This email went out to the smart folk on my list earlier today. I wasn’t going to share it here, but the feedback has been off the charts, so here it is.

(I send a lot of stuff out by email that never goes anywhere else. Be sure to sign up here if you don’t want to miss anything.)

Hatemail, Disclosure and Belief

The best hatemail I ever had was riddled with expletives and ended with the words “have a good one, fucker.”

Thankfully, they don’t come round that often.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a very polite email from a former subscriber that read like this:

“I’m unsubscribing from your list.

I find your language offensive and unnecessarily violent (beating yourself upside the head, refashioning your facial features with a blunt spoon, etc.), and I didn’t like your quip about the Law of Attraction being a pile of candy-coated nonsense. That remark had nothing to do with the message you were trying to convey.

You don’t speak my language, basically.

You’re probably trying to be funny and witty, but it’s really keeping me from wanting to read your stuff. And telling me I rock every email, and that you like my face is just over the top.

You probably have a great message, especially if you went through Michael Port’s training, but it’s not reaching me because of your style of delivery”

My response?

“Thanks for your feedback, sorry to see you go”.

My thought-process?

1. Argh! I offended somebody.
2. Probably best she’s not getting my emails any more. I can’t imagine sitting in the same room as this person, let alone working with her.

Luckily, she feels the same about me. Neither of us is holding a grudge.

You see, if you’re not being yourself, then you’re not doing yourself any favors.

There are some people you’re meant to serve, and some you’re not. It’s that simple.

But here’s where it got blurry for me:

Am I really being myself? Or am I being a hyped up version of myself?

I asked my friend Mirabai Galashan, who works in a similar industry to my erstwhile subscriber (and had described that particular email’s tone as “Gordon Gecko on ecstasy”) for her thoughts.

She said:

“I love your sense of humour, I think this style may put “people like me” off, not because of the jokes per se but because it is a little over-caffeinated and under-sincere at times.

To motivate my demographic I think you need to let them feel your heart/soul.  They need to connect to your depth – the most impressive fact to them is that you were a major mainstream success and then decided you wanted more meaning, to make a difference, be a great dad stuff. This doesn’t come through in a lot of your sales emails.”

So, here goes:

• My entire working day is constructed around spending time with my two-year old son. Soon, he won’t want to hang out with me. Sincerely, that’s scary.
• The reason I quit my “major mainstream success” was because I was miserable. Selling on price to disinterested multinationals wasn’t what I was put here to do.
• Not a week goes by when I don’t wonder if I was selfish and stupid in walking away from something that had so much potential and to which I’d given almost four years of my life.
• Writing these emails is the toughest thing I do each week. I do a fair bit of copywriting for other clients, and I don’t find it difficult. I find it enjoyable and, dare I say it, easy. Using my own voice is a different process, however, and one that leaves me feeling vulnerable and open to abuse, rather like I – and you – feel frequently as an entrepreneur.
• Standing up alone and forging your own way in the world is simultaneously terrifying and exciting. Watch the first five minutes of this video to find out how likely it is that you are suffering from bipolar disorder.
• When I tell you “you rock” at the end of my emails, it’s an expression of gratitude. It’s also a branding exercise.
• The over-caffeinated version of myself that goes out in my emails is, on examination, most likely some kind of protection mechanism.
• I believe in expressing gratitude. I believe in luck. I believe I am lucky to have been born a white guy in the south of England at the end of the 20th century. I also believe in making your own luck.
• I frequently can’t believe my own luck.
• I do not believe in the Law of Attraction. I think it is a pile of candy-coated nonsense.
• I believe that what I believe should have no bearing on what you believe. I do not believe my beliefs to be any more valid or correct than yours. I will not pour scorn on you if you subscribe to the Law of Attraction, or Catholicism, or shamanism.
• I believe we must disagree about these things.
• I know my right people are more interested in what I can do for them, rather than whether we agree on everything. My wife and I disagree on most things. It’s the strengths we don’t share that make us a good team.
• If your set of beliefs doesn’t impinge on the rights of others to live their life free from harassment or violence or coercion, then it’s possible that we can be friends.
• Confidence can be learnt.
• I fuck up a dozen times a week, if not more. This is not an attractive quality in a marketing expert. Experts, after all, are meant to be infallible. Right?
• I have one big win each week – a new client, a long boozy lunch with friends, a good book. Ideally, all three.

