2014…for UK Business Owners who are serious about becoming super-successful

Jan

20

14

Quote for the month“If you think you can, or you think you can’t you’re probably right”

Henry Ford

“Who you hang around with matters - a lot”

Nigel Botterill

''The UK’s largest Membership Organisation dedicated to helping businesses grow.''

In a recent Mastermind session, one member was a complete revelation. “I’ve realised that, for the last five years, everything I’ve been doing has just been fiddling around the edges,” she said, “but I now know the things that make a difference and that’s all I spend my time doing.”

I recently read a biography of Ronald Reagan. In it, when asked about his reputation for not working as hard or putting in as many hours as other presidents, he is quoted as saying: “There are things that must be done. There are things that can be done. Then there are lots of things that either don’t need to be done or that can’t be done. If you just focus on the first two, you really don’t need long hours.” It strikes me that

what Reagan is actually describing there is discernment.

In my experience, most people lack the ability to discern what is truly important and what is not. Actually, I’ll take it a stage further – most people are so weak at this that they deal with anything and anyone and everything and everyone at random.

It’s proper bonkers.entrepreneurscircle.co.uk

SENDING THE BILL TO THE HERD Page 3

I THOUGHT I KNEW THIS STUFF Page 4

THANK CRUNCHIE IT’S FRIDAY Page 8

EMAIL TRICKS Page 14

UNLOCKING THE WILL TO ACT Page 16

A NEW WAY OF RAISING CASH Page 22

INSIDE THIS MONTH

TO WIN, MANAGE

OR SURVIVE?

02

TO WIN, MANAGE OR SURVIVE? (CONT)

I learnt a long time ago of the importance of spending the first 90 minutes of my working day on the things that are important to me and will make my business more successful.

And I’ve said many times before, if you track back the history of my businesses, you’ll find that all our success has, in truth, been built in 90-minute chunks, five days a week.

There are hundreds of members in the Entrepreneur’s Circle who know this and who understand it. The majority of them would agree that spending 90 minutes focused on the things that will move the business forward each day is a smart thing to do. Yet there are, in truth, only a few dozen doing this, religiously, every single day. Bonkers.

What are you waking up and working on each and every morning?

Are you obsessed with the essential success factors and functions that will achieve your big, ballsy 2014 goals or have you spent hours today on the vague and divergent activities, responding to other people’s agendas? Is there clarity or fog? Are you out to win or just manage? Or worse, just survive?

As we start a brand new year, many people all across the country will be making resolutions. The majority will be history before January is out.

It was actually May, almost 11 years ago when I started my 90-minute habit. If you like, it was a new May resolution, but, well over 10 years on, it’s a habit that is still with me and it’s responsible for almost all of the success I’ve been fortunate enough to achieve in business.

Why? Because my daily disciplines have shaped my life. And so it is with you.

Whether you consciously map out your day or not, the reality is that it is your habits that shape your destiny.

“Some people say I’m very simplistic,” Reagan told his guest, Richard Allen, in the book, ‘Rawhide Down’ (Reagan’s codename with the Secret Service was ‘Rawhide’ and the book focuses a lot on the assassination attempt).

“But there’s a difference between being simplistic and simple. A lot of things are simple if you think them through. So, keeping that in mind, here is my theory of the Cold War… we win. They lose.”

There’s a lot to be said for clarity. Especially since it is an advantage that few seem to have. One of the

things we’re working really hard on with Mastermind this year is helping people to clearly and definitively state their objectives, their targets and their means of measuring success. It ain’t easy. Many business owners don’t have a clue in this regard. In effect, they’re playing what my good friend, Dan Kennedy calls ‘blind archery’. Of course, all this new stuff like social media and new shiny objects and software only compound the problem, but Reagan was right, you know. There is a big difference between being simplistic and keeping things – like running a successful business – simple. In a one-to-one last month, a very high-profile member of the EC, albeit one with only a moderately successful enterprise, was getting so obsessed about the automation of the marketing funnel that they’d completely missed the point that the most sensible and obvious thing to do with the 11 or 12 highly qualified leads they were generating each week was to simply ring them up and embark in the simple act of selling. Simple.

Most businesses thrive or suffer based on a very small number of critical factors – they can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. A ruthless definition of productivity, say, and another of profitability can be used to reject or discard all sorts of ideas, activities, distractions, even people so that focus and focused effort is possible.

It’s all pretty simple if you think it through. There’ll be people that you could call today, or send an email to or a piece of direct mail that will result in your cash register ringing. There’s stuff on your to-do list today that’s really, really important and that will play a hugely disproportionate part in determining just how close you come to achieving your goals this year or not and then there’s all the other stuff, the flotsam and the jetsam of modern life. The distractions and detritus of the doomed.

So, dear reader, my wish for this New Year for you is that you are conscious throughout – and discerning in the extreme. Deep down you know what you should and shouldn’t be doing. It’s up to you to make it so.

Have a great month.

Nigel.

03

GENERATING INCOME AT WILL

Sending the Bill to the Herd

If you’ve been around the Circle for a little while, you might have heard me use the phrase “sending the bill to the herd”.

It’s not offensive in any way but it refers to passing on the cost of anything in your business to your customers – which you can only do when you have a strong relationship with them and you’re offering them something of real value.

However, when you are in that position, it effectively means that you can generate income at will and a couple of Mastermind members managed to achieve this for themselves just recently.

Dominic Jones, who runs Barton Technology renewed his Mastermind

membership for the second year in November. “I had the money, and I paid up front,” said Dominic, “but I just had this thought that it would be really good if I could put into practice what I’ve heard Nigel talk about so often. Could I ‘send the bill to the herd?’”

What Dominic did was write a fairly short email to 12 of his best customers inviting them to join his own Mastermind group for the bargain price of £3,000. Within two days, five of them had signed up – and paid the money. “It was a great feeling,” said Dominic, “and I realised, for the first time, that I really am in the position now to generate income at will.”

