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We were invited to take part in this programme when it was made last year but declined to do so for two reasons:

1. We didn’t know if it was going to be a balanced programme or a hatchet job – journalists are notoriously cynical of anything that challenges their world view
2. We had also just decided to put the Money Gym (as a business) on hold for a while to pursue our own personal interests, so there didn’t seem any point.

What About Your Money & Wealth Creation Nicola?

I’d just like to say, in light of some of the comments already circulating around Facebook, that I have never positioned myself as a millionaire, far from it. I have always been just an ordinary mother of two, who was on her own personal journey to make a living (ideally without trading time for money).

I’m deeply grateful to many of the people also mentioned in the Money programme – Robert Kiyosaki and T.Harv Ecker in particular. Robert has changed the way that millions of ordinary people think about money, for ever.

I’ve had some pretty spectacular ups and downs and I’ve never made any secret of that, but I now know how to make money, how to handle money, how to grow money and what NOT to do with it.

What About The Money Gym Then?

What’s more, The Money Gym’s teachings (via the book on Amazon and this website) have created several millionaires and one or two multi-millionaires that I can think of. You can get a free ebook copy of The Money Gym here >>>

Many more people over the 10 years or so, have gone on to make a great living or even just a substantial part time income, from something they are interested in or passionate about.

I’m very proud of that and always will be.

My personal journey to wealth continues.

Nowadays I’m concentrating on helping people – via this site – who want to learn how to market their business better online, and help creative people like my sister Heather, “product launch” their books, albums, products or services”

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I started with a weekend in Shoreham with my kids where I got to cook for P and two of her friends who were staying over, which I love, both nights.  I got to hear about their prom which was the previous week and see more pics of how amazing they all looked.  Of course P wasn’t happy with her appearance (I made her French pleat quiff too high apparently and she felt like she looked like a drag queen!).  My son N was around Friday but headed off to Henfield on the bus, to stay with a mate on Saturday – he’s getting so independent now he’s 13.5  but while he’s starting to shoot up he still looks like my baby to me!

Sunday, I headed home to Hove and then P came to stay Sunday night so we could watch the first episode of True Blood together, which is becoming a bit of a ritual for us.  As they get older, and while they are living with their Dad while they finish their exams and I finalise where I want to live, we are having to keep our bonds strong by finding different activities to do together, which hopefully will lay the ground for our friendship as they grow into adults.  I love their company and they seem to enjoy mine, and long may that continue.  Harry Potter, this week yay!

Talking of them growing up, we have been talking to P about the need to get a part time job while she’s off for a couple of months, awaiting exam results and college acceptances.  She would really rather stay up late, get up late and hang around with her mates down the beach, while her Dad and I are very keen she starts to earn her own money, start to manage it a bit better (she spends her pocketmoney in days while her brother always has a couple of hundred in the bank, stashed away from birthday gifts too!) and get some idea of what the world of work is like.

My theory is that…

…once she’s had a taste of real work – dull work, hard work, minimum wage kind of work – she’ll apply herself a bit harder at college, recognizing it for the lifeline to a more fulfilling career that it is.  Unfortunately, she’s not interested in “sitting in front of a computer all day” so she won’t work for me!  And I could use some  help so I might have to turn to the Northbrook College Apprentice Scheme – did you know that you don’t even have to employ your apprentice yourself, there are third party firms who will take all the pain out of hiring an apprentice, for you?

I’m trying to think of P as a young employee now, as an effort to stop treating her like a child, which winds her up enormously, but I had to exert a bit of leverage this week, to show the pain of potential consequences by a certain timeframe, if a certain type of behaviour wasn’t employed.  As this involved her pocket-money and mobile phone I felt a bit mean for it, but after some fairly frank and robust text messages which I managed to ignore and not rise to, she got off her butt eventually and went and delivered 10 or so CV’s in person along Shoreham High St.  She’s an engaging girl in person and this strategy resulted in her being offered a job waitressing in one of the restaurants (owned by a mate of one of my poker buddies, who’s a nice guy, so that’s cool).  She starts this evening on a trial basis and was so elated, she texted me immediately, all crossness forgotten in her glow of achievement.

My sister Heather’s “push the baby seagull out of the nest” policy seems to be working.  This is gleaned from watching the rather outwardly uncaring attitude of the mother seagull that laid her egg on the roof outside Heather’s bedroom window, so we have been able to witness her mothering techniques first hand.  The little fluffy chick is growing up fast – it’s having to!  There’s no cuddling and sheltering from the sun, wind and rain there, no sir!  That mother is all about teaching self-sufficiency!

Tuesday was our always lively “Online Strategy” meeting for the Worthing & Adur Chamber which I really enjoy as Tina and Tracie from the Chamber are energetic, engaged and willing to try things out, Tina’s husband Ian who is the techie whiz, while Clive Spring of XL Design and Mark Lyford from http://Pep4Print.co.uk are both enthusiastic and excellent in their fields and together I think we make a great team.  I managed to come out of that meeting with only a few action points – apart from my ongoing work for the Chamber – so I was happy!

