A month in the life of a Wealth Coach…

The last month included Christmas and New Year. Routinely these are times for family and celebration, times accompanied by their own joys and stresses. In the Collins household there were plenty of both!

Christmas was a pleasure. Once I’d got used to the fact that my partner had invited everyone for Christmas dinner… well maybe not absolutely everyone but we did cook dinner for 12 which is the most I’ve ever had to cope with! Actually it did go pretty well, even if I say so myself. Food was on the table only 20 minutes later than predicted and the worst thing to happen was splitting a bag of frozen peas and throwing them all over the cooker with 5 minutes to go! (We’re still finding stray peas in the most surprising of places!).

My greatest professional activity over this time was project managing a property refurbishment. We bought a house before Christmas. It badly needed a rewire so we figured it was better to do the job properly before we moved in. There was also the possibility of significantly upgrading a bathroom and kitchen so we got together a team…

Dave the builder is great and masterminded most things really efficiently. He’s a real “can do” builder and so refreshing to work with. Bill the plumber was also a real asset to the team, turning his hand to wallpaper stripping in the quieter moments between plumbing jobs. The only slight problem with our choice of plumber was that he lived in Ystrad Mynach and drove a Ford Focus. Now don’t get me wrong. There’s normally nothing wrong with those choices, but given that South Wales, along with the rest of the country has experienced the heaviest snowfall for 20 years, there were times I wished we’d picked a plumber who lived in Roath and drove a 4 x 4! Still to his credit, Bill has been there when we needed him and his ability to “lend a hand” has been a great asset.

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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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New Year – Brilliant Thoughts

I love New Year and New Year Resolutions.  September is also good for new starts, but New Year is the best.  Not only do you have spring to look forward to, but there is a whole week between Christmas and New Year (if you are lucky enough not to work for anyone else) to get bored, think about stuff and make lists.

I subscribe to a lot of ezines and the “New Year, New Start” themes are beginning to emerge.  I thought I would share the best of them with you, this year.

First up, the ever erudite Martin Avis from Kickstart Daily.  Follow Martin on Twitter at “martinavis”

“All in all, I’m very pleased with my own progress in 2008 and although I haven’t ticked every box as I’d have hoped, I knowthat I took action and moved myself forward in many ways.

And that’s the way I’d urge you to see things: lack of successisn’t failure provided that you have moved on from where youwere. Lack of success is just a resting point on the journey. Solong as you continue to travel, and know in your heart that youare progressing, your resolutions are still in the process ofcoming true.

Failure is when you have allowed the hope of achieving your dream to die”

Marketing Welly, Women Talking Money and Wii’ing All The Way To The Bank

As we come to the end of the Money Gym events for 2008 we gear up with a bit of marketing welly, for Money Gym Gold, as December & January are traditionally very busy times for new clients signing up.

We always like to make an irresistible offer to encourage you all to take action and we have come up with a corker this year.

I’m going to let you in on the rough plan, so that you can give me some feedback using the “comments” button above, if you wouldn’t mind.  Especially if you are thinking of joining Money Gym Gold for 2009

First of all go and have a look at http://www.themoneygym.com/gold so you know what I’m on about.  It’s our flagship product involving working one-to-one on YOUR financial plan, over a year, with one of our experienced wealth coaches (all ex-clients themselves).

The lead in will be a month-long marketing campaign, culminating in a 12 hour long “Wealth-A-Thon” on live internet tv via www.MoneyGym.tv on Saturday 3rd January.  Just after New Year, on the last weekend of the holidays.  Perfect for those whose New Year Resolution is to sort out their financial situation once and for all.

We are not going to add masses and masses of bonuses, but we will of course include the six workshop days planned for 2009 (total value of £638 / $957).  Those will x 3 of our “Let’s Talk Money” interactive wealth coaching days, the Brett McFall event in September, a Property Extravaganza in April and a Business Success Surgery mid-year.  All the dates are being firmed up as we speak.