When Dominic told his colleagues in the Mastermind group about what he had done, over

dinner the night before their Member session, fellow member, James Wilson, was hugely perturbed. “I was really cross with myself that I hadn’t thought of this,” explained James, “so that night, when I got back to my hotel room, I too wrote an email, which I sent out the next morning to some carefully selected customers of my own. Hey presto, I’ve been able to do exactly the same as Dominic.”

There’s no doubt that having the ability to generate revenue and cash like this is huge for any business owner and it all stems from how you think and the questions you ask yourself.

It doesn’t have to be about funding a place in Mastermind – it could be sorting out a tax bill, buying a new car or paying for an extra member of staff. The truth is, in most businesses, if you’re getting the basics right and doing the right things, then you’ll be forging relationships with your customers, which will enable you to offer something of appropriate value to them and for which, in return, they’ll put money in your account.

It is truly a wonderful thing.

04

BIG LESSON OF THE MONTH

A long story short, but the week before the 2014 Mastermind Group, we were all set to kick off with a big weekend summit for all 50+ members and we had one guy drop out. It was for very good reasons and I completely understood his decision but it did leave me one member short and that’s a reasonable chunk of revenue. Nevertheless, on the Monday afternoon when he told me, I simply shrugged my shoulders, figured that there was nothing I could do about it and carried on my daily business.

The following morning, I was midway through my 90 minutes when a thought struck me. I stopped the work I was doing and instead drafted a very hastily written email to members explaining that we’d had this dropout of Mastermind and that there was an opportunity for one person to come into the Group.

Within four hours, we had seven applications.

I was genuinely stunned.

It was only six weeks after we had offered and marketed the 2014 Mastermind programme, so it’s not as if these people hadn’t known about it or hadn’t had the chance to buy recently. And that was the big lesson for me: that people buy when they are ready – not necessarily when you’re doing the selling.

What I think this shows is the importance of keeping in touch with and regularly reminding our customers of what we do and how we can help them. It’s arguably the single most important thing for any marketer. It’s certainly getting a place much higher up the agenda in my 90 minutes going forward.

Every business has leads sat somewhere that, if reignited or communicated with today could generate a conversation that leads to a sale. But across the country, business owners have dismissed these leads as old, dead or dormant. Worse still, they’ve simply just forgotten about them – like the guy at the NEC who I wrote about in the lead article last month.

I Thought I Knew This Stuff…If you’d asked me before December whether I was good at following up with my customers I would have said, “Yes.” Indeed, if you’d really put me on the spot, I would have said we were at least a nine out of 10 at this. We were very good. Or so I thought…

05

I Thought I Knew This Stuff…

At the Convention in September, Sir Chris Hoy called these things ‘marginal gains’. I don’t care what name or badge you put on them but my eyes were opened massively by this incident in my business and I’ve resolved not to let it happen again. I hope this note does the same for you.

Before you turn the page, just have a think about the short two to three-paragraph email that you could write in 20 minutes and send out today or tomorrow that would bring in some sales that you otherwise wouldn’t get.

That’s the power of follow-up.

What’s stopping you?

06

CREASER’S BIG COLUMN

1.4 BILLION Things You Could do this Year to Grow Your BusinessGoogle “growing a business” and you’ll see pages and pages of search results. It would take you a while to read through them, but Mark Creaser saves you the trouble with this neat digest.There is no shortage of people queuing up to tell you how you can grow your business. There are thousands of books, hundreds of events and business coaches in every town vying for your custom.

The fact is though, there are only three ways to increase your business. Only three. And you don’t even need to do all three to grow – just get one right and you can’t go wrong.

I know you’re on the edge of your seat, so I’ll spill the beans…

Three Ways To Grow Your Business:

#1 Get more customers#2 Increase your average sale value #3 Increase how often your customers return to buy againI bet you’ve heard these before. I bet that you knew them already, but I’d wager that you haven’t given much thinking time to how you can do them…

A full 68% of business owners couldn’t answer the following questions. Can you?

How many customers have you got? How many people spent money with you last year?

What’s your average sale value (before you tell me that it’s different for every sale, remind yourself of what ‘average’ means)?

How often do your customers buy from you? How many purchases do they make in a lifetime? What’s the gap between one purchase and the next?

Knowing and understanding your numbers is a great starting point for growing your business and yes, I made the 68% statistic up, but experience suggests that I won’t be far wrong.

I’ll go through each of the three magical business growth secrets one by one.

1) Get more customersIt is seems obvious – because it is. There’s no mystery here, no secret formula. If you find more customers in 2014 than you had in 2013, you’re odds on for a more successful year.

Here are four ways you can get more customers…

Make sure that people looking for you can find you.

If someone’s looking for what you’ve got, then you need to be sure that they’re able to find you. In most markets, that means showing up in style when a prospect does a Google search for something related to what you do.

You need to be on page one. It doesn’t really matter whether you achieve it through SEO or AdWords. If it’s SEO that you’re relying on to bring you new customers, you’d be smart

...there are only three ways to increase your business. Only three. And you don’t even need to do all three to grow – just get one right and you can’t go wrong.

07

1.4 BILLION Things You Could do this Year to Grow Your Business

to have an AdWords campaign set up and ready to go live in the event that you get hit by Google’s next algorithm change – if you were unaffected by the Panda and Penguin updates over the last couple of years, maybe you won’t be so lucky with Parrot or Panther or Poison Dart Frog.

Make sure that people who’ve got a problem you can solve know that you exist

This one means spending some time understanding your market. Who are your customers? What is the common problem that they have that you provide a solution for? Where can you find more people who’ve got that problem – even if they’re not looking for a solution right now?

How can you promote your business effectively to people who need you? Where do they live? Can you write to them? What do they read? Can you advertise to them? What else do they buy? Can you tie up with another business they’re already buying from?

Make sure you’re not losing as many customers as you find

Not every business is a ‘pay monthly by direct debit’ business like the Entrepreneur’s Circle, sure, but there are very few businesses that genuinely only transact once with each customer. Whether you typically do business weekly, monthly or just every few years with each customer, you need to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep the customers you’ve already won.