Most importantly, I believe – I know – that my right people are out there.

Just as YOUR right people are out there. 

If you try to please everybody, you’ll end up pleasing nobody. You’ll second guess yourself based on every piece of criticism and negative feedback and suggestion you receive.

That gets tiresome quickly.

The people that you identify to work with should be the same people that don’t fight that mutual feeling.

Imagine for a minute that you don’t have to sell, you don’t have to persuade or make a strong case for you instead of the competition.

That’s EXACTLY what happens when you have a clear message and a distinct personality.

You don’t have to water down your message. You shouldn’t do what everybody else is doing. You ARE capable of forging your own way in the world.

You are capable of doing what you love.

If you don’t believe me, ask my friend Jonathan.

You rock (yes, really)

Matt

Hatemail, disclosure and belief is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

I’ve got a confession:

For the last four months I’ve been working out of a temporary office in a bedroom of an apartment building that is ripe for condemnation.

While the builders rip apart my regular residence: new floors, ceilings, electrics, plumbing, bathrooms, kitchen and some heavy-duty wall-dropping and archway-reimagining, I have moved out.

My wife, my son and I are now living in an apartment that belongs to my wife’s family. It was supposed to be for a month or so, but builders are builders, and we’re still here.

I’m hugely grateful (due to my notorious tightfistedness) that this solution exists. It saves us forking out a few thousand euros each month for short-term housing.

I’m doubly grateful as it comes at exactly the same time as our tenants in Brussels return home, leaving us with a temporary hiatus in rental income until we find new ones.

The place we’re living in now has a seafront view, a double balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and is large enough for a few more people.

But it’s a bit grim, a bit old, a bit desolate, and it’s affecting my work.

The apartment has been on the market for about three years and needs some serious work doing to it. The doors don’t close properly. The windows rattle at night. It contains the accumulated debris of three generations of good-living Mediterraneans and the taps run rusty for the first minute of each blast.

The office I’ve appropriated is a back-of-the-building bedroom.

I’m uncomfortable there, which is no big deal, as it’s temporary, but it’s difficult to do your best work when you’re not in a good place (physically and metaphorically).

Every couple of months I decide to get myself an office outside of the house. Occasionally I get as far as calling real-estate agents and landlords and seeing what’s available.

And every couple of months I decide that I’m better off working from home.

There’s a financial consideration, of course. The last one I liked the look of was big enough for seven people and would have cost $30k a year. It’s not a massive sum, but it buys a lot of plane tickets, birthday presents and (let’s be honest) beer.

The others I don’t like much.

And so I return to the back-bedroom of the slightly grim apartment and decamp regularly to the cafe on the corner, which has its own distractions in the form of carrot cake and newspapers and the Polish waitress with the big boobs and friendly smile.

I don’t LOVE to work from home. The regular distractions abound, particularly with a two year old in the house and a wife who has a real job: lack of separation of work and non-work, facility of wandering into the kitchen and re-emerging forty five minutes later trailing cookie-crumbs and guilt, stubborn refusal of aforementioned two-year-old to keep his fingers out of plug-sockets and tongue off the TV-screen …

But they’re also the reason I stay at home. The coffee is cheap and exactly how I like it. The “staff room” is the playground on the sea-front. We don’t fob off our son onto hired help (at least, not any more – he had better ideas).

Working from home is a choice, not a compromise borne of financial or practical considerations.

If you work from home, you’ve made a choice to live well, to carve your own path, even, perhaps, to stick it to the man.

But you’re likely suffering a little.

Even if you’re lucky enough to be doing a job you love, you’re going to suffer from occasional bouts of boredom, frustration and stir-craziness when it’s just you and your computer all day long.

Solitary pursuits become unhealthy when they’re solitary for too long: drinking, sexual activity, exercise and working.

