Archives

I’ve been thinking a lot about passive income this week, the REAL kind of passive income not the pretend kind where you launch an ebook and hope that you never have to do anything in the way of marketing it but are counting on the sales to fund your retirement. That kind of passive income doesn’t exist.

And anyway, even if it did I probably wouldn’t want it.

I love my brand of hustle. The brand of hustle that I do every day on my terms and not on anyone elses. I choose to spend a lot of my time online marketing my products. I’m very active on twitter and in Facebook groups and I’m always looking for ways that I can generate leads, make some sales and help YOU to make the most out of your time online.

I choose to hustle. I choose not to work for someone else but I choose to work damned hard for myself. I choose to spend my days pushing my message. I choose to spend my days working, walking, napping and doing what I want to do when I want to do it. I choose NOT to report to someone else who needs me at a desk from Monday - Friday 9-6. That’s not how this works for me.

I’m taking a few weeks off in the summer when I have the kids with me. Not TOTALLY off but I can guarantee you I won’t be in front of my laptop from 9-3 like I am most days now. I’ll be making up the work time in the evening and getting up earlier to fit it in but I don’t plan to spend the holidays with them in childcare and me working.

This is why I built my business this way, so that I can spend all the time in the world that I need to with my children. I am in love with my business, I really am. Passive income for me would be a bit of a turn off, it would mean that I couldn’t do what I love every day. I think the business model I’ve built is perfect for me. It allows me freedom and income at the same time. Maybe its a freedom income model rather than a passive income model.

I might have just invented something there.

Freedom income is what I crave. The freedom to create products that really help you, and that help me at the same time. My boxes are ticked by helping people. By being of service. By stepping up and delivering what you need and what you want while at the same time being true to myself and enjoying every second of my life.

I used to think I craved independence - but that’s not right. What I love is freedom. The freedom to choose how I spend my days and to do what is right for me and my family.

I support me. I support my children. In many ways I support my partner. I am a lot of things to a lot of people, and yet I have time to be me. And this is because of the freedom income model I’ve built for myself.

Its perfect. For me. Maybe it would be perfect for you too?

Anyway, passive income (in the true online entrepreneur style) for me is a myth and a turn off. The only kind of passive income I want is when I have a million pounds in spare cash and can invest it in a series of stocks and shares that will generate me a monthly income. Now that kind of passive income is RIGHT up my street.

 

 

The biggest social media study to date, courtesy of Buffer. The best times to tweet!

 

UK Business owners aren’t taking social media seriously enough. Want to up your social media game? Schedule a chat with me!

 

With more and more businesses leaving their Facebook Pages in favour of starting a group, here’s a great post on how to build and manage a private Facebook community.

 

Cassie Howard’s great Huffington Post article: “10 Things I Learned in My First 10 Years As An Entrepreneur” “Failure is a part of life, and even more so for the everyday entrepreneur. The thing about entrepreneurs is that their brain is always on. They’re always thinking of the “next big thing” and how they could turn that “thing” into a real, thriving business.”

 

Really really REALLY hate pop ups? Here are 7 other places to put your newsletter optin.

 

7 strategies to nurture a new twitter account. We all have to start somewhere!

 

How to increase your Facebook reach WITHOUT spending money on ADs.

 

We all know that interviews and guest posts are an amazing list building tool. Here’s a video from money mindset mentor Denise Duffield-Thomas on how she gets interviewed 200(!) times a year. Yikes!

 

That’s all folks! I hope you found some of these links useful and insightful! Please let us know if you’d like to see a link roundup of a particular topic or social media platform!

 

psst! - If you haven’t already, check out my new opt in offer which will tell you exactly how to make real money from your social media.

 

For those of you who are seeking the magic formula about how to get rich quick online, how to make loads of money through “passive” income and how to sit back on your desert island and watch the money flow to you - I have this to say:

There is no magic formula. Sorry about that.

I’m being driven mental at the moment by all the places that I see “Learn how I made $10K with just one Facebook post” “Go from 0-$100K within 30 days using my formula” “Passive income - earn 6 figures a month with NO effort”

ARGH! Come on people, you KNOW that’s not the right way to make money online. Its like all these weight loss adverts that promise you that you’ll lose pounds in a day if you just use their magic pills or potions. We ALL know that the way to lose weight is to make sensible food choices, eat smaller portions and exercise (in a nutshell, I’m no health coach!) but yet people still fall for these LOSE WEIGHT QUICK schemes as often as they fall for the MAKE MONEY FAST schemes.