It’s almost always cheaper and easier to keep a customer than it is to go out and find a new one. Keeping in touch is key here – it doesn’t matter how happy they were the first time they bought from you if they’ve forgotten who you were and what your number is the next time they need to buy – they’ll be straight back to Google. A regular printed newsletter can play a big part in a long-term keep-in-touch campaign.

Make sure you ask your customers for referrals

Where are you going to find people who are just like your best customers? Why not ask them? Referral programmes can help to build your business automatically – if you do them well.

2) Increase your average sale value First up – price. Lots of Entrepreneur’s Circle members find that they once were nervous about pushing their prices up. They think they’re going to lose customers and break the whole business. But they cross their fingers and implement a price increase anyway, then wait for the angry backlash.

It never comes.

Driving up prices is the easiest way to increase the value of your average sale. If you haven’t done it for a while, there’s no better time than next week. Honestly.

Up Selling

“Do you want fries with that?” is a great upsell question. Offering a bigger, better, higher end alternative to your standard product or service can mean a significant uplift in transaction value.

And here’s the thing: if you get the upsell right – and price it appropriately – you’ll make as much profit on the upsell as you do on the whole of the original sale. Nice.

What’s in your ‘Platinum Package?’

Cross Selling

Rarely confused with cross-dressing, cross selling is all about dreaming up identifying new products and services that you could offer your customers, that are usually related to your core product or service.

3) Increase how often your customers return to buy againReactivate Past Customers

Whether or not you’ve done a fantastic job of keeping in touch with your customers, a “we

miss you” customer reactivation letter often produces eye-watering returns.

Make them a limited-time offer that’s exclusively available to past customers. If you’ve got the data, make it as relevant to them as you can by looking at previous purchases – what did they buy, how much did they spend. Use that information to your advantage.

Offer a Pay Monthly Package

Naked Wines is my favourite example of this. There are lots of places to buy wine so Naked Wines needs to work hard to stay top of mind. They achieve this – and more – with their ‘become an Angel’ programme – and it’s worth spending seven minutes just looking carefully at what they do (after you’ve finished reading the Circular – obvs!).

Whatever you’re selling, if you can design a package where your customers pay you every month automatically, you’re on course to increase how often your customers buy from you.

Reward Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty programmes work. Look at Tesco Clubcard, Boots Advantage, Airmiles, even Subway, Starbucks and Costa. You don’t need to give your customers another card but you know how you feel when you see a great offer and then it turns out that it’s only for new customers? That’s the opposite of what you want to achieve here.

Make your existing customers feel special. Make them feel valued. Recognise their loyalty. Do a good job of this and you’ll be less likely to lose them AND they’ll come back to you more often.

Love you.

Thank Crunchie it’s Friday

08

MARKETING LESSONS

Jacqui sent out the letter that you can see on the opposite page to her existing clients that she knew either received voicemails over the weekend or were open on Saturdays.

“We send an email out two days ahead of the letter,” says Jacqui, “and we followed EC recommendations of resending the email to those that haven’t opened it but using a different subject line on the second send.”

The letter, complete with real Mars Bar and Crunchie Bar arrived on day three or four.

“The results stunned us,”

explained Jacqui.

“To date, 52% of the people that received the chocolate letter have signed up to our Saturday service and they all contacted us within a week of receiving the letter. Further follow ups have revealed that a number of other recipients are currently considering adding the service to their package. It’s been brilliant.

“We would never have considered doing something like this before joining the Entrepreneur’s Circle and I’m so grateful that you encouraged us to think outside the box. Having had such a lot of success with this campaign, we’re now exploring other direct mail pieces and I’m keen to run them more regularly going forward.”

It’s a great letter for two reasons. Firstly, the chocolate is a real easy way to get people’s attention and make it stand out from the crowd. Jacqui has built on this with a nicely laid out piece, which includes a strong offer and a deadline.

The second reason it’s worked so well is because of who it was sent to. Jacqui’s used this to increase the spend from existing customers – people who already know her, trust her and have confidence in her – and it is typically much, much easier to utilise direct mail efficiently to get additional sales from your existing customer base.

This might not be as sexy as some of the pieces that have been shown on these pages but we don’t think we’ve ever had a marketing piece before in which over 50% of the recipients have actually signed up for the product – and that’s why it’s showcased here. It’s wonderfully simple – but also wonderfully powerful and in that regard it ought to serve as a very useful prompt for you.

Who could you send a couple of fun-sized chocolate bars to with a short, focused message that would generate some additional sales?

This month’s example of really great marketing that works isn’t from a big national brand or a FTSE 100 company. Instead, it’s coming from much nearer to home in the form of Inside Track member, Jacqui Frost who runs The Office Genie, a call answering and VA business.

Jacqui

Thank Crunchie it’s Friday

09

To date, 52% of the people that received the chocolate letter have signed up to our Saturday service

The letter,

complete with

real Mars Bar and

Crunchie Bar

arrived on day

three or four

OVER 50% of

the recipients

have actually

signed up for

the product

January 2014 Winner:

Henry PattersonNot Before TeaThis month’s Entrepreneur of the Month award goes to nine-year-old Henry Patterson, whose edible Mud & Worms have captured the imagination of everybody from politicians and senior figures at Sainsbury’s to legendary Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave and Innocent Smoothies founder Jon Wright.

We spoke to his mother, Becky to get the full story behind his amazing journey and find out how he plans to be like ‘Alan Sugar but happier’.

10

ENTREPRENEUR OF THE MONTH

It all started when I set up my sweet shop, Sherbet Pip, which sells nostalgic sweets.

I recognised that, every time adults talked about sweets, they thought back to when they were children. Plus I always had a secret desire to go into retail (having been in PR prior to this).

While working on my product range, Henry asked me what I was doing for children. I explained that it was a sweet shop for adults who wanted to be children as opposed to products for children. However, I told him to come up with some ideas and, if they were good enough, I’d think about a children’s page.

This isn’t the first time Henry has embarked on a business venture. In fact, this is his third. When he was six, he started selling horse manure outside our house after he saw some for sale at a garden centre and realised that we had loads at home. Our neighbours were also doing it so he undercut their price.

Then, a little while later, he created a niche market for selling his old toys. For example, he noticed that there wasn’t a farming Power Ranger so he sold his Power Rangers bundled with a tractor.