The extra-special bonus this year, will be the “Money Gym Membership Site Bootcamp” product which we sold at Brett McFall’s event for £1750 / $2625, which takes you through, step by step, how to set up a blog then how to create a membership site from your blog and how to hook it up with TotalBusinessCart, a payment gateway, and a forum.

Some of our existing Membership Site Bootcamp people are coming up to speed nicely (see next week’s ezine for the rest of the links)

http://www.TheBlazingBBQ.com/blog
http://www.TheFluencyProject.com/blog
http://www.LivingRightNow.co.uk/ – click on the blog link on the left
http://www.InsideMotorRacing.com
http://www.MakeMoneyAtUni.com/blog/
http://www.ClassicMiniClub.co.uk

and the wonderful http://wiihealthzone.com/blog/ where Jodie Lawton has put all her classmates’ blogs on her blogroll, bless her!

Now, hold this thought for a second………..

If you can deliver enough value to make the membership of your site worth £5 / $7.50 a month, and you get 1000 people as members, you will be earning £60,000 / $90,000 per year.  5000 members will bring you in a handsome £300,000 / $450,000.  16,666 will make you a million a year.  Marvellous!

But be under no illusion – the hard work is not setting up the membership site, or even delivering the £5 a month value, it’s driving traffic to your site.  The best way to do that is by paying for traffic via Google Adwords and by blogging every day, on topic.

This is where most aspiring online entrepreneurs will fall down and I will be covering this and many other reasons why people find it so hard to succeed online, and financially actually, in my new report, tentatively entitled “Three Million Unemployed – That’s A Good Thing!”.

During the “Wealth-A-Thon” I will be coaching folk live, who are struggling, I’ll be video interviewing Money Gym clients, our various experts and other people of interest around the world (if you would like to be interviewed on the 3rd January, book your slot by emailing nicola@themoneygym.com)

I will also be giving away the newly-re-written-for-2009 Property & Internet marketing chapters of my book “The Money Gym” via a special opt in page that our affiliates will be sending their traffic to.

If you want to get involved in the promotion of Money Gym Gold, and earn affiliate commission of £240 / £360 for each new client that signs up, just click the links below to join (or confirm your membership) of our affiliate scheme.

Money Gym Affiliate Signup
Money Gym Affiliate Login

For super-affiliates, I will be creating special copies of the new report and the “Leaked Chapters” with their affiliate link embedded, so their list members won’t even have to opt in but the super affiliates will still benefit if anyone clicks through and buys an ebook, or joins Silver or Gold.

And then, at midnight on 3rd January, for 2009, the investment in Money Gym Gold will go up from £379.50 a month to £479.50 a month or £5754 for the year.  So you will save £1200 if you sign up for Gold before the midnight deadline.

And finally, we are limiting the intake of Golds to just 50 people as that is the maximum we can handle at the moment.  Playing with the idea of just the first 20 to sign up getting the Membership Bootcamp bonus.

What do you think?  Exciting launch or too confusing? Let me know, using the comments link at the top of this post.

Where have I been this week?

Up to London for a great Harlequin Presentation – how to take your dull old pension and turn it into a SIPP which you can then use to invest in Caribbean Property.  This was two short presentations which were actually really good fun and very, very interesting.

You can now view that online – no charge – by visiting
http://www.themoneygym.com/harlequin/register.htm and putting your name and email in.

We also hosted the last “Women Talk Money” workshop day – an experiment from 2008 that we won’t be continuing but we enjoyed very much.  All the participants got a lot out of it, the most surprising element of which was increased self confidence!

We played Cashflow 101 – and several have booked to come to all the Cashflow 101 games planned in 2009.  Find out more at http://www.themoneygym.com/events

And I stayed at the Hoxton Hotel again – marvellous!  Then I came home to find my sister and her kids moved in for a week, and I played in the Fab Five poker tournament at the Crown & Anchor (got bust out when I went “all in” with Ace King but came up against an “all in” Ace Queen, and I dealt a Queen on the flop – tragic).

So a very busy week, but very enjoyable.

Have fun, we ALWAYS are!

Nicola