The rest of the week passed in a flurry of activity, punctuated by the Jazz Jam on Tuesday, getting things ready for my ex, who is about to start some telesales and telephone follow up for me.  I’ve realised that while networking and online marketing are great, most of the local businesses don’t spend all their time online, and I might have to add a more traditional bow to my arsenal of marketing tools.  The Telephone.  Eeek!   An instrument I have a bit of a phobia of, finding it very distracting / disruptive when it just rings and having spent the last 12 years or so coaching via phone.

He’s decided to go freelance on the telesales front, having been one of the best telesales people at CBS Records in his day and having worked for various firms in this capacity for several years now.   So if you want someone to gently but persistently follow up your leads, he’s your man (just email me for more details).

I have an ambitious growth plan for The Business Success Factory and want him to be part of that as he’s just  the steady, key accounts / managerial type I’ll need, while I concentrate on marketing, sales and strategy for the Local Business Marketing Business I’m steadily creating here.

Which plan is gathering momentum, after getting not just one, but two great write ups in the Worthing Herald business pages last week and attending yet another Chamber networking event at the Ardington on Wednesday evening.  I attracted two very strong enquiries at that event and am looking forward to talking to both businesses further.

The more competitor analysis I do, the more sure I am that the lead products and 3 x full service levels we are developing for future customers are great value and will make a real difference to any local business looking to market themselves more effectively.  I don’t need a massive amount of clients luckily to build a great business and working with the Chamber is a great start.

We don’t have to just work with Brighton, Shoreham & Worthing businesses but that’s where I’m focusing my activities right now.  Although I am also mentoring people in other UK areas who want to follow in the footsteps of someone who is ACTUALLY DOING IT rather than just standing on a stage selling it.  If you like the sound of that, just email me at nicola [at] nicolacairncross.com to find out more as the details are not publicly available as I only work with very determined, action orientated people.

I’m just trying to work out how to best use the several local websites that I’ve got to Page One on Google – like EstateAgentsShoreham.com, ShorehamHotel.com, VanHireWorthing.com, JobsShoreham.com, AccountancyBrighton.com and many more including DigitalMarketingBrighton.com which was originally created as part of a blogging duel but which is now dominating for the phrases “internet marketing brighton”, “marketing brighton” and “online marketing brighton” – it’s almost doing better than my main website for those phrases!

And on that note, I’m off to Staples to buy some postcards for a new marketing test…

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Technology is a wonderful thing  – when it’s working!  We have had internet issues this week with Virgin Media losing our internet connection on a regular basis, which covered up the fact that my Firefox started to move with the speed of a slug this week, but I disabled as many add-ons as I could and that sorted it out eventually.  Phew, thought it was my trusty laptop for a while!

I’ve been re-reading Rich Schefren’s brilliant report on traffic this week, after watching the latest excellent webinar, and resolving again to extract the maximum value from my existing traffic before seeking more.  This is a bit of a catch-22 because in order to be able to split test etc., which helps you extract maximum value from your squeeze and sales pages, you need a bit of traffic!  Too little data can give false readings, so I’ve been playing with Microsoft Bing advertising before going back to the Big Daddy Google Adwords.  However, none of that traffic is converting to leads, much less sales, although my warm traffic unique visitors convert very well at between 8% and 25% to leads and around 1-2% to sales of everything from eBooks to top level mentoring.

But unless you can create and then convert cold traffic, you can’t really…

…grow your business sustainably so I’m persevering.  I identified that the key phrase I was targeting was too far “back”  in the info seeking / buying process, so I’ve identified a couple of other phrases where people who searched them (and there are thousands per month) would definitely be looking to opt in or buy some information / help so we will see if that works better at converting to leads / customers.

The recent Google Panda algorhythm amendments (aka Google Farmer’s Update) hasn’t hurt my traffic, in fact I’m noticing a jump every three months and many of my sites-for-rent are now Page One Number One of Google – although that itself doesn’t’ guarantee traffic, by a long shot.  Click here for a fairly decent roundup of the Google Panda Update (even though it’s not an English as 1st language site, the explanation is easy to understand)

One of my sites is at the top even though when I click on it, I don’t seem to have added any content!  That just shows what having a great domain name with the key phrase in the URL and the All-In-One-Plugin can do for a site.  Better add some before I fall victim to the Panda Update on that one!

Another of my clients, who has a great Indian Gifts website specialising in beautiful objects from the Assam region, spent some time with me on the phone last  week and she’s emailed me today to report that, from not being listed at all on Google, she is now – within a week – being listed on Page Three (and climbing) for her key phrase.

She had paid to have her site all set up but nobody had put any meta-title, meta-description or meta-tags in at all.  This means Google can’t index it and it is something I see so regularly it’s frightening.  One other client asked me for a Marketing MOT and I couldn’t put it online I was so cross with what she had paid for – and not got!  And this by a firm who were promoting themselves as a Local Business Marketing company.  Grrrrrrrrr!

Alternatively, I got a call from someone the other morning, who had found my site, downloaded my book and read it, and who now wanted to coach with me, promptly signing up and paying immediately for my top level mentoring programme

As Rich Schefren says “the goal of great marketing is to make selling redundant” and I certainly didn’t need to sell anything in that instance!