A few days after our talk, he came back with six jars of sweets – one of which was Mud & Worms. I told him that I didn’t think it would sell as it was brown and looked unappealing but he was adamant that kids would love it. And he was right.

Packaged with the sweets, he included a pen so that kids could decorate the jars

afterwards and he sold them with dental stickers – to keep the parents happy. He really had all bases covered.

He decided to call his page on the site ‘Not Before Tea’ – after what his gran says to him when he asks for sweets.

Next he designed a logo – Pip the Mouse – and even wrote a book about it.

So, once we had a name, a brand and a product, I did press releases for both businesses, sent them out – and everybody pretty much ignored mine and went straight for Henry’s.

Once the word was out, Not Before Tea really captured people’s imagination. The Daily Mail called us for an exclusive interview and the story was picked up by Yahoo News, The BBC, The Independent, The Times and the New York Times.

Unfortunately, this is when we started to get our first bits of negative press. People online didn’t believe that it was all Henry’s idea and started to say some really quite nasty things. But, true to form, this didn’t put him off. In fact, Henry got really annoyed and asked to do a live BBC radio interview. He wanted to show people that it was all down to him and was very much his venture.

Henry’s someone who naturally knows what to say and covers the key points. For example, at awards ceremonies he might be asked the same question 20 times in a single day but always tells the answer like it’s the first time. He’s very confident but also humble – I think he’s a little shocked to be in the position he’s in

but he takes it all in his stride.

And he needs to because we’ve been invited to so many awards and events over the past six months. Among them was visit to the Bedford Chamber of Commerce, where Henry was presented with a plaque and given lifetime membership.

This was an amazing honour. However, when asked what his best moment in business has been so far, Henry will say the evening in September when he attended The Great British Entrepreneur Awards. In fact, Henry says it was the best day of his entire life!

We met lots of politicians and business figures and it was obvious that Henry was in his element. From the moment he arrived, he worked the room like he’d been doing it for years. One of the big highlights was when Sir Steve Redgrave recognised him and asked for a photo.

Henry had done so much press for the awards and, being the youngest nominee, had become almost the unofficial face of the event. The night was topped off by him being given a special One to Watch award and being asked to speak.

None of the other business owners were asked to say anything so I was a little nervous about what Henry was going to say and how he was going to handle it, especially as it came as a total surprise. He stood up and said that the government is not doing enough to help young entrepreneurs and business people. We’re still waiting to hear what

Becky

011

We are always on the hunt

for the next Entrepreneur

of the Month winner and as

‘the voice of the balls’ says...

IT COULD BE YOU!

To enter yourself (or to

nominate another member)

simply send an email to me

at nigel@nigelbotterill.com

telling me what you have

done in your business that

makes you worthy of this

prestigious prize.

It could be

you!

the press are going to report on this!

Henry was then given some retail space in one of Start-up Britain’s PopUp shops – an initiative that gives start-ups the chance to get their products onto the high street. This was a fantastic experience and he got loads of great customer feedback, the type of which you just don’t get online.

It was the perfect way to see how his product would sell in a shop – and we sold out of Mud & Worms.

Soon after, Henry was invited to pitch to Sainsbury’s alongside nine other startups, chosen from 2,000.

To be honest, we weren’t really prepared for the scale of it all and knew we wouldn’t be chosen but, again, we got some great feedback, mostly about our packaging and the door has been left open.

Jon Wright, one of the founders of Innocent Smoothies was also there and that was a big thrill for Henry to meet such an inspirational entrepreneur.

Something else that came from the meeting was their advice that he should publish his story book so he’s planning to self publish in February.

It also inspired him to expand the range. He’s currently working on a range of baking products, biscuit tins and something called

a Doodle Pod, which lets children decorate fabrics. When deciding what to do next, he’s interviewed his grandparents to find out about what they used to do for fun. There’s not a computer in sight and it’s all very traditional.

Finally, earlier this month, Henry went to Waterstones to find a hands-on kids book on running a business but couldn’t find any. He looked at me, smiled and said: ‘You know what that means, don’t you.’

So, his second book is already well underway. He’s planned the questions he wants to ask (he’d like to interview Nigel, Richard Branson, Alan Sugar and Peter Jones) and can’t wait to share his own advice on how young people can go about starting a business.

Henry learns a lot from established entrepreneurs and when asked who he wants to be like, he always answers ‘Alan Sugar but happier’.

He’s also a big fan of David Walliams and loves anybody who can capture the imagination. I think he’s done just that so far.

Henry with his

range of sweets

12

INSPIRING STORIES

Success Story Roll CallAnother festive season has come and gone and it’s great to see that our members are ending 2013 with a bang and hitting the ground running as we head into 2014.

Our very own success detective and resident copywriter, Mark Toon has compiled the finest success stories from across the EC. To see them all, check out www.nigelbotterill.com/success

This month, as well as the latest Success Story Roll Call, we’ve picked out a fantastic four of the best stories to showcase in more detail.

Enjoy!

Mitch Lloyd – Petra Jewellery

Howard Wing – Howard Wing

Lee Callender – Mail Magic

Mark Rose – Boosh 365

Mike Pattle - thebestofExeter

Albert Rockhill – All Colour Envelopes Ltd

Marc Wileman – Sublime Science

Lorraine Ashover – Minerva

John Arko – FinderMonkey

Stephen Hargreaves – The Cranleigh Boutique

Jamie Reeves – The Best Singing Waiters

Ian Redding – Buckingham Ford

James Sheard – The Accountancy People

Matthew Lord – LDL

Imogen Edmunds – Redwing Solutions

Marie Cross – First Impression Training

New ways of thinking quadruple Ben’s turnoverHaving joined the EC in May, Ben Wheeler’s focus on building customer relationships, knowing his numbers, and implementation has seen some truly dramatic increases in turnover for his company, Beach Software.

Having created a one-man business, Ben knew he needed to take on more staff to grow Beach Software, as it was fundamentally limited by his time constraints.