The way to make money online is this:

- Create a product or service
- Build somewhere or somehow to sell it (website etc)
- Drive traffic to that product
- Be amazing, build some happy customers
- Sell

Passive income is never passive. It takes marketing, time and effort to build an audience and sell it. Yes for some people this means 50 hours a week in Facebook groups, on forums, running free calls and for others it means 5 hours a week doing the same. Some people spend a lot of money on Facebook ads, others spend nothing. But I don’t think there is anyone out there who genuinely built a product and now spends less than an hour a week actively marketing that product and spends the rest of the time sitting back raking in the money. (If I’m wrong and this is you PLEASE get in touch!)

Making money online doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be all consuming. But you do need to work at it. There is no magic formula. If it was as easy as writing one Facebook post and sitting back and waiting for the $10K to fall into your lap then everyone would be doing it. There are a few things that you need to do consistently before you will be able to make serious money with an online business

1 - show up. Every day. Do the work, whatever that might be.
2 - show up. Every day. Do the work, whatever that might be.
3 - show up….

You get the idea? You’ve got to be in it for the long haul.

And you get back what you put in. If you want to work 80 hours a week on your business and invest money in a business coach and getting your social media and marketing right from the beginning then you’ll make the mythical 6 figures long before someone who wants to work 5 hours a week and has nothing to invest in their success.

You get back what you put in.

That doesn’t mean that everyone has to work 80 hours a week on their business and invest tens of thousands of whatever currency you work in before you’ll be successful, I don’t. But it all comes back to your definition of success.

What would you consider to be a successful business?

My business is successful - it doesn’t make 6 figures a year. Yet. I have no doubt that it will do very very soon but I still think its a brilliant success. It allows me to feed my children, to keep a roof over our heads. To eat out when we want to and to go on holiday. It allows me to walk them to school in the morning, pick them up at 3 and be mum until they go to school the next day. It allows me to pay for piano, singing, trumpet, horse riding and gymnastic lessons without having to worry.

That’s pretty successful I think.

And I have built this 100% online. I don’t pay for adverts in local magazines, I don’t even really go to local networking events any more. I pay for Facebook ads and the rest of my business comes from organic social media interactions and referrals.

I don’t promise to show you how to make thousands instantly from one post on Facebook but I will promise that if you are serious about growing your business and prepared to put in the time and effort to do the work and generate the leads on line then I can show you how to build a sustainable, organic business that fits YOUR needs and helps you get what you want out of life.

But first you’ve got to get off Facebook and stop buying into everyone else’s idea of how your life should look.

There is a lot of talk online at the moment about list building, about having as many people on your list as possible. “Don’t launch a product with less than 1000 on your list” is one piece of advice that I see floating around. There are tonnes of business owners who are frantically trying to build their lists, to reach that golden number of 1000 people on their list. They are taking our Facebook ads, creating landing pages and working their butts off to build their list.

Because they’ve been told this is what they have to do.

Rubbish. I had less than 50 people on my list when I first launched. My first digital product added 84 people to my list which means that out of the 100 places that I sold only 16 of them came from my list. The rest came from a piece of lead generation work.

I had less than 50 people on my list when I first launched.

If you are busy striving for a list of 1000 people and you are not looking after those you have then the chances are you’ll eventually get to your goal of 1000 and you’ll have a lovely mailing list that you’ve totally neglected for as long as its taken to build it. Because there’s no point doing anything with a little list, right?

Wrong.

This reminds me of Twitter followers. You know those business owners who start a social media campaign and are so desperate to reach 1000 followers on twitter that they are grateful for every spambot that follows them. If you want 1000 followers that badly then go and spend $20 and buy them. Easy. Done. None of them will ever engage with you, buy from you, tweet to you or share your message but you have 1000 followers so therefore you are successful, yes?

No.

I really don’t understand this mindset of needing to be seen to have the right numbers, to be successful. Online marketing should be about lead generation. The only metric you should measure is how many leads did social media bring me this month and did I convert them to customers.

Not even how many new people joined my mailing list, although if you have a good process for converting mailing list signups to customers then this is OK too.

Build relationships. Engage with people. Generate leads not numbers. Understand your process for converting new people into customers.

I would personally rather add 10 people a week to my mailing list and nurture them with value and content and build a relationship with them and sell to them than add 100 who wanted my “free download” and who are unlikely ever to click my emails that I send to them.

Stop worrying about numbers. Stop trying to build your mailing list. Stop trying to get as many social media followers as you can.

Build relationships. Engage with people. Generate leads not numbers. Understand your process for converting new people into customers.

Stop trying so hard to get people to come to you Concentrate on the customers that you have. On the groups that you are in. Get a solid lead generation plan in place and you won’t need 1000 people on your mailing list.