I’m hopeful that the interview with Tina Tilley from the Worthing & Adur Chamber of Commerce will come out in the Worthing Herald this week and that it will appear online so I can send you a link.  The poor Business Editor had a job to get a word in edgeways but he was making copious notes and I sent him some follow up stuff about QR Codes and how local businesses can get busy using them right now, with some examples I have found recently.  http://thebusinesssuccessfactory.com/how-qr-codes-can-help-you-make-more-money-now-in-your-real-world-business/

I had to get very strict with another client this week – he’s a great guy and we have a laugh every time, but he’s very busy with two things at the moment and the one I’m coaching him on is getting left aside rather.  We talked about diary zoning and how important it is, when you are working on more than one thing, and you have family commitments too.  We also talked about out-sourcing, and using virtual staff to get things done that are not getting done when left to you!

Did you know that for around $300 – $500 a month, you can have a full time VA from the Philippines?  They are really bright, hardworking people, and often have EXCELLENT written and spoken English.  I haven’t gone down this route as I can’t face ploughing through all the CV’s but it’s a great idea if you are just swamped but only have a limited budget.  You could also use 123Employee.com as they apparently insist that the VA’s go to work at their office and you have a project manager who farms out the work and makes sure it gets done.

Because if something crucial – a critical success factor – isn’t getting done in your business, then you need to find a way to get it done.  And if you aren’t doing it, for whatever reason, practical or emotional, then you need to find someone who will.

For example, I know that I need to create an “optimum selling system” for my business The Business Success Factory.  The marketing is starting to work well, in terms of mentoring clients, but the “All Done For You” outsourced marketing service needs to be sold – these customers just simply don’t spend all day online.

If I want to reach Local Business Clients, the way to do it is via some of the more traditional routes, like direct mail, advertising, following up by telephone, etc.  And I’m just not going to do all that. I know myself and I just won’t.  So I either need to find someone to do it for me, or I need to find another way.  So the thinking cap is on, right now!

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My second book “3 Secrets Of Business Success” has gone off to a professional editor, as it’s around 60,000 words and it needs to be more like 45,000 and I’m at the stage where, if I start to try and edit, I’m adding more stuff IN but not taking anything OUT.  I’m excited about that, as it’s someone who knows me very well, having been a Money Gym client for years, and I know she’ll understand what I was trying to say, when it gets a bit confusing – I’m looking forward to a much improved and succinct version coming back.

On the book input rather than output front, I’ve been reading “Influence” by Robert B Cialdini which is, as everyone says, brilliant.  I’m only just a few chapters in, so will review it later, and next up will be “Good To Great” by Jim Collins, while I wait for a book to arrive that Rich Schefren especially recommended for me on a recent mentoring call.

I’ve been talking to some potential “All Done For You” clients this week, where we become someone’s marketing department and just do it all for them, having agreed on strategy for the year, and at monthly strategy sessions.  One of whom particularly would really be very lively and fun to work with, so fingers crossed on that one.  I’m really enjoying the “consultative selling” process because it doesn’t feel anything like selling.  I just give as much value as I can for an hour, following a rough outline of how the call should go and at the end the potential customer knows whether they want to work with me and we both know whether they are very likely to get their guaranteed 100% plus return on investment.

Many of the potential clients have often watched the 6 x Free “Business Success” Videos as well, so they know that I know my stuff, and they have, of course, been to the site, signed up, downloaded things, read the ezine….so they know the marketing principles I follow, and would apply for their business, work too because otherwise they wouldn’t be on the phone!

However, a rather large opportunity has come up with a US based marketer which seems to have my name written all over it, as have two interesting opportunities in Brighton.  I’m keeping all my options open as, now the book is done and nearly dusted, I have a lot more time on my hands and am seeking interesting projects.

As part of my getting out and about policy, before the Colin Turner interview tomorrow, I’m up at the crack of dawn to go to my old school, Durrington High School which I notice from the website is now a Business & Enterprise specialty school.  Well, all I can say is that I wished it had been when I was there!

The event is a Worthing & Adur Chamber networking breakfast, presumably prepared by the pupils.  It’s all to do with the Youth Chamber which the formidable Tina Tilley is very keen on and has been working very hard to get going.

Last week I interviewed my first Chamber Member, Michael Dove of Dove Consulting, for the Chamber Podcast and it went very well.  Micheal was in corporate life before going freelance a few years ago, and it’s fascinating to hear about the matter of fact way he went about becoming a success.

Then, this weekend, I’ve set my sights on mastering a new bit of software – which will enable me to run webinars as if they are live each time.   It’s a bit of a steep learning curve but I like a challenge.

But before that challenge, is the one of putting my daughter Phoebe’s hair up for her Prom tomorrow night, so that it has at least a slim to middling chance of staying up for the whole evening.  She’s got a lot of hair as you can see and she is very excited about the whole event.  She’s been reminding me on Facebook about not forgetting the eyelash glue and other such essentials – well, it is a big evening for her!

I don’t remember having anything like a Prom when I left school in the late 70’s (gasp!), the best we got was an end of school disco, but oh! The tunes!  Gil Scott Heron was a particular favourite of the time and I’ll leave you with the video – which is STILL awesome.

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This site gets 10 million visitors a month and while I haven’t seen a massive boost in traffic yet, I’m convinced that it will lead to something.  Besides, I love to read and write, so it’s not exactly hard work for me.

It’s interesting about that whole thing, though, it got me thinking about how I just get on and do stuff, trusting that it will have an effect, somehow, somewhere.   I liken it to throwing pebbles  in the pond, you know it’s going to make a ripple and you don’t know when that ripple will come back or what it will look like, but I just trust that taking action will have a positive impact.