You need people. I need people. Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow. You’re no exception.

In addition, you need to have FUN. Fun on your own is possible. In my life, at least, fun with other people is kind of mandatory.

Introducing the Water Cooler

Every month, I drop a few hundred dollars on mastermind groups: rent-a-mobs of like-minded independent professionals who chin-wag and bounce around ideas and solicit and reinforce and nurture and strengthen and cross-promote.

It is, by far, the most important money I spend on my sanity.

But they’re all very structured. They all involve an element of teaching. There are assignments to complete, forms to fill in, boxes to tick.

What I’m looking to build – with you – is something that looks like this:

An informal group of peers who get on the phone every two weeks in a group, but that are actively encouraged to get together individually by Skype or phone as frequently as necessary.

A group without a leader (I’ll do the facilitating) and no structure. No syllabus or checklists, which means no getting behind and the associated hand-wringing that goes with it.

Every member gives in return for getting. Time, expertise, connections, advice, a friendly ear. Every member brings something tangible to the group.

You get what YOU need, not what’s on the agenda, because there’s no agenda. If you want accountability, we’ll give it to you. If you want to goof off for half an hour to better focus later in the day, but don’t want that goofing off to be mindless Facebook stalking, then there’ll be somebody you can chat with.

If you want to talk about the non-work issues that are affecting your work, then do that. If you want to talk about your difficulties getting your membership site to play nicely with your shopping cart, then you can talk about that.

But it’s NOT group therapy, despite its therapeutic implications. This isn’t a group of people who are looking for the next big idea or advice on “how to make money online” or trying to identify their passion or select their niche.

Everybody in the group is a content-creating, product-making service professional who has been in business for at least a year. You’re a little or a lot creative and you’re good FUN. We’re not going to focusing on the negatives. Life is too short.

There is no coaching here. It’s a group of equals, bolstering one another and making new friends, contacts and avenues for income.

There’ll be some kind of forum that you’re under no obligation to use, but will house everybody under one roof. You don’t have to come join the calls if you don’t want to. You don’t have to hang out round the water cooler if it doesn’t suit: you’ll be able to find somebody when it does.

Everybody will take it seriously as a commitment, not to others, but to themselves. Everybody will recognize the huge importance of the water-cooler in their home office, and take full advantage of it.

It will drastically improve the quality of your work-from-home life.

You’ll get access to the hive-mind: shared connections, expertise, knowledge and compassion from people like, but you who aren’t you (or your son, or the Polish waitress.)

It won’t be free, as free is isn’t taken seriously. But it won’t be expensive.

(There’s this post’s marketing lesson: you’ll get no-shows at a $5 seminar. You won’t get many at a $500 one.)

If it’s right for you, the $500 one-off fee for six-months will be a no-brainer. It had better be, because there won’t be any refunds. It’s a joining fee. An introduction fee to a group of people that will change your working life. Once you’re introduced, nobody can take that away from you.

Who’s in?

I’m in. If it’s right for you, you’re in as well.

I reckon we need five people to get it off the ground. I think any more than about ten on the twice-monthly calls will be too many, but we’ll see.

Scheduled calls will be every other Friday at midday Eastern time, which is 9am Pacific and 5pm UK. Unscheduled calls will be whenever you like. It’s your group.

Click here to let me know you’re in and find out more.

I’ll look at all the notes as they come in. If you’ve got any questions about this, then use the form here as well.

There’ll likely be an exchange of emails, or a phone call, before we both commit. The integrity of the group is important.

But I want you to think hard about it.

If you’re looking for coaching, then you need to click here instead.

Working From Home: Boredom, Frustration and The Water Cooler is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

Ah, the end of another year. Another, glorious, hair-thinning, gut-expanding, wrinkle-deepening 12 months has passed.

And we have grown. We have gotten older. We have sagged and expanded and (some of us) have toned and honed and cut back and improved and learnt and filled our heads with knowledge and our guts with beer.

