Here’s something I recommend to my VIP clients to increase their profits month on month:

Spend your time on what makes you money

You’ve probably heard me say this before many times but there’s only one thing that counts in business, and especially when you’re in the process of replacing your salary…

…and that’s the sale.

If you find yourself getting distracted by technology you don’t really need, building pretty sites, tinkering with new software, learning unnecessary skills or anything that takes your eye off the ball then you’ve lost focus

It’s all about the bottom line.

Your customers don’t need to know that of course, and your job is to help them and offer good content, but don’t ever lose sight of the fact that you’re a marketer primarily because it pays well and gives you a lifestyle that most can only dream of

If you’re surprised to hear me say that, then that’s good – the best marketers are those who don’t make it obvious they’re selling to you 🙂

That doesn’t mean you can’t help people of course – that’s a big part of why I do what I do.

In fact the more you help people, the more success you’ll have…

…but remember, ALWAYS keep your eye on the bottom line!

If you want to see exactly how I turned my business completely around in just 30 days (and how you can do it too) CLICK HERE

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I had a beer with a neighbour yesterday…

My kids were over there to visit his son on his birthday and we chatted while having a beer on the decking overlooking his garden.

One of the presents his son had got for his birthday was a cracking remote control all terrain vehicle. It was zapping round the garden, over ramps, through the bushes – the lot. AND that was only on ‘training’ mode

Apparently it gets up to 35kph when it’s on ‘pro’ mode.

My kids had a go on it too and I could only drag them to go home when the battery finally needed charging, which took a while.

Last time I was round there he’d just got a quadcopter thingy which was also extremely cool, and obviously a very good model.

I have no idea about ‘boys toys’ like these but I know one thing, If I ever decide to buy something like this either for myself or my kids…

…my neighbour will the person I talk to first.

When I got home I was idly thinking about how he could monetise his gadgets and while it’s a competitive market, I know it’s certainly doable because a mate of mine does the same with weight training equipment.

It’s competitive but the secret seems to be to focus on ONE exact make and model per blog…

Here’s roughly how he does it:

Video of the gadget in various modes of operation.

SEO the exact make and model of the item on either a blog or a Youtube account. Usually a YouTube video linked to a mini-blog

Written explanation.

Link via your Amazon affiliate account to the related product

Relatively basic SEO on your site (we’re not talking PBN linking or anything like that)

I’ll have a word with him next time I see him – he’s a bright bloke and what man would NOT want to make money from playing with fast toys eh? 🙂

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Never piss off your chef, dentist or hairdresser…

…it’s just ASKING for trouble.

A mate of mine was always embarrassing in restaurants.

We don’t eat out with them any more.

I’ve seen him insist on ‘viewing the kitchen’

I’ve seen him be rude to waiting staff – obnoxious actually.

And all I can think is – as you sit here feeling smug and superior the chef is currently wiping your fillet steak around his ballsack.

It’s really not worth it to try to show off.

 

Dentists?

I rest my case.

 

Hairdressers.

Same

 

There are some people you think have power, but they don’t.

If you upset a politician or member of the royal family here in the UK there’s actually not much they can do without looking like bullies and getting bad press.

But if you upset your hairdresser…well be prepared to spend 3 months wearing a hat

Beware of people with REAL power – they’re not who you might think…

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The world has changed…

…since whatever internet marketing technique you are using was invented/became popular/was widely accepted…

…and today.

You’re using OLD marketing strategies.

Because by the time they’ve been refined, tested, put into practise and then TAUGHT by whatever guru you learned them from…

…they’re out of date.

Doesn’t mean they don’t work though.

It just means that someone out there is at this VERY MOMENT, inventing / adapting the next big marketing technique.

They’re not using old strategies, they’re inventing and testing their own.

Couldn’t we be doing that?

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If you read this blog you may know I’m not a petrol head.

We have one posh car for travelling around the country, Europe etc and a ‘work-horse’ one which is usually a 4WD to chuck stuff in the back of and potter round the village.

On Monday the workhorse dropped dead. Phoned a bloke with a flatbed trailer who paid me £100 and took it away so the same afternoon I went out and bought an old but good condition 4WD. I don’t buy new cars in this role because I know how I treat ’em 🙂

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I needed some car insurance the other day for an old 4×4 car I just bought

If you thought Vistaprint were masters of the upsell think again

They have NOTHING on insurance companies.

Years back they simply used to tell you whether things like legal cover, courtesy car, windscreen replacement, lost keys and a hundred other things were included in the cover.

Not any more

The policy I bought seemed really cheap. 

LOL

That’s because each of these upsells was presented to me individually in a process than lasted 15 minutes.