Perhaps my business experiences to date help me trust like that, or perhaps it’s because in the early days of my internet marketing career I  had some great mentors and I just believed them and dis what I was told and got the amazing results.

Because I find that so many people don’t have that trust and therefore they don’t take action.  They only seem to want to make the effort to do things where there is a guarantee that those things will work.  By work, I mean make them money.  Well, it just doesn’t work like that.  You have to trust, then take the actions, then you will get the results.

I don’t know if I’m getting my point across well enough here, but in this example, I didn’t know that writing that blog post would get me picked up by the book editor of a huge mega-site and offered a guest blogging role on a multi-million visitor site, did I?  But I took the action anyway.

Why? I don’t know really but I do know one thing, if you don’t take any action, you are guaranteeing nothing is going to happen.  Take some action and something will happen, you just don’t know what!

There!  I’ve nailed it.

Do Something, Anything Can Happen.  Do Nothing, Nothing Will Happen.  For Sure.

Delving a little deeper, going a bit woo-woo for a minute, I have been talking to Steve quite a lot recently about what we both need to do to get monster amounts of traffic to our sites and guest blogging is definitely on that list.
However, I find it hard to get motivated to think up a blog post for someone else’s blog, much less write it!  I want to write stuff for my own blog first.

However, I knew I desired to secure a guest blogger spot but it was on the back burner till I could work out an easy, effortless, enjoyable way to do it.  And it turned up, and fell in my lap.  Because I took some action.

I spoke to Professor Colin Turner on skype about the details of our webinar next week – we are both looking forward to talking on the 24th at 1pm and giving away copies of his book that changed my life – if you haven’t done so already, register for the call here >>> we will be recording it but only those who turn up live will get the free book so try and make that if you can.

Then Heather, my sister, came home with a copy of the Evening Argus and said “Did you know you are in the Business Pages?”  and there I am, large as life.

Then I headed over to the Worthing & Adur Chamber offices on Friday to be interviewed by Neill Barston, the business editor of The Worthing Herald, with Tina Tilley,  about working with the Chamber on their blog and social media, and we were thrilled to tell Neill that the Chamber is the first UK chamber to have it’s own podcast.

Working with a professional PR person – Louise Thornton – is really paying off.  I’d be paying a fortune for the column inches she’s getting me and editorial really positions you as the expert whereas display advertising is really tricky to get right and get a good return on investment on.

I’ll keep you up to date on what all those ripples in the pond come back looking like!

My daughter has one more GCSE to take and she’ starting to look for a job.  She didn’t’ get the Hollister one she went for (on this occasion) and she’s worrying that her lack of work experience is hampering her.  I don’t know how kids are supposed to get experience nowadays, they are not allowed to handle food or money till they are 16, even 18 in some shops.

I was working in a sweetshop at about 12 (having lied about my age obviously), humping fruit around in a greengrocers by 13, then cooking in a nursing home by 14 – my roast dinners are legendary!

I was a little taken aback when she said she would rather work as a cleaner, than work with me doing office / admin / internet marketing work….I thought, really?  Talk to me again after you’ve cleaned a few hundred toilets, luv!  But the Apprentice Scheme being co-ordinated by Northbrook College might offer some help. She’s got 3 months at least before she goes to college to study Art & Photography, and apparently the Apprentice Scheme can be for less than a year.  They get paid too, at least minimum wage.  I’m going to call them with her on Monday.

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Sometimes you trudge along, enjoying what you are doing but just getting it done and sometimes weeks just come along that completely blow you away. I’ve had a couple of trudgy weeks and then, last week, I had a “blow the roof off” week!

But before I tell you about that, can I ask you for a bit of feedback?

I’ve been doing this diary writing style of blogging since 1998, documenting what I’m doing to grow my business, firstly The Money Gym and now The Business Success Factory. I’ve always thought that, to aspiring entrepreneurs, especially perhaps those in jobs, it would be useful to see what a real life entrepreneur does and feels on a day to day basis. Warts and all sometimes!

But is it? Is it boring? Or inspirational? Useful or just a totally yawn?

I would really love to get some more questions and comments on this blog so that I can tailor my content to help you, whichever business you are trying to build…do feel free to use the comments box or hit the “share your thoughts” link.

In the meantime, let me tell you about last week and what I did to move my business forwards.

Monday To Wednesday – Too Much Thinking Makes Your Head Hurt But Burns Calories!

Monday to Wednesday was spent doing the usual, which at the moment is doing a lot of book editing (possibly the most boring thing to do on the planet and something that challenges my ADD big time) and also doing a lot of thinking strategically, trying to come up with a plan to get some success stories for The Business Success Factory which is the only thing I’m missing now.

I read somewhere that thinking takes up about 20% of the calories you eat, and when you are REALLY thinking hard, it’s 40%. And I’ve been really doing a lot of hard thinking….to the point where my brain hurts. Business journalling really helps, as it gets all those swirling thoughts out of my head and onto the paper where I can evaluate them properly. I definitely feel more focused since starting that in January.

Getting away from the computer helps a lot too – you know when you are at the computer concentrating for ages, and your forehead starts to feel a bit weird? That’s a sure sign that it’s time to go for a cup of tea and do a bit more journalling.