It’s an instructive exercise to take 30 minutes, around New Year’s Eve, before the early-onset hangover appears but after you’ve indulged just enough to relax the mental ties and REFLECT on the positives of the last 12 months.

I’m not one for positive affirmations, but I’m big on gratitude.

In the words of Louis CK, “Everything is amazing right now, and nobody is happy.”

Take stock of how good you’ve got it. It’s a useful reminder that you weren’t born to a homeless prostitute on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

By the grace of god …

Do this, appreciate your life

So this year, do it. Get your family round. Group your friends and enunciate the three greatest things that have happened to you this year.

For me, last year’s great events were topped by the birth of my son a few days before the year began. Sure, there was other stuff – getting out of Belgium, saying farewell to a job I’d come to dislike, getting a book deal – but it was spending the year with a healthy boy that won the Very Great Stuff Award in 2010.

2011 has been a killer as well. 

I’m going to tell you about my year – because it’s my blog and I choose to indulge myself – and then I’d like to hear your high points in the comments. 

2011 – A Grateful And Self-Indulgent Summary of 3 Great Things

1. Malta

The pearl of the Mediterranean,  my home for the last twelve months. We might be squeezed together like rabbits in cages, but it’s good people to be squeezed in with. The islanders make their own entertainment through force of historical necessity. Your friendships are based on personality rather than profession and you spend more time away from the office than you do in it.

Admittedly, the food is pretty dire, having been destroyed by the British and their proclivity for pie, but if you’re keen on rabbit pasta, pretty girls, low taxes and ten months a year of sunshine, then you could do a lot worse. I love it here.

2. The people I work with

That’s you. Whether we’ve worked together privately, or you were part of the Product Factory, Summer School, Amplified or 2 Day Marathon Webinar or you’re currently a Book Yourself Solid Coach In Training, or member of The Alliance, or joining us for Explosive Business Growth I’m grateful to you. I’ve learnt a lot from you, and I’m here for you.

My teachers, particularly Michael Port and Clay Collins, have reinforced, almost daily, why I choose them to help me out. Thanks guys.

Everybody who got How To Get a Grip into the shops in the UK and USA, and talked about it online, and brokered the deal for the German language version, coming next year, and talked about making it into a TV show (still waiting on that one) and helped me out when I really didn’t deserve it. Thank you.

The nine people who gave up their day to talk to me for my interview series How I Got My First Client, you all rock.

And anybody who’s reading this now, or gets my emails, or has written to me this year – THANK YOU.

3. America and new friends

2011 saw the beginning of a love affair with the United States.

In June, Fox Rent A Car sent me and Amy and Nick and Lauren on a Road Trip. We rode mechanical bulls in San Diego, drank beer with fetish models in Vegas, chugged wine on trains in the Napa Valley, and got up to mischief that wasn’t recorded for posterity in case any of us ever want to run for office.

I discovered that Americans, by and large, aren’t fat and stupid.

Brad bought us tickets for the baseball, Paul paid for coffees, the good folks at Zappos showed us round, the team at Dailybooth gave us T-shirts.

I went back in October to hang out on the East Coast, and met two prior-to-then-only-internet buddies, Laura and Ashley, as well as a whole host of other, normal folk, who don’t live their whole lives out online.

And I’ll be back to repay all that goodwill.

***

Yep, 2011 has been a hell of a ride, and there’s still a week or so left.

Those have been my highlights of the past year. What are yours? 

How To Remember You’ve Never Had It So Good is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

The single most important change I made to my business this year was implementing Infusionsoft.

It’s been monumental. Not just email management, or shopping cart management, or CRM, or payment processing, or automated follow-up or affiliate management, but the whole lot together.

That’s why I’m running an:

Infusionsoft Webinar: Wednesday 21st December at 1pm Eastern

(that’s 10am Pacific, 6pm London and 7pm CET)

Click here to register

Jimmy from Infusionsoft and I will get on the phone for about half an hour to forty minutes and showcase what it can do for your business.

As a bonus, at the end of the webinar, you’ll have a chance to get your hands on it for the lowest price they’ve (never) offered it PLUS I’ll be offering a $400 rebate.