After his first EC meeting, Ben was so struck by what he saw and heard that he joined as a full member that day and ordered his tickets to the Convention the next.

Since, Ben has committed to direct mail and email campaigns, as well as exploring the huge potential of telesales and social media. Ben’s new way of thinking has led to huge increases in turnover for Beach, having gone from a £5k a month business to a £20k a month business in just nine months.

A commitment to learning and implementing has skyrocketed Beach Software’s income, potential and goals, and is a great example of the power of dedication and ambition. Congratulations, Ben on some super results in a short period of time.

Ben Wheeler – Beach Software

The personal touch is worth £10,000 to DerekEveryone should know that personalised direct mail is one of the best ways to get your customers’ attention, and an understanding of the importance of relationships has landed Derek contracts worth a cool £10,000.

It had been a while since Derek had met face to face with a couple of particular customers, so a lunchtime meeting would be a great opportunity to catch up and talk shop.

Rather than sending out bland emails to suggest a business lunch, Derek posted specially designed invitations in large silver envelopes with handwritten addresses ¬– the extra cost and time in doing this was negligible, but the result was brilliant.

Derek’s customers appreciated the personal touch and were happy to accept. The good feeling this created carried on into the lunch, and after a productive tête-à-tête, Super Structure Associates walked away with contracts worth £10,000.

Derek Mason – Super Structure Associates

13

Ash says goodbye to his comfort zoneSpeaking in front of people is something that strikes fear into some of the hardiest souls, but embracing such an opportunity and demonstrating the power of following up your leads has lead to a huge upturn in sales for Ash.

Ash faced his first speaking event in front of 235 fellow tennis coaches recently and, despite his nerves before the event, he did a great job and created some real interest in his services.

Picking up 21 solid leads from his presentation, Ash knew that the only way to turn these prospects into customers was to commit to effective follow-up. A short email campaign later and he had converted over a third of his leads into sales, selling eight coaching packages worth a considerable £545 each.

As if that wasn’t enough, Ash has also been asked to present again next year (for a fee this time) and also managed to pick up a day of consulting work.

Ash has combined the confidence to expand his abilities into new areas with a great understanding of the need for efficient follow up – great stuff, well done, Ash.

Ash Taylor – Ash Taylor Tennis

Quick thinking turns disaster into successThere is little more valuable in the business world than the ability to turn a seemingly unavoidable disaster into a resounding success. And Thomas Bower recently sent us a great example of such an occasion.

When Thomas was contacted by a customer during a delivery and told a very large order was to be cancelled, he could have insisted on making the delivery anyway. Instead, a bit of creativity and some very quick thinking allowed Thomas to turn a big problem into a profitable opportunity.

The boxes of unwanted food were split into four smaller ‘taster packs’ and delivered to prospective customers in the local area.

Within an hour, one prospect had rung enquiring about catering for a buffet and, with a little follow up, Thomas secured two new customers worth an average of £6,000 a year each.

We all hit unexpected hurdles in business but it’s worth remembering that it’s how you react to those obstacles that counts. What a fantastic way to turn a £45 buffet into £12,000 worth of new custom – well done, Thomas.

Thomas Bower – Thomas the Caterer

AS SEEN IN THE VAULTAfraid you might have missed out on some great EC content? Maybe you just want to refresh your memory and take another look at some of the most practical tools the EC team have ever produced.

Either way, you’ve come to the right place. Once again, As Seen in The Vault delves deep into the vast EC archives, has a good root around amongst the shelves and emerges clutching some of the most useful, practical and inspiring nuggets from days gone by.

Delivering a quality product or service is one thing, but to sell, you need the right marketing, and that’s why understanding the difference between good, average and flawed sales copy is fundamental to your role as a business owner.

Join Nigel and Mark for this latest webinar as they show you how to use good copy in order to get your phone – and till – ringing!

Find it in the ‘Webinar’ section of The Vault

Secrets of Writing KILLER COPY that Really Sells Webinar

Where Did All The Money Go? Webinar

Join Nigel and special guest Wayne Burgan as they show you how keeping track of the numbers is essential in making your business a success not a statistic! In this webinar you will learn about the importance of bookkeeping and accounting and how vital it is to have a good grasp of your numbers to effectively grow your business.

Find it in the ‘Webinar’ section of The Vault

EMAIL TRICKS

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With more and more EC members using Infusionsoft and other CRM systems to put in place long-term auto responder campaigns in order to keep in touch with the people in their marketing funnel, I thought I’d share with you four neat little tricks that are having very positive impacts here at Botty Towers.

Four Auto Responder Tricks to Boost Your Returns

Auto Responder Trick 1With Infusionsoft we can see that some people open up our auto responder emails more than once. Some of them open them as much as six or seven times. This is a definite indicator of interest and the people who open up emails three or more times are the hotter prospects and the ones who get to the top of the list to call.

Auto Responder Trick 2It’s okay to repeat the same email in an auto responder series eight or nine months after it first went out – providing you use a different subject line. Our experience is that this doesn’t give us any issues with unsubscribes and the truth is, people don’t remember that they’ve seen it before. When it’s a worthwhile value-led message, there’s no harm at all in repeating with this kind of frequency.

Auto Responder Trick 3On some of our marketing funnels, we put part 1 of the message in the email and then a ‘click here to continue reading’ link at the bottom which drives people to a website.

What we’re seeing is that the people who click through to the second part of the message are more valuable prospects – if you think about it, it’s an indication of their interest – and that enables us to narrow our follow-up focus to fewer, higher quality people.

Auto Responder Trick 4We will often send the same email twice. The first time early morning on Day 1 and the second time in mid-afternoon on Day 2. What we often see is a 40% plus increase in open rates with not a huge amount of overlap. The truth is people are busy, inboxes move at a swift pace and this has been a really effective way for us to get our message across more frequently.

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Report CardOnce again, it’s time to get up close and personal with one of the EC team.

This month, it’s the turn of Assistant Accountant, Lucy Boulton. Lucy works closely with Finance Director, Helen Sharkey and the rest of the team to ensure that all of the EC’s finances are correct and up to date at all times. No pressure, Lucy.

