Business Success | The Right Book At The Right Time? | Part 1

Written by - 4 Comments

rainbow_over_stoupa_main_beachI’m working on figuring out my next business success and it’s a bit like wading through treacle.  But hey….. is there a bit of clarity coming?  Even writing about it all in last week’s ezine helped so I’m going to continue writing about this journey on the blog here.

Any regular reader of this blog will know I’ve been having a bit of a business wobble over the last few months.  I haven’t set any goals – and I’m no stranger to goal setting having set “21 Goals In 90 Days” a la Chris Barrow for several years now.

A bit of background

Suddenly, earlier this year, for several reasons, some of which I’m unable to share here, we found ourselves unable, at The Money Gym, to  continue to blog or send out our ezine about wealth creation, and since then, I’ve been wondering what to do with my creative energies around blogging particularly.

After years of painfully boring jobs, interspersed with many business start-ups and as many failures, work that I love is now a huge and rewarding part of my life and, for lots of reasons, not least that I only got going on the wealth creation journey a few years ago, I’m not in a position just yet when I can just stop, even if I wanted to.  Which I don’t.

Having poured my heart into The Money Gym website to the exclusion of everything else, pretty much, since 2006, I now felt completely bereft.  I regarded The Money Gym website and particularly the blog, as my life’s work and now….what on earth could I replace it with?  For the first time ever, I fell apart rather – I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t stop crying, all that stuff that I never normally indulge in.  All very weird.

Shirley Valentine?

I ran away to Greece, for a while.  Not so long, a month or so.  But, you know what?  All those footballers wives and film and pop stars who go on holiday when things fall apart, they are actually onto something.  I highly recommend it!  (you can see some of the little videos I made when I was there, over at my YouTube channel UKMarketingMentor )

Being in a totally different environment really does help – it jolts you out of your day to day routine (which has just been turned upside down anyway) and something about the unfamiliarity and beauty of your new surroundings calms your nerves and helps you think differently.  I went to a part of Greece, Stoupa, that I know and love and for a while, I thought I might stay, and commute back and forwards, but I missed everyone I love too  much.

My Future Lies Online

I have always been very passionate about writing an ezine, blogging, internet marketing, the means by which I built The Money Gym from a one-woman coaching company, a five page website and an ezine going out to a few hundred people to the “influence” company is was by the end of 2009.

I loved the way “t’internet” allowed you to communicate with, share ideas with and even inspire people who you had never even met.  The thought that you could write something on your website or in your ezine one day, read by a complete stranger the next, and that the other person could be moved, or even better, moved to action is completely magical to me.

I always think of the internet – and particularly my laptop, as my window to the world.

My business partner Judith Morgan had, ironically just after one of our biggest workshops, when things were just going brilliantly, asked me, during early 2009, what I would do if we built The Money Gym to the point when we didn’t have to run it any more?

I remember saying, I would go and sign up for a high level coaching programme with someone like Frank Kern or perhaps my friend Brett McFall and really learn how to become a top internet marketer.

Because although I’m probably one of the best at teaching people how to market a real world business online, I am not a massive internet marketing success.  I make lots of extra streams of revenue online, but I haven’t ever cracked the £20k a month mark, entirely from internet marketing.  And that rankles – I really want to crack that.

Keep Doing What You Do (Till You Know What To Do Next)

While seeking my new direction, I kept coaching my private clients.  Even in Greece I carried on working with a few select business owners on their own online marketing.  And I started developing my own membership site, which would give people access to me and my “7 Step System” at a lesser investment than my one-to-one clients, but I couldn’t decide on who my ideal client was or even what to call it.

First of all I thought I wanted to work with Star/Creator types, in Wealth Dynamics terms, and called the program “Hidden Star To Superstar” but after a while I realised that these people are not the kind to develop their own internet marketing, they really wanted someone to do it for them.  So I changed the focus towards business people who wanted to market their real world business online and called it the “Business Brand Blueprint”  Same “7 Step System” but different focus.

Worked for me for a while but there was a major flaw in that name in that I couldn’t actually say it out loud without stumbling over the last word – you try it!  And as speaking made up a big part of my marketing plan, that really wasn’t good LOL!

Just Because You Could…Doesn’t Mean You Should

I looked at several other online opportunities – the most notable being the potential for selling internet marketing services to local businesses – and I kept getting excited about one thing after another, or about the potential for one thing after another, before the initial thrill wore off and I realised that my heart just wasn’t’ in it.]

Anything that involved repetition, systems and being accountable to a client for deliverability….no, that’s not for me.  My strengths are big picture thinking, creating products, strategic marketing, speaking, writing….not sorting out outdated hosting, wrangling with previous web designers, putting together ezines for harried business owners who couldn’t even manage to produce or find online, one article every two weeks.

Another part of the problem was that I had got used to working as a team, and suddenly, Judith and Steve were now working on their own projects.   We had been in constant contact, many times a day, and not only was I feeling lonely, I started feeling overwhelmed with emails, admin and unable to get creative because of the day to day stuff that needed doing.

Things improved a bit when I found Kelly, my new Virtual Assistant.  She’s taking all my admin and invoicing off me and that’s a blessed relief, as I’ve just been approved for Strategic Internet Marketing Mentoring for businesses of 5 employees or more, who can apply for business help and a grant via the Train To Gain / Leadership & Management scheme.  The form filling is a bit daunting to say the least.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, when my sister Sarah, who knows me really well, knows how I like to work and who is pretty techie, offered to act as my online business manager and take my email first, only passing what is absolutely necessary to take action on and also to help me with Customer Service and to knock my membership site into shape.

Gradually some space was being cleared in my mind, and we all know that you need space to happen in order for good things to come into your life.

And good things are starting to come – the first being “The Right Book At The Right Time”.

But I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Popularity: 2% [?]

You Might Also Enjoy...

Powered by WishList Member - Membership Software