We’ll also show you how to generate more leads and (importantly) convert them into paying customers using the unique nurture process that Infusionsoft offers.

You don’t HAVE to buy, there’s no hard sell, but if you’ve been curious about a seriously powerful CRM tool for your small business, you’ll learn a lot, in a short time, about what it can do for you.

Click here to register

It will be delivered live, there WILL be a replay (but you have to sign up) and it will be GREAT to have you on board.

The Most Important Change I Made In My Business This Year – Infusionsoft is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

These are my own rules for the new year. How many of them resonate with you?

1. Shut The Fuck Up

Enough with the pontificating and pratulations and post-experiential “lessons learnt’ blog-posts, Twitter chats and backslapping, circle-jerking, profuse fuckwittery masqerading as work.

Get on with the work. Shut up a bit. Nose. Grindstone.

2. Sell Sell Sell

If you’ve started your business, and 90% of your time is currently being taken up with product development, process-fucking-aboutery and “networking”, then you haven’t started your business.

Until you know where the next client is coming from and how much they’re going to spend with you, and how long your existing clients are sticking about with you, and what you’re going to sell them next so that they’ll love you even more, then you haven’t got a business.

3. Selective Hero Selection: Choose Your Heroes Wisely

You can’t do it on your own. And you shouldn’t. Problems shared pale, and strengths combined soar.

But be cautious: everyone’s a fucking expert.

Never a trust a man who tells you endlessly on loop how good he is before you have the chance to find out yourself.

Pare down your list of “thought leaders” to zero. Pare down your list of those who are catologing their post-adolescent journey to freedom to those you’d share a beer with, or look out for like a kid brother.

Then, identify somebody who’s had what you want and hound them until they share how they got it.

4. Spades Are Spades

Skive off. Muck about. Enjoy. Kick back. Drink beer.

But call it what it is.

Not everything you do is about your inner journey, your personal development, your life lessons or your “biz”. Sometimes you’re just fucking about. That’s OK.

Only those guilty of underwork reframe fun into work.

5. Simplify

Cut out 80% of your good ideas. Lock them in a jar for your retirement.

Get a red pen out and go over your last six months of software purchases, memberships, subscriptions, bank statements and “must-have” apps.

Pare, excise, cannibalize, streamline.

Take the single thing you do: the thing you’re known for, the result you deliver, and deliver it better.

Ask the insurance broker who lives at the end of your street how he’s managed to take his wife and six kids to Cabo three times a year for the last eight years without running his own company or finding his passion or joining Twitter or mastering mobile affiliate marketing.

He did it by doing his job, which was selling insurance.

Anything to add?

Shut The Fuck Up And Other Advice For 2012 is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

I could take the time to read a fiction book, but I don’t. I would rather read websites, newspapers, magazines, looking for ideas and concepts that I can use. I spend time in bookstores because one idea from a book or magazine can make me money.

The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there.

Mark Cuban, How To Win At The Sport Of Business

I’m starting a book club.

If you want in, sign up for my list. After all, if you’re not learning, you’re not earning.

Below is the list of books I’ll be reading (or in some cases, re-reading) in 2012.

I aim for five a month, and will read them in the order they appear below. In addition, I aim to review them in this order as well.

It’s unlikely I’ll put all the reviews on the blog, but if you want a summary each month of my brain food, for inspiration and education, enter your email address into the box on the right and I’ll push them through to you as soon as they’re done.

52 Business Books To Read In 2012

The reading list has been influenced by the good people at ReadItFor.Me (aff) who have compiled a great resource for those low on time but high on knowledge-hunger.