Boulton, Lucy from TiptonD.O.B 6.8.1989

What did you do before joining the EC?

I spent three years as a trainee accountant working in an accountancy practice (where I got my AAT qualification) on year-end and management ac-counts for sole-traders and small to medium sized businesses.

I then moved to a drinks wholesaler where I ran the whole accounts function, from credit control and wages right up to management accounting and forecast reporting for the Director.

What do you enjoy about working here?I love learning new things every day. In the accounts team we’re always trying to see if there’s a better way to achieve something, we bounce ideas off each other and try them out to see if they’re more efficient. I’m a numbers girl but I have a creative side too so listening to new suggestions on how we can better support our members really interests me.

Another great thing about working within the EC is definitely attending the events. My first event was the National Entrepreneur’s Convention and I loved connecting with all the people and discovering more about their businesses.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Outside of work I’m a real foodie so I grow lots of vegetables and herbs in our garden and love to cook with home-grown produce. I’ll be making lots of jams and chutneys this year from our fruit trees and vegetable patch. I also like to go for city breaks in the UK for weekends away but when I’m at home I’m usually curled up with a good crime fiction book.

With more and more EC members using Infusionsoft and other CRM systems to put in place long-term auto responder campaigns in order to keep in touch with the people in their marketing funnel, I thought I’d share with you four neat little tricks that are having very positive impacts here at Botty Towers.

Four Auto Responder Tricks to Boost Your Returns

Say Hi to our

Assistant

Accountant

Of course, for these tricks to work you need to have an auto responder campaign in place… you do have one don’t you? Just last month we sold a franchise to someone who first enquired over three years ago.

A quick look at Infusion shows me that they have received 187 emails from me between their first lead coming in and their five-figure purchase. Well worth the effort.

UNLOCKING THE WILL TO ACT

If you think you don’t need this, then it’s definitely for you

There can’t be many people in or around the EC who haven’t, by now heard about Terry Gormley’s fascinating Unlocking the Will to Act courses.

We’ve yet to meet anybody who has been on one that hasn’t changed their behaviour and results – in business and in their daily lives – for the better.

Here’s Terry to explain more about the course and why, if you think you don’t need it, you definitely do...

No matter how much great content there is, there will always be too many business owners not implementing it.

There’s often a block between what they want to do and what they actually do. That’s what the Will to Act is about. It’s about unlocking the secrets to why people aren’t doing the things that will benefit them.

For example, in my experience as far as the Circle is concerned, many more people could – and should – be doing their 90 minutes every day. It’s about behavior change at an unconscious level.

The thing is, people behave on autopilot without thinking through what they’re doing. They don’t plan, they don’t execute and they procrastinate.

Doing this means that their business will remain the

same year after year and this leads them to get angry and frustrated because they’re not getting what they want. In short, they’re not in control.

I’ve talked to Nigel a lot over the years, often about why people don’t do the things that are good for them and their businesses and we realised that we were both really passionate about helping them.

However, it’s difficult to put a label on what I do simply because what applies to one person rarely applies to another. It’s about unlocking what gets the job done for each individual. We want people to look at themselves in a way that they don’t in any other kind of training.

Over the years, I’ve worked with drug addicts, sportspeople, people who have stopped

drinking and people who have lost weight. These are just effects. We work hard to make them aware of the reasons they’re not doing things that help them to achieve their goals. Some have family blocks, some people are in the wrong businesses but they keep doing the same things every day and expecting different results.

The thing is, whatever the industry and whatever background people are from, it works for everybody because we’re all human and all have self-imposed limits.

People are worried about being uncomfortable. That’s the secret to everything I address in Unlocking the Will to Act.

I teach them how to feel the fear but do it anyway.

Throughout the course, people pick all these things up. I create

an amazing atmosphere where people feel comfortable and can open up, which enables them to do different things.

The bottom line is, if you can change the attitudes and the core elements within people then you can change everything else externally.

Nobody recognises the blocks that affect them and most people think they’re alright.

During the courses, I use behavioural change techniques and language and pay attention to people’s unconscious movements, how they breathe etc. I then use the tools and resources I’ve built up over 10 years to help them change and clear up the behaviours that have been holding them back.

The thing is, you can only help people to change when they’re willing to change.

Terry

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If you think you don’t need this, then it’s definitely for you

Take my own story, for example. I was a miner then a fire fighter then I ran a small business in fire safety on my days off. I went on what I thought was an eight-day communications course to help me to sell more stuff and it changed my life, mainly because how you communicate with yourself is just as important as the way in which you communicate with other people.

You get what you focus on.

Ask most people how they’re doing and they’ll say “not bad” or something similar. But if you understand the mind, you’ll know that it doesn’t pick up negation. What these people are telling themselves is that they are bad every single day. They focus on the negatives in life.

My fire safety business was doing okay in its first year – I was turning over around £60k. But I went on this course and when I came back I made £10k in the next four or five days and it was all down to the way I was communicating with my self. Now, over 10 years later, I have the UK’s leading fire safety training company amongst the other things in my portfolio.

Here’s the thing that business owners don’t realise: for things to change for them things have to change in them.

On this course, people discover advanced thinking and behaviour techniques and the tools that build rapport with others.

But they need to address them because people’s lives don’t change unless they change their thinking and their behaviour.

Basically, what I’m saying is if you are sat reading this article and you are saying to yourself that you don’t need this course, then my experience tells me it’s definitely for you.

For more info on Terry’s coaching courses, call our team on 0121 765 5551.

I’ve had the great pleasure of being mentored by Terry and this has had a dramatic impact on me and our business.

Having implemented a lot of the techniques, which we’ve learned though the EC, I realised that there was still a barrier, which was preventing significant growth – and that barrier was my own thinking.

There is a huge difference between knowing something and actually doing it. I was that barrier and thinking differently has changed our results. Being a small family business, I lived in fear of making the wrong decisions and the impact they might have on our business and our family and so I placed an artificial impediment to growth.

However, learning to act in spite of that fear, as well as getting used to being outside my comfort zone has made all the difference. In fact I now describe it as being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I have some words from Terry, which sit at the side of my desk and I see every day: “If you don’t ask for more, then Chloe and Olivia [my granddaughters] will not get more” and “If you let pride get in the way of what’s best for your family then you’re an idiot.

