Ethics In Business

After a conversation with a potential client, Nicola Cairncross is very aware that, if she cared less about doing the “right thing”, she could make more money but she would always rather make less but treat people well. She also knows that this attitude attracts people to her business that want to succeed but only if that’s by helping others, not hurting them. It’s important to be able to sleep at night knowing you do your best for people, always.

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Clicks And Leads is a “tongue in cheek” digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.

Mentioned in the Vzine

Find out more about Nicola’s Clicks And Leads Academy and get the help you need to start your online business
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On the blogs

Vzine 058 | Keep Focused On Income Producing Activities
Vzine 057 | Who Drives Your Business?
Own It! 171 | Essential Journeys
Own It! 170 | Facebook Group Changes

Find out more about Nicola’s Clicks And Leads Academy and get the help you need to start your online business

Welcome everyone, it’s springtime in Stoupa still. Yesterday was a bit cloudy, but today is absolutely glorious, and I’ve got about 18 minutes to record this message to you. And I’ve had to seize the opportunity, even though some Greek guys are just delivering some rocks over behind the camera there, so you might hear lots of “ela, ela, ela,” ’cause that’s them saying “come, come, come,” when they’re telling people where to put things.

Yeah, so you might notice something different about me today. Yes, I’ve got some makeup on. Well, why is that, then you might ask yourself, those who are even remotely interested. It’s because I woke up in a bit of a funk this morning. It’s the last week before the anniversary of Steve’s, second anniversary of when Steve died, and I wasn’t feeling so great this morning.

The week before is always a difficult one, because you remember exactly what you were doing on the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday, et cetera, and you can’t help those thoughts crossing your mind. You know, what if we’d done something different, what if we’d made him go to the doctor’s, et cetera, et cetera, although there weren’t any obvious signs.

So, yeah, so I thought, I gotta do something to change my mood, I’ve gotta do something to change how I feel, so I thought, I don’t know, it just came to me. I’ll tell you what it was, I had my hair cut above my eyebrows and I suddenly thought, I really need some eyebrows there, so I thought, why don’t I put a bit of makeup on? I’m going to meet the Write Club ladies in a little while, and I thought that might surprise them if I turn up with makeup, having not worn any for two years.

So it just turned into a bit of fun, really, just to see if I could remember how to do it, and who knows if I’ve succeeded. So yes, it’s all about changing my mood. And funny enough, it worked. I feel much chirpier now. I’ve come upstairs and I’m battling through the elements to try and get this message out to you.

So, if you’re not feeling like it or you’ve been feeling a bit down or if you’re feeling a bit mis, then see what you can do. Getting up and doing something physical is supposed to help, playing loud music and having a bit of a dance is supposed to help, just changing your physical state is supposed to help, and obviously, giving yourself some eyebrows helps too.

So, I just had a call with a charming gentleman called Derek, and he booked himself into my day, and when he filled in the form, I knew that there was not a lot to go on. He said he was a new business, he had a fiction book, and he wants to know how to market that better, and he also wants to become an affiliate marketer. And I thought to myself, I’m probably not gonna be able to help him, but we’ll have the call anyway, and we just had the most delightful chat for half an hour about all the different ways that he can move forward to market his children’s book.

So, it’s The Lovely Little Dragon, and it stands a lot of good chance of being very popular with things like video, and merchandise, and all that stuff, if he can get the book selling. So, we had a good ol’ chat. I gave him lots of advice about how to get the book animated, how to get the book perhaps off to Audible for perhaps an exclusive audio deal, and lots of ideas like that.

And then we talked about the affiliate marketing side, and I said he’s probably better to separate the two, not trying to add the affiliate marketing into the promotion of his books, but to learn affiliate marketing as something completely separate. And I sent him on his way to the best person I know, who could teach him affiliate marketing in an ethical and efficient manner.