1. 7 Lessons For Leading In Crisis by Bill George
2. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
3. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
4. Awesomely Simple by John Spence
5. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
6. The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz
7. Brain Rules by John Medina
8. Brains On Fire by Robbin Phillips et al.
9. Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump
10. Change By Design by Tim Brown
11. Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman
12. The Design of Business by Roger Martin
13. Different by Youngme Moon
14. Do More Great Work by Michael Bungay Stanier
15. Drive by Daniel Pink
16. The Element by Ken Robinson
17. Engage by Brian Solis
18. Evil Plans by Hugh Macleod
19. Fascinate by Sally Hogshead
20. Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott
21. Flip The Funnel by Joseph Jaffe
22. Good To Great by Jim Collins
23. Great By Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
24. Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod
25. Influencer by Kerry Patterson et al.
26. The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
27. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
28. Love Is The Killer App by Tim Sanders
29. Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
30. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
31. Mindset by Carol Dweck
32. Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer
33. Neuromarketing by Thomas Nelson
34. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
35. The New How by Nilofer Merchant
36. New Social Learning by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner
37. Newsjacking by David Meerman Scott
38. Peak by Chip Conley
39. The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
40. Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
41. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
42. Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli
43. The Referral Engine by John Jantsch
44. Results Rule by Randy Pennington
45. The Shibumi Strategy by Matthew May
46. Switch by Chip and Dan Heath
47. The Shift by Lynda Gratton
48. The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt
49. Think Better by Tim Hurson
50. Whale Hunting by Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith
51. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
52. Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney

And, voilà – the entire list.

If you want to join me on this journey of brain-enlargement, then sign up to my list, below or top right, and you’ll get my reviews in your inbox about once a month.

52 Business Books To Read In 2012 is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

You need to know how to sell. 

Marketing – getting people to know about you and your stuff – is one thing. Selling is quite different.

True, a good marketing campaign will make the sale easier, but without being able to close that sale, the marketing is all for nothing.

How To Sell – the eBook

I used to sell this. Now I’ve revised it so it’s brand spanking new and I’m giving it away. Oh, the irony …

I’m working on bigger stuff now, and am keen to get some of my best existing stuff into new hands, so please share with everyone who might be interested.

50 pages, 5000 words, totally free, no opt-in.

Inside, you’ll discover:

• 2 ways to make what you’re selling insanely attractive to your buyers, every time.
• 4 hidden advantages you can identify in your products and services to push your prospects’ hot buttons.
• The biggest mistake most service-providers make in promoting their work and how to avoid making the same mistake yourself.
• How to deliver your product or service so that you can instantly demand a higher price and make the buying decision easier.
• A simple tip to kill the competition.
• 5 simple ways you can differentiate yourself and your services (pick one or pick them all!)
• How to repackage your services as brand spanking new and why that works in turning prospects into buyers.
• 3 times you need to be selling to make the most sales.
• 7 times you’ll be wasting your time (and harming your business) if you try to sell.
• The best way to warm up a prospect to get them eating out of your hand.
• How to use psychology for the good and get your buyers eager.
• The ONLY 2 reasons that prospects won’t buy your stuff and how to tackle them before they become an issue.
• How to get your prospect to convince you to let him buy!
• How to totally eliminate buyer’s remorse.
• … and more than I can fit onto this page.

I’m going to go against my own advice here, and offer this in return for a “share”.

Please use the share buttons below to tell your Facebook friends and Twitter followers about this resource. I want it in as many hands as possible.

It’s an honor system, of course. If you don’t want to share this, you can have it for nothing.

Because you rock.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD “HOW TO SELL”

(or right-click and save).

How To Sell – brand new, totally free ebook is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

Last week, after announcing my Infusionsoft discount offer, I got a ton of emails asking about the other tools you might need to run your business.

So I decided to share my little black book.

In it, you’ll find:

• The designers I work with and recommend.
• The only resources you’ll need to get started with a kick-ass effective social media plan.
• The single best copywriting education you can get (for free).
• How to get a website up and earning in under a day.
• The 11 books every business owner needs to own.
• How to get a free weekly marketing education from the comfort of your car;
• Which virtual assistant company I use – and strongly recommend.
• Where you can get dirt-cheap and rapid transcription.
• The 7 cheap or free tools you need to get your multimedia empire started.

There’s no opt-in, you can download it here, give it away, share it with your clients or give it to your list.

Enjoy!

All you need to run your business: a peek inside my little black book is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

–> CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP <–

Switching to Infusionsoft for managing your entire back-office will be one of the smartest things you can do for your small business.