David Browne, The Scottish Shutter Company

I was wanting to find clarity on what was stopping me from doing the things I knew I should be doing. My business was growing massively but I knew it could do more.

The change for me didn’t occur in one single moment on the course, rather my thinking has changed as a result of the Convention and following up with Terry’s course. There are key messages from the Convention that I thought about more while on the course.

The conclusion I came to was as a consequence of thinking more about things afterwards. While at the convention, a number of things really resonated with me so I got to thinking about why this was the case.

My big take away from the course was that it made me realise that I was messing around at the edges of my business, which was making things five or 10 percent better but what I really wanted to do was make it 10 times better. I soon came to the conclusion that I was getting distracted because what I had planned wasn’t actually challenging enough. I was getting bored.

Hazel Edwards, Container Team

On the first day of the course, all I could say was ‘I don’t know why I’m here but something made me come’. I was interested in seeing where it would lead me.

What I got out of it was a lot different to what I envisaged. I was very aware that I had gotten into bad habits – I can procrastinate for England – and I just wanted to understand why I wasn’t doing the things I knew I should’ve been.

Terry steers you away from what you think the problem is and gets to the bottom of what it actually is. I think, for many in the room, the problem they needed to overcome turned out to be completely different to the one they thought.

For me, it was about clarity. On the first day, I decided that I had three of four separate issues but Terry gets you to realise that they’re not separate at all. They’re all part of the same issue. He gets you to think about your goals, what’s important and how negative behaviours stop you achieving what you want.

Every day since, I’ve done my 90 minutes – although not at the same time as before because that wasn’t working. Instead I’ve worked out what’s best for me.

Sian Nisbett, Dizzy Ducks Day Nurseries Ltd

The main thing I took away from the course was a better understanding of why things haven’t worked quite as I’d hoped in my business this year.

It helped me to address some issues in my own head that were restricting my business from moving forward.

When you’re in the environment that Terry creates, it makes you think differently. For example, there was something called ‘map versus territory’ – which I’d never heard of – that went a long way to explaining why I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing. Basically, I was trying to make it from A to B but using somebody else’s map, not my own.

A lot of things were addressed at a personal level too. There was so much to think about but the key thing was working out why I’d been so unhappy throughout much of 2013. To have a business that you’ve been running for three years suddenly go downhill is a big thing, particularly when you don’t know why. Now I do.

It made me address issues in a more logical way. It’s let me move beyond issues – some of which had been holding me back since childhood – and see things much more clearly from a business point of view.

Paul Cox, Spinless Plates

Get ready for the new and improved 14 Days of Love – now called the Local and Loved Business Awards.Like to see your business crowned one of the most loved in the UK? Loved and Local 2014 is your chance to be recognised for your excellent service and to prove to potential customers out there that you truly are the best in town!

It’s also an opportunity for everybody to show their appreciation for the hard work that local businesses do to maintain local pride and help grow local economies. Now in its 5th year, the campaign is designed to raise the profile and awareness of local businesses and prove that community spirit and engagement can make a real positive impact on towns across the country.

The campaign sees shoppers in towns across the UK voting to decide which local business will be crowned the best loved in their area, category or even in the whole of the UK. To help support the campaign, thebestof will be promoting it nationally through e-shots and social media and we’ve produced special marketing packs, which will help to get customers involved and give businesses an even better chance of scoring some great PR and building their reputation in their local area.

Not only this but to encourage customers to leave a review, thebestof will also be holding a prize draw every day from 1st to 14th February, with each reviewer in with the chance to win a daily cash prize to be spent with a local thebestof member.

What now?If you want to enter the awards and get your business recognised as one of the most loved in the UK, then contact your local thebestof of franchisee for a marketing pack, containing banners, postcards, flyers, flags, posters, bunting and artwork to put on your website.

Campaign winners will be announced on February 16th.

Chris SmithSophie ProwseCharles Holdsworth HuntTom RonanTim TandlerFelicia BasiDerek WestRichard IngateCraig JacksonAngela BelassieMichael TrewinChris HallMartin JohnsonRobert CaswellPaul MooneyMichael WilsonPete CannSteve HoltGisa EllisDarren PlattsCat SwatridgeJohn Wright

Suzanne HighamJon KempBen LovegroveJude DeeksSarah CalderMaria BlanchardDennis WilsonKenneth GrannellSally WilsonJohn MurrayDavid SoleMark PowellTim BaldwinJoe HinchliffeMartyn CareyLise HardimanRichard CurtisDivian MistryDeborah KerrClive WilliamsSimon WebsterSteve Thurgood

Peter AmorMark EganSerhat AkcaPatricia NilandDarren PlattsAdam GrayRichard CurtisAnice McNamee Amanda WellerDavid ShawGareth DaviesIgor DalavourokMark PotterPosy BrewerRichard KirsteinIan SpillerLouise DeeleyStephen CantorLucy BainbridgeElisa NortonMiklos VargaDerek Boxall

Patrick PokuDavid RixCate AdamsonJerry JariwallaSarah RuggIan ReadPaul KeoghJohn OrrLaura MussellOlive SegreGavin FlaxmanVivienne Logan-ReidDavid FeastAdam ButteryMariette JansenCherie PlaiceAnn PraxLindsey WrightAmy SomervilleNicky Ansty

Congratulations and welcome to the latest group of forward thinking business owners that joined the Circle last month. You’ve made a smart decision! Make sure you make the most of your membership by booking on to our upcoming events (both national AND local), delving deep into the super useful content in The Vault on the member’s website and taking those nuggets to implement from the monthly Circulars. It’s great to have you on board as part of the gang. Here are the new members who joined in the last month:

New members this month…

A WARM WELCOME TO…

It’s been over three years since we launched the Entrepreneur’s Circle and we’ve learned a lot since then. We’re always on the lookout for ways to make the Circle even more valuable for you, and that’s why we’re going to be making some big changes over the next few weeks and months.