Get out there, add value. Give. Serve. Transform people’s lives with what you offer and the rest will all fall into place.

Office Posture Matters: An Animated Guide from Flikli on Vimeo.

How to use Facebook Insights: What you really need to know as a marketer.

Out of the Box Ideas to Get More Traffic to Your Website

37 Tips for Writing Emails that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked

5 Tips for Launching a Product On Your Blog Without Annoying Your Readers

Important question to ask! Is Instagram right for YOUR brand? This checklist will tel you is you should even have an account at all!

The ‘secrets’ behind growing a huge audience online is actually really super simple.

Posts from me you might have missed:7 Reasons Why Social Media is Good For Your Business, The Top 10 Mistakes I Made Which Caused My 7 Figure Business To Fail and How To Make The Most Out of Your LinkedIn Profile

How long have you been running your business? And how has it changed in that time? Do you spend your days focussed, taking action that you know is going to increase your business and seeing amazing results? Or do you spend your days on Facebook, watching what everyone else is doing and buying course after course after course because they are ONLY $99 and you know they are exactly what you need to grow your business.

But do they grow your business? Are you increasing your profit every month? Do you have new leads every day and followups to make?

No. I didn’t think so. So where are you going wrong?

I can tell you because up until a couple of months ago I was doing exactly this. I would get my client work done and dusted first thing in the morning then spend much of the rest of the day on Facebook and Twitter checking in on the rest of the world. I told myself it was my business to be on social media all day, it wasn’t procratinating. It was growing my business.

I bought course after course. I joined groups, I posted, I shared, I gave value. But I didn’t get big enough results for my liking. I was frustrated by everyone’s seeming “0 to 6 figure success” in less time than I had been running my business for. I didn’t realise what I was doing wrong. Then one day I realised this had to stop. I realised I was taking the advice of HUNDREDS of different people and not focusing on what I was doing. I was doing OK - making money that I was happy with but deep down I knew I wanted more.

The point where I stopped creating content that I thought I should and began creating the content that I wanted to was a turning point for me. Coming up with my own strategy and plan so that my Facebook and twitter time was limited each day made a huge difference.

Choosing one coach and investing in a mastermind that gives me clarity and focus was a big step. I think this is really important - stop booking all the free sessions under the sun, find the person that you connect with and invest in your success.

I want to help my customers make money online. But I’ve realised that I don’t want to help those People who aren’t ready to help themselves. The people who spend $5 on one of my promotional offers and then ask for a refund because it didn’t change their life.

It’s not going to change your life. You are not going to be able to spend $5 on a product that will give you the life and business you want. Sorry to burst that bubble but its a fact. You can find useful information for $5 and you can work out who you want to work with, who speaks your language, who is the RIGHT person for you to connect with for this but you won’t find the answers to a long and happy life and business.

These answers come when you are clear about what you want to achieve. When you focus. When you invest seriously in yourself and take action. When you give up on al the excuses in the world and just do what you know you need to do, every day until it works for you.

I’ve realised that in order to step up to the next level in my business I need to do sales calls. If I want to carry on selling products for $20 - $99 then sure I can carry on as I am but if I want to be able to help serious people make serious money then I need to get on the phone with them. I need to get in front of as many people as I can which is why I am now holding more webinars and booking more free calls.

Investing in myself at a scary level has made a huge difference for me. I’m now more afraid of failing than I am of succeeding and that’s the game changer. If I don’t take action, if I don’t make changes, if I don’t make this work then I’ve wasted that investment. If I do? Then the money I’ve invested in me will come back to me 10 fold. I know that. I believe that.

I’m launching a new product this week that originally I was going to sell at a lowish price and try and get 100 people to buy. I’ve changed the scope of it to be a higher investment because I know that those people who will invest this money will be serious about change. They will be serious about making a difference in their business and creating the life that they want. I don’t need to help 100 people who want to do well in their business. I need to help 10 people who want to do AMAZING. Who want to transform their business.

That’s what I want to do. I’ve invested heavily in me to get to this point, are you ready to invest in you?

So many of my clients are uncomfortable with the idea of putting themselves out there and promoting themselves on social media. Every day I see Facebook pages that are beautifully branded and contain tonnes of useful information for the businesses ideal client, but no links back to a website. No attempts at offering free optins and collecting email addresses for your mailing list. No links to webinars, blog posts or anything that might be considered marketing your business.

While I definitely don’t advocate going down the route of “sell, sell, sell” or “broadcast, broadcast, broadcast” on social media - there has to be a balance between promoting your business and positioning yourself as an expert.

While I definitely don’t advocate going down the route of “sell, sell, sell” or “broadcast, broadcast, broadcast” on social media - there has to be a balance between promoting your business and positioning yourself as an expert.