If you currently accept payments online, do any amount of email marketing, manage your contacts with a basic (or complicated CRM) or sell downloadable or physical products, and you’re NOT using Infusionsoft, you’re missing a trick.

I want to send you money

Infusionsoft is running an affiliate promotion at the moment. As a proud affiliate and evangelical user, I want to share my spoils with you.

IF YOU SIGN UP TO BECOME AN AFFILIATE PARTNER BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER 31ST 2011 THROUGH MY AFFILIATE LINK, I WILL SEND YOU $400.00.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Click here to visit their homepage, or click here to schedule a demo.
2. If you decide to become a customer, drop me a line to let me know. You can email me: matthew [at] matthewkimberley [dot] com.
3. Watch your marketing hassles become a thing of the past!

If you DON’T use my link, I won’t be able to send you any moolah!

The only small print is that I’ll pay you after 90 days, not to hang on to the cash, but because I get my commissions clawed back if you sign up just for the rebate, then cancel …

Why I Switched To Infusionsoft

I was using a ton of really useful tools. I had Highrise for my CRM (customer relationship management system) which is great.

But it didn’t “speak” to Aweber, which I was using for my email marketing, which meant that I was keeping two customer, prospect and lead lists in separate places. Updating one didn’t update the other.

I was using 1ShoppingCart for ecommerce. I’m not a massive fan of 1ShoppingCart. It’s OK, but its email marketing was crappy … AND … it didn’t connect to either of my two other customer databases.

In addition, I did all my invoicing through Freshbooks (I still use it for some sporadic consulting work) and I loved it … but … I had no way, unless I spend half my week updating my various databases, of knowing which clients were worth what, or at what stage of the sales cycle they were in.

Infusionsoft solved all of these issues. It combines email marketing, affiliate management, ecommerce, CRM and even task scheduling in a hugely powerful, individual-driven database.

By individual-driven, I mean that the starting point for everything inside Infusionsoft is your contact. Your contact is assigned tags (rather like Gmail tags emails). That means there is no such thing as keeping separate lists (email marketers, you’ll know what I’m referring to.)

In a click, you can see the lifetime value of any particular customer, which emails of yours they have opened, which links they have clicked on and which affiliate referred them to you.

But that’s not even the best thing.

No, the best thing about Infusionsoft is the automation.

By spending a little time defining your sales cycle, your prospects will receive only RELEVANT and TIMELY emails and offers and follow-ups based on their past behavior.

Cool, huh? 

Imagine that you want to send out a promo to your new leads that offers them a discount that existing customers don’t benefit from. You don’t have to add the hideous disclaimer “only valid for new customers” at the end of your offer because Infusionsoft will do it for you.

Imagine you want to send an email ONLY to those of your customers who have spent less than $1000 in the last twelve months AND who had recently ignored your last three emails AND whose birthdays fall this month.

Entirely possible. And can be set up automatically.

Infusionsoft saves me time and money. You owe it to yourself to check it out.

What are you waiting for?

Click here and sign up using my affiliate link. Let me know that you’ve done it and I’ll send you 400 big ones as my way of saying THANKS and GOOD CHOICE.

You rock!

PS of course, if you’ve made it this far, and you’re certain that it’s not for you, then that’s cool. But perhaps one of your friends is looking for a cash rebate and would like to see this offer?

If so, hit the buttons below to share. I’d appreciate it and you’ll go straight to heaven (or something).

Infusionsoft Rebate Offer – I Want To Send You Money is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.

I get paid to travel.

That means, apart from getting paid to travel, I can travel and not worry about getting paid for it.

Yup, do my job, determine your own vacation time.

SUCK THAT corporate America! Britain! Belgium! Malta!

By means of example, I get to have adventures like this:

<tangent>

New York, Philly, Washington DC

I’m just back from New York. I stayed in an apartment about one block from where the Occupy Wall Streeters were occupying Wall Street.

I went to take a look. The smell of dope-smoke and human feces was overpowering. I took the executive decision to occupy Starbucks instead. Choice well made. I stuck it to the man with a venti latte.