I read Blue Ocean Strategy this week, after my business mentor mentioned it again, and when I opened it I realised that I didn’t actually read it last time, just the first two chapters. This is very unusual for me, I usually always finish books. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for it, then, or it went over my head… but this time I found it very useful, both in terms of helping me work out who I’m competing with and also in terms of strategic pricing, both of which I’ve been floundering around with recently…..

As I say, I’ve realised that my next challenge is that I’ve got loads of success stories for The Money Gym but in order to create specific success stories for The Business Success Factory I need clients to put through my system. However, in order to attract more clients, I need success stories.

I identified that challenge by reading a report by one of my mentors which said to ask yourself these three deceptively simple questions:

1. What would my prospects need to believe that would make investing in / buying my product or service a complete no-brainer?
2. Why wouldn’t my prospects invest in / buy what I’m offering?
3. Why do my prospects need to invest / buy right now?

My answers are that they would need to believe that they are going to make much more profit than the cost of my product or service – that their Return On Investment is going to be 100% or ideally much, much more over a year.

My first response to Question 2 was “that they don’t have the money” but then I caught myself and remembered that this is just a reaction and it’s scarcity thinking, and it’s a hangover from my childhood (which was very scarce indeed).

There are plenty of businesses out there doing well enough to afford this marketing service as I’ve priced it to be very affordable, BUT they just haven’t heard of me yet, or worked out that they need me. That’s a traffic issue and a USP (also known as a “unique selling proposition”) or a “compelling offer” issue.

My USP is as follows:

“The Business Success Factory – Your 21st Century outsourced marketing department (for less than the cost of a part-time secretary). We will slash your marketing budgets by 50% while increasing profits by 20% or more. Within a year or your money back, no questions asked, guaranteed”

What do you think? Pretty compelling? Says what it does on the tin? Then the call to action is to either

Tuesday PM – Yes! It Was So Good It Deserves It’s Own Mention

You know how sometimes the stars stop turning and universes collide and everything changes in a heartbeat? Well, I had one of those experiences on Wednesday. I got home from a particularly unpleasant errand to find an email in my inbox from a Colin Turner.

The email said something along the lines of “Dear Nicola, a friend of mine has just sent me a screenshot of a review you did of one of my books in 2003. Thank you very much and would you like 200 copies to give away to your subscribers / members?”

I dashed off a reply as I had to go out again, saying “I’ve got a better idea, why don’t I set up a webinar, interview you about what you have been doing since I read your book and we can give away the copies of your book to the attendees? ”

To be honest, it hadn’t sunk in really who it was, as I was in a bit of a rush. But I wanted to acknowledge the email before I went out again.

“Great idea” came the swift response “let’s talk on Friday”. After a bit of to and fro about times, we settled on 3pm.

Later on that evening I got a chance to google Colin Turner, thinking I’d do a bit of research before our call, who only turns out to be a Professor Of Entrepreneurship, an 18 book best-selling author and someone who had started NINE, count them NINE companies, three of which were multi-million enterprises. He was also the President for a while of a Nasdaq listed company. All this from a man who was born in a caravan in Inverness, Scotland, not a million miles away from Montrose where I went to school for a while. He now lives in Monaco – yep, that Monaco.

All very exciting and I spent the rest of the week reflecting on the weird synchronicities of life, from a little book falling off the shelf in Books Etc in Oxford Street, twelve or so years ago, to my writing that review in 2003 through to us doing a webinar together on Friday 24^th June, where I’m going to grill Professor Turner about success, success thinking and everything else you need to know.

What was that little book? Watch this short video and find out – but I will tell you one thing.

There was just ONE drawing in it that changed the way I thought about money for EVER.

We’ll be giving away FREE copies of that little book too, to every one who attends the webinar so don’t delay, book your place today! As you can imagine, it’s filling up fast.

Webinar Wednesday

Talking of webinars, Wednesday is always webinar day and we had a corker this week – it was so good, I’ve got permission from the attendees to share it with you.

Click here to watch webinar >>>

And if you like the idea of having that much fun and support while working out what you need to do next in your business, why not join us for a 30-day trial of the Business Success Factory Mentoring Programme? This includes:

• ===> Feedback from me on your business model / business idea
• ===> 4 x live webinars just like this
• ===> 30 Days membership of our private Facebook group
• ===> Membership area with lots of “how to” videos on internet marketing through to membership sites
• Join for the trial now >>>

After you get past the bit about installing Google Analytics, it got very interesting indeed.

Again, the main issues centred around business strategy – one of my clients has a natural migraine relief site that is getting loads of traffic but not making any money yet – and there was a very funny twist in THAT tale.

I wonder if you can guess what it is?

Thursday – Masterminding In London

Thursday was a welcome break from all the thinking, with a trip to London to see my Mastermind Group. Eight huge egos in one room plus me *grin* and among the serious business there was a lot of laughs. Ben Hulme had to go early as his wife is about to have a baby any day now and she was called into hospital, but he’s not a Daddy yet….

What is it about a bunch of men when they get together they think anything to do with bottoms is funny. Age range 22 – forty something, and farting is still funny apparently. I just have to pretend to be one of the boys. Bit like my poker buddies – they are just the same!

TGIF – The Best Still To Come!