Each one was accompanied by a cartoon of what horrors could happen if I didn’t buy.

Some bloke staring down a drain having dropped his keys into the sewer. Another hapless chap standing in front of a judge handing over sackfuls of money because he didn’t buy legal insurance.

Luckily the cover I need is for an old ‘workhorse’ car that I’ve bought for chucking garden waste in the back and pottering round the village so I don’t want any extras.

But it was fascinating to watch 🙂

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Had an hour or so in our local pub with my wife yesterday afternoon while the kids were at grandparents.

Sitting in the pub grounds enjoying the sunshine……before returning home to the danger and pain that is our kitchen door.

Every time I have more than three pints of Guinness or even when totally sober but not paying attention, I can end the day grumpy, with a sore head and once even unconscious

I’ll let the pictures explain

Here’s a pic of our kitchen doorway…

 

 

…and here’s our kitchen doorway with me standing in it

 

Now I’m quite a tall bloke at 6’4″ but its still a very small doorway because the house is quite old.

And after 8 years living here I still forget to duck

Ow f**k can be heard from time to time in our kitchen

My reason for posting?

The big duck egg now forming on the front of my head after coming in from the pub yesterday and going into the kitchen to make a cup of tea…

 

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The dark side is Lancashire…

We left our sunny Yorkshire village at 10am to meet up with friends and do some walking along the beach around St Anne’s in Lancashire.

Creepy wasn’t the word.

A fog rolled in the likes of which Landis or Carpenter would have had an orgasm if they’d seen it.

I was telling my kids a (totally fabricated) ghost story about the beach while the mist swirled around us only to realise they weren’t remotely interested but I was looking around anxiously for dead pirates with billhooks and rotting eyeballs coming for me.

The muted, eerie sound of bells choked across the sand and I was horrified to see the ghostly figures of several animals through the mist.

Turned out to be the donkey rides.

So five quid poorer I watched the odd sight of my children being led away into the fog, seated on slow moving, clanging donkeys by an old lady.

She did bring em back though

I tried to take a photo of the sea with an old pier thing in the foreground but the image in this post is how it came out. I haven’t altered it in any way so the sepia tones are what we saw yesterday.

We had a great walk though although my old comfy walking boots sadly dropped to bits at the end, so now I have to break in a new pair after about six years.

Just waffling on…

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I always remember some wise person saying something about how our generation had been sold a dream by Hollywood but it’s incomplete…

He said (to paraphrase) when we’re driving ours car we feel like Vin Deisel. When we’re out with a girl we feel like Ryan Gosling and when we’re having a beer we feel like Mickey Rourke.

But who are we when we’re scraping dog crap off our kids wellies?

Or juggling credit card payments so we can pay the rent?

And that’s the problems with dreams. They’re wonderful, necessary, life-changing things…

…but in order to recognise the dream you need to balance them against reality.

When I sell my training products or work with people to teach them how to set up an e-business I try NOT to sell the dream. I try to sell the reality but also teach them to start dreaming from day one, because they have to know what they WANT before they can aim for it

I knew EXACTLY what I was working towards when I started building my own e-business. My first child was on the way and I wanted to be around when she (and the next one) grew up. I also wanted to earn enough money from my online business so my wife could give up teaching and stay at home too.

I wanted a bigger house than the lovely but tiny two-bedroom cottage we lived in, and I wanted to work doing something I loved but only work a few hours a week so I could have enough time to do other things that I wanted to do – simple things like travel, gardening, reading, ‘trying out’ other businesses and helping others to build their businesses.

It worked and I’ve now achieved every single one of the things above

Not because of dreaming…

…but because of comparing the dream to my reality.

By doing this I could see what I needed to change, and imagine – almost TASTE the lifestyle I wanted – but at the same time recognise the work that I would have to put in to achieve my dream

I think we all need dreams – I think they’re essential to our lives. But don’t hate your reality, even though yours might be in a grim position at the moment.

Instead use it as fuel, as motivation to build your dream.

That’s the secret to success and to keeping your motivation going. When you’re walking a long distance, it’s impossible to see how far you’ve progressed until you turn round and look at where you’ve come FROM.

Then you’ll really see how far you’ve travelled.

Wow, how deep is that eh?

Must be the Easter egg I’m munching for breakfast 🙂

Dunno how many times I dreamed of having Easter eggs for brekky when I was an 8 year old boy but my parents (quite rightly) wouldn’t let me.

Don’t think I’ll be doing it again though…feel a bit pukey…

But you have to know the reality to realise if a dream is for you, right? 🙂

If you want to know the techniques I used to turn my own business around CLICK HERE

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