(Aside: once, in Italy, I watched an American tourist order “venti latte” and receive twenty lattes. Venti is Italian for twenty.)

Copywriters and booze

Laura Belgray, the Talking Shrimp (who smelled of honeysuckle and lavender and brains) suggested dinner at an Italian place, where we put the world to rights over Guidobono Nebbio, amaro, salame Toscano and coffee.

A few days previously, Ashley Ambirge and I had put the world to wrongs with a bar crawl of Philly’s deepest dive bars. There are places in Philly you can get a shot of Jim Beam and beer in a tin-can for $2.50. You need to ask for a “special”: named for the needs of those who drink them.

Bikes and bureaucrats

I got on a bike for the first time in ten years and took in the monuments of Washington DC.

Washington reminded me of Brussels: a town staving off terminal depression by means of public-administration implants. It’s the kind of town you’d only visit if it was a matter of, say, national security.

Religion: in a bottle, on a tree

On the plane from Vienna to JFK I sat next to an ancient Albanian couple who had brought their own lunch of bread and petrified goat’s cheese.

The man kept swigging discreetly from an opaque medicine-sized plastic bottle with “Holy Water” stamped on the side. It smelled potent. He entered a state of religious nirvana around Dublin and snored ostentatiously for the rest of the trip.

He wasn’t the only one looking to get to heaven on the flight. A large-boned Hasidic gentleman stood directly in front of me, swaying, praying and reading from a prayer book for the best part of 90 minutes.

Had he not been praying, I would have said something along the lines of “excuse me, with respect, your rocking backwards and forwards is making me feel sea-sick. Plus, I specifically bagged the emergency exit seat so that I’d have extra leg room.”

But because I’m an understanding and accommodating type, and because we tip-toe around the right of the religious to do their thing, I didn’t.

He only stopped when a tiny old Austrian lady stood next to him, read over his shoulder and asked for a simultaneous translation from the Hebrew.

Exasperated, he took his etrog and his lulav and returned to his seat. I was simultaneously relieved at the redemption of my personal space and appalled that I may have subconsciously and passively perpetuated Austrian anti-Semitism.

Medical tourism

Around day ten of my trip I woke up with an eye the size of a golf-ball. The normal solution of ignoring physical inconveniences until they subside didn’t work, so I visited an opthalmologist on Broadway. He charged me $340 for a four minute consultation.

Friends, we may be in the wrong job.

</tangent>

The business

The real reason for my trip was to spend four days in the company of some of the brightest, smartest and most clued-up entrepreneurs I’ve met. Michael Port hosted his first mastermind meeting for members of his Alliance mentorship program. I’m faculty.

We spent 40 hours together, plotting, planning and deconstructing our businesses. There were breakthroughs, revelations, tears and laughs. We traveled from Sweden, the UK, New Zealand and New Jersey to lock ourselves away from the outside world and focus single-mindedly on our businesses.

If it’s something you’ve ever done, you’ll appreciate its power. If it’s something you’ve never done, you owe it to yourself to try. We’re meeting again in Febuary. You can come, too, if you’d like.

The point

(finally)

I’m a Book Yourself Solid coach. That means, no matter where I am in the world, I get to serve my clients wherever they are in the world.

I can be at home, or I can be abroad. I need a phone, a computer and my innate wit and learned wisdom.

There’s a chance you can do that, too.

If you care deeply about the 99%, and want to make a difference in the world by making small businesses more powerful, and if it’s something you think you’d be good at, click here to find out more about becoming a Book Yourself Solid coach.

Or get in touch with me directly. We’ll talk through it. If it’s right for you, I’ll hook you up with more details.

***

Now, I’m back in Malta. I have to go and rescue my son from daycare. In the middle of the day. Boo-ya!

How To Get Paid To Travel is a post from Matthew Kimberley's getting more clients blog. Matthew is a small business marketing consultant. Perhaps you want to hire him? Anyway, if you enjoyed it, be sure to get your free copy of his More Clients Please ebook.