. Then folks can earn commission from the ebook, the ebook/paperback bundle, recurrring commissions from The Money Gym Club - Silver Membership and Money Gym Gold - all from one place!

This in turn should make us more attractive to affiliates and joint venture partners, and I’ve got some brilliant networking opportunities coming up, with the World Internet Summit UK (watch this space, lovely reader as I have a GREAT offer coming for you on that, so don’t book yet….), getting to know Tim Brocklehurst with his 1000 strong team of Viral Spirallers, and the Money Gym / Internet Marketing Cruise in January. With Paulie Sabol, mike filsaime, Jenny Armato, Joel Comm and all those peeps I haven’t even met yet….should be some joint venture possibilities there hopefully.

But still the search goes on to highlight our unique position in the Wealth Creation Education marketplace, and to make Silver Membership ABSOLUTELY IRRESTISTIBLE!!

Any ideas as to what you would like to see? Just hit the comments link at the bottom of this post - help me out and TELL ME what you want, what you really, really want!

Cheers, Nicola

“I first met Nicola Cairncross at the U.K.’s first-ever Internet Marketing Conference (which I spoke at) way back in 2003, and was impressed by her willingness to learn and enthusiasm for helping others benefit from her wide range of business and life experiences.

It was clear to me that Nicola was someone who knew what she was talking about, and was extremely well-connected in the Info Marketing business.

The Money Gym is a brilliant, practical wealth-creation model, and her weekly blog is one of my ‘must-reads’, containing as it does numerous pearls of wisdom, not only on business-related matters, but also the joys (and tribulations) of being a parent!

Nicola is an engaging and entertaining speaker, her whole approach to Info Publishing is a breath of fresh air, and the exact opposite of the ’smash and grab’ tactics employed by others.

My advice? Listen to everything she says, listen again, write it down, act on it, and you will become wealthy - in EVERY sense. Nicola Cairncross is the Helena Rubenstein of U.K. Entrepreneurs and has my highest recommendation…”

Nick Wrathall
http://www.thecompleteguidetocopywriting.com

Nicola Cairncross from www.TheMoneyGym.com interviews reknowned internet marketer and real estate investment expert Paulie Sabol, and Capt’n Lou from Little Shop of Cruises about the forthcoming mike filsaime “Internet Marketers Cruise” in January in the Caribbean, and why YOU should be coming along!

butterfly.jpg" src="/blog/wp-content/uploads/butterfly.jpg" border="0" alt="butterfly.jpg" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="202" height="152" align="left" />We have discovered an amazing new toy / tool this week and it’s called the Google Website Optimiser.

Now those webmeisters amongst you will already know of this wondrous machine, but most ordinary folks won’t…..or won’t have realised how easy it is to use!

Or what a huge effect you can have on sales, tweaking and tweaking and improving by tiny amounts, multiplying the effect, until you have the best possible performing sales page.  A super-model of a sales page in fact.

This is called the Butterfly Effect and is described by Wikipedia as “The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system”

mike filsaime first use this phrase with respect to internet marketing, in his famous “Butterfly Marketing Report” which i have just re-read for the second time and made loads of notes from.
[Read more →]

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

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 →]

Yesterday I started to share with you, the Top 5 Mistakes most self-employed people and business make, when trying to make money.

To recap, what were those Top 5 Mistakes again? 

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!)

Over the next few days, in the run up to our next “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop, I’ll be going into each mistake in a bit more detail.

(And don’t forget, you can hear what our two speakers on Saturday, Daniel Wagner & Richard White “The Accidental Salesman” think about the whole topic here)

Richard White - http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com
Daniel Wagner - http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com

So, Mistake #2:

1.  We are unclear about who we are offering our product or service to

One of the biggest mistakes I see is people saying that their product or service is great for “anyone” whereas we should actually be defining very clearly who our ideal potential future client or customer is.

This has three effects….you could have guessed that by now though, couldn’t you?!

1.  The first is that we don’t know where to find our ideal future client or customer (let’s call them our PFC shall we?)

2.  The second is that, because we don’t know who they are, we don’t know what their specific problem or pain is, or whether our service, product provides the best solution for them.

3.  The third is that we don’t know how to simply, powerfully and authentically communicate the fact that we have that solution for them.

We also need to identify some key qualities of our ideal PFC.  Sit and brainstorm as many as possible but think about at least these three for starters….

1.  They need to be experiencing this problem or pain - or you are educating your market they need you and that’s hard work.

2.  They need to be experiencing it now!  This creates urgency and helps that buying decision happen.

3.  They need to be able to afford our solution.  And you need to make it easy for them to pay.

In the Money Gym we know exactly who our ideal client is.  Because I know who they are, it makes it easy to communicate to them that we understand what their challenges are around money, independence, overwhelm, financial control, old age, overwork, responsibility, cashflow management, security, work/life balance.

There are many other types of people who need help with their finances, and we attract many of them too, but we write all our ezines, our website, our marketing material, our article, our reports, with just one person in mind.

Not one type of person, one actual person.

One of our most recent ideal clients in fact.

Could that person be you?

We will see.

Anyway….here are YOUR 3 ACTION STEPS:

1.  Read the rest of my emails this week

2.  Join Richard White and myself tonight on the fr*ee Webinar
http://www.MoneyGymRadio.com

3.  Come along to our “Money Gym Presents…..Business” workshop on Saturday in Central London.
THEN WE CAN HELP YOU TO:

1.  Identify your ideal PFC and their specific problem
2.  Craft just three choices when offering your solution to their problem
3.  Communicate those choices in a simple, focused way.

Sound good?

Great!

http://www.themoneygym.com/mgpresents/business3.htm

See you there!

Nicola

<<< READ PART ONE HERE     READ PART THREE HERE >>>