It is human nature to want people to like us. Although its a bit of an over exaggeration we generally don’t want to do anything that is going to make people think badly of us. As entrepreneurs we want to help people and sometimes can get stuck in the mindset that helping people means that we need to give stuff away for free all the time.

Giving your best work away for free is a brilliant way to build your business, people will get to Know, Like and Trust you quickly and they will be more likely to buy from you. But they will only be more likely to buy from you if you give them the opportunity.

Building a network of people who gravitate toward you for information is awesome for your self esteem but not really very helpful for your bank balance, unless you can begin to sell your products and services to that network and really help them.

I find that the best way of feeling good about selling your services is to look at it from a different angle. Instead of the “I am asking people to give me their money” feeling which makes the whole selling stuff experience a bit icky, think about what you are enabling people to do. What value you are giving to them. What you are teaching them, how you are improving their life. You are not just selling to them in order to get their money, you are doing it to show them that things can be different and that you can help to solve their biggest problem and make their life better.

That’s powerful stuff. When you can shift in your mind the concept of why you are offering your services and products for sale you will begin to feel much happier about selling to people in whatever way feels natural for you. Don’t go at your online marketing from an “I need to make money” angle, go at it from a “how can I really make a difference in the lives of all the people in my network” and know that you can do that in more than one way. Giving free advice is great but you’ll find that when people pay for something they are far more likely to take it seriously and know that it is important to them. The value of a paid for service can be far greater than that of a freebie.

So get out there and begin to tell your people what you can do for them. Do it in whatever way feels best for you - the most important thing is that you DO IT and don’t just hide behind your freebies.

Business advice from 10 six-figure entrepreneurs

Great news for you if you’re a brand with a physical product on Pinterest, as they add ‘buyable pins’

Closing The Gap: Why There Should Be More Female Entrepreneurs In The UK

Ultimate guide to Instagram Advertising

4 Ways to Get Reviews & Testimonials for Your Small Business

How to create YouTube videos people will actually, y’know, watch.

How to hire a best fit social media manager

As more and more people are using LinkedIn to connect with their potential customers and build their reputation as an expert in their industry, the need to sometimes send a message to all of your contacts on there at once increases.

It is worth noting that constantly sending sales messages to your LinkedIn community will be seen as spammy and will not win you any friends or clients. I advise my customers that once a month is the most you want to be sending bulk messages out, but if you have an exceptional offer or a message that you really need to get to all of your contacts then here are a few pointers for you.

Firstly, LinkedIn only allows you to send to 50 connections at once. This is because, as I mentioned, LinkedIn doesn’t really approve of sending bulk messages to everyone. So they make it harder for you to do so. But its not impossible, it just takes a little time.

Do not be tempted to export all of your contacts and add them to your mailing list. This is really bad form and will not be tolerated. Equally, don’t export your contacts and just email them through your email client. Keep your communication through LinkedIn, unless you begin a conversation with someone and then I think its OK to email, phone or even arrange to meet up with them.

Click on connections

And then look for this section here that says sort by.

Choose Last Name and you’ll see that it brings up a box that shows you all the letters of the alphabet.

This is the process I use for my own Linkedin and when I manage projects for clients. Take a piece of paper and write the letters A - Z. Choose to sort all of your contacts by the letter A to start with. You’ll see a list of the contacts like this.

As you scroll down a field will pop up at the top telling you how many connections you have with that last name. If it is over 50 then write it next to your letter on your list.

Click on the select all button that you see and scroll down to the bottom of the list of your contacts. Then at the top choose the Message button.

You may receive a message here that says some of your contacts will not be included, this is fine - just click Okay.

Now you’ll see your message start to take shape.

You can remove people if you do not want your email to be sent to them by clicking on the cross next to their name.

Enter your subject and your message and the most important step here is to then UNCHECK the Allow recipients to see each others names and email addresses button at the bottom.

Once your email has been sent, go back to your alphabet list and tick off the letter that you have sent to.

If you have more than 50 people with a last name beginning with that letter then I suggest coming back to them at the end when you have completed the alphabet.

Your list should look something like this :

When you have ticked each one off go back to the first one on your list that was over 50, in my example above that would be the letter C.

Sort your contacts by C and then scroll all the very way to the bottom. You will have messaged the first 50 of these connections already and you now need to select the rest of them from the bottom of the list working your way up. So for me here I need to select the bottom 24 (74-50 = 24) and then send the message to them.

So there you go, how to send a message to all of your Linkedin contacts. Its not difficult but it is time consuming and you need to be careful not to duplicate emails to anyone!