Friday was off to Worthing for a Worthing & Adur Chamber Website meeting, which was lively and very entrepreneurial with us all coming up with several new income streams for the Chamber which is great news. I’ve set up the Podcast and I’m just waiting for it to be approved by iTunes, while Tina Tilley looks for a Chamber Member with recording facilities who could create some jingles for us – they make any podcast sound much more professional.

Next year we will talk to Northbrook College about it becoming a project / competition for the students… Tina’s very involved with creating a Junior Chamber at the moment and I’m hoping to get involved with that.

I’m starting the Chamber Members interviews shortly and the weekly podcast will be a weekly update from Tina on Chamber and Business News around Sussex plus an interview with a member – a great way to promote your business across Sussex and the world!

I’ve got to say, the Worthing & Adur Chamber offers SUCH good value for the money, I’m amazed that more businesses are not banging their doors down, but hopefully, our online initiatives will take care of that.

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The MOST exciting thing I’ve got to tell you is I’ve learned to do an embedded “table of contents” in a Word document, which I can update every time I make any changes to the document.  You have no idea how happy this has made me!  Took all of 2 minutes research on Google and then a bit of concentration to implement but it’s going to make my life so much easier!  I’m only half joking about it being the most exciting thing, so read on to see what I’ve been up to…..

Touring The Pampers Factory

I went to Manchester a week or so ago, in my capacity as a Pampers iVillage Expert (I do Money & Work At Home) to meet the other experts, some celebrity mummy bloggers, have lunch and tour the factory, which was fascinating and great fun.  We enjoyed a couple of short presentations from Chris Horner (Plant Manager) and Fleur Turncock (Site Leader) and we got to pull some nappies apart to see how they were made and try out the gel stuff inside to see how much water those tiny nappies can hold nowadays – answer: a LOT which is reassuring to mums.

The thing that REALLY stood out was the passion and dedication of Chris, Fleur and the other Pampers (Proctor & Gamble) employees.  We saw a presentation about the history of the plant from 1870 up to date and met some of the guys and girls on the factory floor, who told us that they loved working there, and that some of their fathers and mothers had also worked there – they were really proud of that.  It was heartwarming to see.

The mummy bloggers were lovely and very fascinating to me particularly as they were enjoying monster amounts of traffic, but had no clue mostly about how to monetise that traffic.  I’m talking 30,000 unique visitors a month in one case!  I’ve had follow up calls with one of the other experts already, who specialises in helping mums with sleep problems and she’s sitting on a goldmine potentially.  My thanks to Rachel, Jovana, Lucinda and Chris from Fleishman Hillard PR who organised the day.

Smack Me Round The Back Of The Head Will You?

As I’ve mentioned before I’m still neck deep in Rich Schefren’s materials  – going through the two business programmes I signed up for in 2007 (BGS) and 2009 (GPS) which also includes the Founders Club materials, listening to Rich’s extensive Q&A webinars where you learn as much from other’s dilemmas as your own.  I’ve been thinking very deeply about The Business Success Factory and what I want it to look like.

Well, last weekend Rich released his new Founders Club report “Beyond Traffic” and it was just in time for me as I was starting to experiment with Facebook advertising.  I printed off the report and discovered that there is no point paying for traffic (the most reliable kind) if you are not converting and extracting the maximum value from your existing traffic.

I’m certainly convering the traffic to subscribers ok, at around 20-25% which is awesome.  But I realised (cue big smack between the eyes!) that I’m not actually selling anything from the site.  Duh!

Bit embarrassing really.

Yep, I’ve been so focused on delivering massive value via the webinar and free videos and building my mailing list, that I’ve forgotten to actually make an offer on my website – of any kind.

Well, there is a Website Marketing MOT offer buried on my Free Stuff page but that was pretty much it.

So I started thinking, what can I offer on my website that might help me get some value from my existing traffic, so that I can re-invest that value in more paid traffic.  And the thing that jumped out at me immediately was…………… my new book that I’ve been working on over the last year, on and off.

So I sprang into action, dug it all out, put the compenents together and it really took shape very fast.  I worked day and night for several days, only stopping to sleep, eat and watch the odd episode of Britain’s Got Talent and Criminal Minds and a week later….

The 3 Secrets Of Business Success Book / The Secrets Of Success Interviews

I’m now thrilled to announce that my new book is nearly ready to send to the publisher and it’s not one book but two!

Called “The 3 Secrets Of Business Success” I wanted to include the full transcripts of all the interviews I’ve been doing with successful people over the last few years from business, property, internet and stockmarket – what we used to call in the Money Gym “The Four Lanes Of The Wealth Highway”.

But that made the book too big – twice as big!  So I’ve made it two books.   The second one is called “The Success Secrets Interviews” and includes the full transcripts from interviews from Jenny Armato, Brett McFall, Alan Forrest Smith, Simon Zutchi, Andy Shaw, Martin Avis and more are being added all the time.  I dig deep in an attempt to find out what REALLY makes the difference between successful people – even those “in between fortunes” – and everyone else.

Then the “3 Secrets” book synthesises the nuggets of gold from those interviews, along with all the stuff I’ve learned from coaching hundreds of aspiring and successful business people over the years.