So, at the end of it he said, “How can we work together?” And I said, “Well, it depends what you want, really. “If you feel, after going to,” I also sent him to someone who’s very good at book marketing, by the way. So, I said, “If you want to carry on “and have someone who you can ask “any question any time about either of those two projects, “then the thing to do is to join “Clicks and Leads Academy, “but if you don’t want to do that, “or you’re not ready to do that, “or you don’t feel you need extra support “on top of the people I’ve recommended you to, “that’s absolutely cool.

“I would rather you went away with the best advice and the best recommendations I can give you for your situation as you are now, and I know that either you’ll come back in the future or you’ll recommend someone to me, ’cause I’ve done the right thing and given good advice.

I also gave him a little advice about how to SEO his YouTube videos. And that makes me feel good, and I like to do business in a way that makes me feel good. There’s a lot of ways and a lot of people that are not quite as, what’s the word, scrupulous I think is the word. And I often think that perhaps I should just take people’s money and just carry on, as most people do. But I can’t do it. I like to be able to sleep at night, I like to be able to think that I’m a good person, I like to be able to think that people could speak well of me, and I like to think that it attracts people to me that also want to business in an ethical, caring, kind, honest way. And yes, we probably won’t make so much money like that, but who cares? We’ll be able to sleep at night, and look people in the eye, and have a really nice feeling as we move around the world helping people.

So, in conclusion, if you’re the kind of person who would like to be able to sleep at night and who wants to make money online from doing reputable things, ethical things, things that actually help people, then do come and see me at Clicks and Leads Academy.

If you come to NicolaCairncross.com, opt in for any of my free gifts, or just look on the menu at the top, where it says something along the lines of “How I Can Help You,” or “Your Options.” I can’t actually remember what it says now. You’ll find a link to watch the Be Everywhere Online video, which is a lead in to the Clicks and Leads Academy.

It’s been bit of a tough one this week, trying to get everything sorted out with all the noises going on around. But the sun’s out, I’m off down the beach, so it’s worth persevering.

On the blog and the podcast this week, we’ve got Own It! Episode 170, which is talking all about Facebook group changes. Yes, Facebook’s trying to make more inventory, more space for Facebook ads, and to do that, they need to cut down the clutter on your timeline.

So what they’re doing now is they’re showing you less business orientated stuff, so that you’ll have a nicer experience as a customer, consumer, so that businesses will have to pay if they want to get their offers in front of your eyeballs, so that’s the goal, and lots of people have been relying on Facebook pages and groups free traffic.

In fact, there was a thing posted the other day about “Facebook, Zuckerberg puts thriving digital publishing business out of business.” Well, it’s not actually his fault, is it really? Because they shouldn’t have been building their entire business on a free traffic platform and expecting that to continue.

So, that’s why I think it’s really important to start getting used to paying for your traffic and build your business on a stable base that you can control, because even if Facebook traffic wanes, there’s always YouTube traffic, there’s always display network traffic, and apparently Google Adwords traffic is getting better again, because they’re adding more targeting options. I’m gonna go and check it out fairly soon.

Anyway, enough of that. What else we got? We’ve got, I think I’m ahead of myself, because I seem to be repeating myself. The latest Vzine is Who Drives Your Business? Now, I totally can’t remember whether I’ve told you about that or not. So, go and check it out anyway. It’s Vzine number 57. Oh yes, hang on a second, Vzine number 58 has just come out, but I totally can’t remember what it was about, so you’ll have to go and have a look for yourself. You’ll find it on NicolaCairncross.com/vzine. That’s where all the latest episodes always go. They also go onto my Facebook page, they also go onto my YouTube channel, and you can subscribe on YouTube and make sure you never miss one when it comes out. If you enjoy them, that is.

That’s pretty much it for me this week. I think I’ve got a client call in about two minutes flat, so I’d better sign off now and go and do that, and then I’m off down the village. See ya later.

Creative Direction & Video Editing
Phoebe Soremekun

Intro Music
Pool Cosby

Incidental Music
Rocola De Verano (feat. Rochee) by Otto Botté
“Pata Pata” Miriam Makeba remix

Drone footage of The Mani
Georgios Ser-Aouas

Check out more videos on my YouTube channel