When The Universe Kicks Your Butt

Sometimes things happen to you over and over again so that you can learn your lesson. Sometimes that butt-kicking gives you another opportunity. Do you get to decide which it is? Not always, but you CAN learn to always take advantage of it.

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

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Hi, it’s Nicola here. And I just wanted to say happy Easter from Greece, yes we have our Easter weekend on a different weekend to yours, and then we’ve just had it here. And it’s been amazing, I went down to our local taverna Melissa’s and they had a lot of meat on the spit, doesn’t sound very attractive does it? But it was absolutely delicious, roast lamb to you and me. As you can hear I’m outside again and with all the accompany noises of people doing up their houses, and motorbikes going past, and people with diggers and dumpers, and all sorts of activity going on here getting ready for the summer season.

So, yeah, I thought I’d come outside and speak to you today from the balcony before the mozzies start taking over. I actually saw one, I let a bee out earlier and a mozzie came in, it seems you can’t have one bit of wildlife without the other. Anyway, that’s enough waffling from me lets get on with the show, shall we?

Sometimes it’s a bit of a slog to think about what to talk about in these middle bits. I usually just have to cast my mind back over the previous week and see what things have come up either for me or for clients and what lessons I’ve learned or re-learned, indeed, because lessons keep coming, they just keep coming over and over again until you actually get them. I call that the universe kicking your butt.

And so today I was really surprised when I went onto Amazon just to get a link for my book, and I found that it’d been reduced on Prime to £1.59 for a copy of my book, The Money Gym. And what I didn’t realise was there was only a limited time promotion, I didn’t realise that at all. But I acted quickly, I got some information out on my page, on my profile, I sent an email to my list saying “You can get a physical copy of the book “for just 1.59 right now, if you’re a Prime member.”

Lots of people went and bought it and all the activity has sent me straight to number one in some strange categories I didn’t even know I was in. One being management and marketing, you wouldn’t have thought a book about wealth creation and financial intelligence would’ve been in management and marketing, but apparently, back in the mists of time, that’s where my publisher put it. And the other one was accounting and audit, well that’s an exciting selling category, isn’t it? I’m absolutely delighted to be number one today, as we speak, in management accounting and auditing category on Amazon so go and check that out. Number four on the other one, which is management accounting, and number 37 in the category that I actually want to be found in, which is personal finance.

What it has led me to do is contact my publisher and suggest we move a couple of categories because the book’s still really sound. I mean it could do with a tiny bit of an update to include block chain technology and perhaps cryptocurrencies as an investment asset class now, because they are growing in leaps and bounds. So that’s probably the only bit I’d update right now, otherwise the book’s still solid. So if you haven’t got a copy of The Money Gym yet, do go over to Amazon and check whether there’s a special offer on, or just go to themoneygym.com and I’ve put links to buy on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

There’s nothing like having a physical copy of a book I don’t think, especially if you’re going to want to highlight bits and make notes and turn down pages when you’re going to be taking some action. That’s what I do, I get a physical copy of the book and I work through it, making notes about what I’m going to do. So I think that’s the difference between successful people, and other people, is they don’t just read the books, they actually take action on the books, too. So how could you do that with your next book that you read?

Don’t just get it on a Kindle, because I find it’s really difficult to make notes when things are on a kindle, and it destroys your flow and it destroys your enjoyment of the book, but if you read it in a physical copy you can not just enjoy the flow and the story, you can actually make notes and turn down corners. So that’s my advice for this week.

So what’s on the blog and the podcast this week? I hear you asking.

Well, on the blog, I’m featuring episode VZ 96 and were talking all about if you’re going to start something, you have to have a positive expectation of the outcome, otherwise you’d never get anything started at all. So we were talking specifically about the podcast that’s just had 100 thousand downloads and Judith and I started that about four years ago and it’s been a slow grower, but we never really doubted that it would grow, well I didn’t anyway, I never really doubted it would grow, eventually. And Judith just kept going because she quite enjoyed it, and even though we do have to put quite a big of work in it’s quite easy to do. That’s what I’m talking about on VZ96, go and check it out over at nicolcairncross.com/blog.

Now, I’m not sure which podcast episode we featured last week so I’m just going to recap the last couple for you. On Own It! Episode 223, that’s ownitthepodcast.com/223, you can see us talking about selling being a dirty word, how most people think that the act of selling is getting people to buy things that they don’t actually want. Whereas in reality, it’s just the action of helping someone move from one reality to a better reality by the purchase of something they actually need. Then I wrote a ad hoc blog post all about the Kardashians, I was thinking about how to have more catchy titles on my blog posts and I was looking through a list of titles and it said “Have a number and have some celebrity “in your blog post titles.” So I thought “Okay what can I think about the Kardashians.”

Because I love the Kardashians and I’ve just watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians episode two, of the latest season, and I thought, “How can I turn that into a blog post.” So I thought about some of the things that they’re absolutely brilliant at, and one of the things they’re absolutely brilliant at is social media. So I’ve turned it into a blog post called The top seven things the Kardashians taught me about creating a killer social media strategy.

So go and check that out on the blog, I think you’ll find it interesting, It’s over two thousand words of sheer advice about how to do your social media, as well as those Kardashian girls. That’s pretty much it from me this week, so do come and let me know what you think of the Vzine by making a comment underneath wherever you’re seeing it, whether it’s on Facebook, YouTube or the blog. I love to hear from you, so don’t hold back on what you’re thinking.

Hope you have a great week, look forward to speaking to you soon.

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