For the first 100 people to pre-order, they’ll get some very special bonuses, including the MP3’s of the recordings AND the chance to send in their story or a  review and get their business mentioned in the book too.  Plus a 30 day £1/$1.60 trial of my mentoring programme valued at £197 / $315.

Because it’s not going to the publisher until I’ve worked through it a couple more times, anyone who orders from my website right now will get all the updates for life, free of charge.

Find out more and take a look at the “table of contents” here >>>

Making Global Business Bartering Simple

While on the train to Manchester I was reading Jay Abraham’s “Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got” and came across the chapter on Business Bartering.  I’ve come across this concept before and have always loved the idea of bartering (getting involved in the Portobello Road LETS scheme while pregnant with Phoebe back in 1995).

But while trapped on that train I was struck by how powerful the idea was and how cool it would be to set up a website to facilitate that bartering process.  Not wanting to go off half-cocked without doing any research, as is my wont, I purchased an exhorbitantly expensive 3-hours T-Mobile hotspot package and started to do some searching online.  Not much around online except the quite promising looking Bartercard which is huge in Australia but only just launching over here.

Thank god! I thought, there’s one business I don’t have to start myself LOL.  But I was a bit mystified as the Bartercard website, while having a lot of content,  didn’t really say if you had to pay or not, to get a card, but seemed to imply it was free.  Loads of testimonials from happy businesses, but some talked about an investment.  Could I find any more info anywhere?  No.  I couldn’t puzzle out the business model (how Bartercard made their money) so I did a search on Google and found some press about the company, which is quoted on the stockmarket in Oz apparently.  So there is money changing hands somewhere and they are selling franchises / licenses per area in the UK now.

The only option seemed to be to put my phone number in, which I’m always VERY reluctant to do as I HATE unscheduled phone calls.

Sure enough, after I got back, just as I was heading out of the door for an appointment, the bloke from Bartercard locally rang me.  I complained that I hadn’t been able to find out any real info on the website, and although he protested it was there, he was unable to tell me where to look.  He started to spark up his laptop to try and find it himself, but that crashed and by that point I’d run out of patience.  I gave him some very direct feedback about how they could improve things.

So in the end, realising that there would be a significant investment when he did eventually get around to sending me the info, I decided to start a nice little ezine where subscribers could list the things they could offer for barter – goods or services – and also list their needs, for a minimum subscription of £1 or $1.

A URL, some hosting and a wordpress website later, the Business Barter Club was born and you can get involved and get some more info immediately – no annoying phone calls – here >>>

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Creating and configuring the new blog was easy, as was moving most of the content over from Typepad where the previous blog had resided.  That job’s not finished quite yet, but the new blog was looking good enough to go live just before the AGM on Wednesday, held in the beautifully restored ballroom and bar above the Dome Cinema on the seafront there.  I’d send you to the website to have a look but I can’t work out which is the official one and none of them have any photos that do it justice, pretty poor show really, I wonder how they get ANY events business!

This gave me an opportunity to test out my new Kodak Z8 High-Definition flipcam which I used with a stereo lapel microphone and no tripod.  Why no tripod?  Because the guest speaker was none other than my old friend and business partner Gill Fielding, yes! Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire herself and I knew that, when Gill speaks, she likes to move around a lot.

I decided to film the welcome by Peter Bennett of Bennett Griffin Solicitors, the Chamber President, and the roundup of the year, by Tina Tilley, as well, and while I was a bit worried about shaky hand syndrome, I leaned my arm on a chair back and the videos came out really very well.

You can see Gill Fielding’s talk about how the economic climate is affecting small and medium sized businesses here at the new Worthing & Adur Chamber blog.

The Chamber are getting my very top level service, which I’m going to be offering to local businesses in the near future, and which I’m very excited about.  So much so, that I woke up at 7.30 this morning even though I stayed up till 2am last night catching up on back episodes of Criminal Minds (love that show!)

Yesterday, I had to write out a 2-3 page business plan for someone who I’m hoping to be working with on a freelance sales basis, because they needed to understand the business overview, products and services before they could tell me if they were interested, and it was easy-peasy because I’ve been planning it all out in my head for several months now….

With the old adage of “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” running through my head, it actually only took me an hour or two to get it all out of my head and onto paper but it made me realise how few times I’ve done that in the past when starting a business.  And believe me, I’ve started a few.

Perhaps I’ve failed fast enough times now, eh?  Enough times to know what has a chance of working and what will not.

Specifically, this time I wrote out in detail what the active sales process would be, which I’ve NEVER done before, as I’ve always worked on a purely “attraction marketing” or “pull marketing” basis before.

But I realise that local businesses will be expecting something a bit more hands on, more networking, telephone and meeting based than just pure email marketing and I had to design a system for that.  What are we going to say first, giveaway first, offer first, how are we going to follow up, what are we going to offer next and all that jazz.

Now I have no idea if my new sales system will work or not, but it seems logical to me and we have to start somewhere.  If we contact 500 businesses, how many will take us up on our free offer, how many will move to step 2, how many move to step 3, etc.

Because if we don’t have a system we won’t have any way of measuring if any of it’s working!

Now here’s my biggest challenge….

It’s that I’m great at creating systems but absolutely rubbish at following them systematically.

Hence my looking for someone to work with on the sales front, who is much more systematic than me.  Because a good sales process needs good follow up and that’s not me.

This is why internet marketing works so well for me, because you do the work once and set it all up, then it happens automatically thereafter.

For example, the “3 Secrets Of Business Success” videos that I created, along with the “3 Secrets / Social Media Blueprint” webinar, people are signing up to watch/listen to those every day and they are being followed up by auto-responder every day or so with the next offer, be that another free gift or a product or service.

What else have I been up to?  Well, I’ve caved in and installed ListCrew on my personal website after watching Steve Watson put it on his and gain 5-10 new subscribers a day.  It really suits internet marketing orientated sites which NicolaCairncross.com is really, and it’s not pretty that’s for sure, looking very old skool and clunky but hey, if it works…..

Essentially, you gain credits every time the box shows on your site, and that get’s your ezine listing shown on the box on someone else’s site.  Since I installed it this morning I’ve gained 4 new subscribers.

I’ve known about Listcrew for years as Martin Avis is a big fan, and I was shocked to work out that every year I’ve not had it on my site, I’ve missed out on 2737 new subscribers to my list, assuming an average signup rate of 7.5 people per day.

I’ve had a bit of a tussle with my online Strategy Session process this last couple of weeks – for some reason nobody is filling in my form.  I sent out an email that got about 500 clicks to the info page and then about 120 clicks on the “Book Your Strategy Session” button but then not one single solitary form filled in.

You’d think it wasn’t working or something, but no, I tested it and it worked fine.

Initially I had quite a daunting looking form (apparently!) asking such tricky questions as “what is your annual turnover” and “what is the value of your average initial sale” and “what is a customer worth to you over a year” – questions which you would think any business owner would know the answers to.

But my mastermind group said it was too scary and daunting looking so I changed it, and just had the button on the info page jump to an opt-in page where people put their name and email in, to be then jumped to a much less scary looking survey type form, with just one or two questions on each  page of the survey.

Well they still came to the info page, and then clicked the button to request a strategy session but then didn’t put their name and email in the box.

I’m absolutely stumped so if you were one of those people, I would welcome your feedback as to what went wrong for you!  You were obviously interested in the service I was promoting but something stopped you filling in the form to talk to me.

I don’t bite and I’m not going to sell you something you don’t’ want or need, that’s not how I work, really!

If you want to see what I’m talking about, here’s the link to the page that starts the whole process off >>>

I was mystified and cross to see a text message sent to me by one of my clients late last night.  How did Facebook send 1131 invites out last night via my mobile phone to presumably my Gmail contacts?  I wouldn’t mind but a) it makes me look like a spammer and b) they couldn’t even spell it right – this is what it said “Don’t no how but have sent out 1131 invites on Facebook, Nicola”. For god’s sake….

If I hadn’t been up watching Criminal Minds way too late I would never have known…

What’s coming up this week?

I’m being flown up to the Proctor & Gamble Pampers Nappy factory outside Manchester on Thursday along with some of the other experts on the Pampers iVillage Experts Panel, this time to talk to some celebrity Mummy Bloggers, which should be fun – my area of expertise for sure.

And……. it’s the end of season Poker Tournament at The George in Henfield tomorrow, so I’m trying to get all my jobs done so I can just go and have fun!

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Last week I had a day trip to London to meet with my Mastermind group and the one thing I wanted to get out of the day was a firm grasp of my USP (unique selling proposition) and my 30-second hook, because my experience at the networking meeting last week proved that I hadn’t nailed it yet.

Getting a bunch of successful opinionated internet marketers in a room, sprinkled with a successful  “Baby Billionaire” stockmarket investor and ex- property multi-millionaire turned best-selling author and it’s a recipe for a lot of noise!

Funnily enough while I really enjoy working on everyone else’s business I don’t really enjoy my bit – I find it quite stressful to have lots of ideas thrown at me, perhaps because I’m such a visual person that talking is not my preferred method of taking in info.   I have to get up and write on the flipchart while we are doing it.

But we did come up with a great hook…. “I can slash your marketing budget by 40% while increasing your profits by 15% or more, so if you are turning over half a million or more and wondering why your marketing’s not working… talk to me now!” which would qualify my ideal client prospects and probably get most business owners’ attention.

I sent out an email with all the details of my “Done For You” service which I’m ready to launch, now I’ve got the Worthing & Adur Chamber Of Commerce as my first client, and the call to action was to click the link to fill in the form, to request a “no-obligation” Strategy Session but out of 36 clicks, not one person filled the form in.

Most mysterious!

I then sent out an email asking for feedback about the form, and a couple of my Mastermind group members pointed out that I was asking some questions on there that may have been putting people off, because they may not have known the answers!

So I’ve simplified the form now, and hopefully that will have an effect.

I also got some feedback from a potential client ( who I know I can help immediately) which was useful and which showed me that I’m still not explaining things very well.

I also took the opportunity this weekend to add Google Optimiser Code to each page, so I could start split testing headlines and other elements.  You would be amazed how just changing a few words can make a massive difference in conversions.

I’ve relocated to Shoreham temporarily while my ex goes on holiday to the Caribbean (Xmas present from his girlfriend, the lucky thing!) and that means I get to see more of my family, friends and poker buddies – I’m off to play with the boys again tonight at my old haunt The Crown & Anchor.

Must go and get ready but have a nice Royal Wedding Week!

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