We don’t want to spoil the surprise (hence this little tease!) but you’ll be the first to know when we’ve got something to share.

Rest assured, we’re working hard to make the EC more useful and more practical than ever, and we can’t wait to tell you what’s coming up!

THE FAB FOUR

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A Word from the Experts

Carolyne WahlenGap HR Services

Ed PearsonHead of Member Services for the EC

From zero to hero – the reality of zero hours contracts Rediscovering RiskAre you one of those evil employers that the media have been bashing throughout the summer?

Are you using zero hours contracts to exploit workers? Of course you’re not. However, if you’ve caught even a glimpse of the media during the ‘silly season’ you might be wondering why you’re being treated like you’re sending children up chimneys.

Essentially a zero hour contract is simply a contract of employment, much like any other. It provides a written account of the terms and conditions of employment and makes provisions for an on-call arrangement between the employer and employee.

There is no obligation for the employer to offer work and nor is the employee required to accept the work offered; they do however have to agree to be ‘available for work as and when required’ and will be paid only for the hours they do work.

Use of these contracts is flourishing as they minimise the risk of taking on new staff to meet demand as and when required.

However it is worth considering that using zero hour contracts is not good if you are trying to build a team that works well together, and a cohesive team will naturally deliver better results. Zero hours contracts can lead to lower morale and less commitment from staff that see less commitment from you!

It is also a double edged sword; while you can be flexible on the hours you offer, there is no obligation for the employee to accept them, so without careful management you might find that you do not have the staff you need. This could mean you need a bigger pool of potential employees in order to ensure you are always properly staffed.

Local Mastermind Member Carolyne formed GAP HR Services with the aim of helping employers deal effectively with staff issues. She also has a niche offering for golf clubs and has been a member of the EC since 2010.

They were surprised he wasn’t a lot taller when they finally met this powerhouse of business guruship... Hang on, that’s another article.

Ed’s wide and varied background in business mean he’s the perfect guy to take a magnifying glass to history and use his crystal ball to determine a strategy for the year ahead.

Remember when you first took that scary step to set up in business? Have you ever looked back and thought about the huge risks that you took? The decisions you made that, looking back, seem a little bonkers?

Well, in the downturn of the last few years, a skillset of discernment has come to the fore. It’s seen business owners treading extra carefully when deciding where to spend their hard earned money.

Nothing too wrong with that of course.

But now the economy is on the up again, presenting you with a great opportunity to grow your business.

However, consider the following statement: The largest number of insolvencies in any market happen during periods of market growth.

You see, one thing that happens is that the businesses that have fought long and hard to remain afloat in a downturn market have done so on a strategy of careful and prudent investment.

However, when the marketplace starts to grow, the fearless Johnny-come-lately startups, realising there’re potential profits to be harvested start to risk it all – like you did when you first started up.

But they couldn’t possibly thrive could they? Well, the fact is that they do and so must you!

Other long-standing competitors who stick with their outdated strategies suddenly start to lose ground as opportunities for growth go to the bolder emerging businesses. Old mentality companies are left to dissolve.

So, if you prescribe to the view that the recent stories of low inflation and steady interest rates are the signs of wider recovery, then the time has arrived to shed the old strategies and rediscover risk.

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Every month we’ll be asking four experts to share with us a few pearls of wisdom that you can put to use in your business. From the latest software recommendations to the best ways to get yourself and your business in front of the people who matter, you’ll hear it all here from the guys in the know.

Dominic Jones Barton Technology

Phil Wintermantle EC web expert

Data Security – what can you do?

Create super-converting lead magnets – in 3 minutes

Mastermind Member Dominic is the guy that many EC members turn to when they need good tech advice and, speaking from experience, we can honestly say that what Dominic doesn’t know about IT isn’t worth knowing.

You all know Phil as the EC’s web wizard. What you may not know is that he’s so dedicated to all things online, he hasn’t used a pen since 2007.

Keeping their own and their customers’ information safe should be top of every entrepreneur’s priority list.

For example, what would happen if you were suddenly unable to look up a customer’s contact details or access their quotes/reports/information?

I’m betting it would severely impact your business.

When put in black and white like this you might be asking yourself “who would even consider using a company that could pose such a risk?” Yet every week I see switched on business owners who really care about their customers putting that relationship in jeopardy.

Consequently, having some kind of offsite data backup is paramount. With hardware failure, software crashes and viruses to contend with, having only a single copy of your data could be disastrous. So what can you do?

Well luckily there are many options available. You could go down the traditional route and make manual copies of your data to a tape drive, USB stick or external hard disk. This option is better than nothing but backup can still be forgotten. It also doesn’t overcome the fact that the drive is typically in the same location as the ‘live’ data, meaning a fire or theft would make it useless.

Alternatively, you could use a cloud file synchronisation service like Dropbox, iCloud or Skydrive. These can be cost effective but may not always be compliance suitable due to T&Cs allowing service providers access to data.

The other solution, which works well for many, is a cloud backup service whereby an automatic, regular copy of your files is securely made and to which only you have access. Many business owners prefer this approach because it provides a cost effective, flexible and scalable way to keep their data secure.

If you would like a list of recommended providers or more information, email me at dominicj@barttech.co.uk.

How to find out what your prospects want to buy, increase email deliverability and create super converting lead magnets in less than three minutes

Let’s talk ‘Feedback loops’, here’s the concept... When a prospect fills in a form on your website, opt’s in for a lead magnet and gives you their name and email in return for something of value then it’s the perfect time to create an opportunity for them to feedback and start a conversation.

What you need to do early on in your email auto-responder follow up (ideally in the first email you send them) is have a reason for the prospect to reply to your email. So you just need to ask them a smart question that gets them to respond and give you some key information, this question is:

“What’s the number one thing you need help with right now? “

When they respond to you with their cries for help not only are you improving email deliverability because they have replied to you rather than you just broadcasting to them, but it also enables you to fire off a personal and specific conversation about how you can help them right now (this might give you some clues as to what they want to buy and how you can tailor your sales process to want they need!).

Finally, the third benefit is you’ll start seeing patters as to what people think they need help with which means you can go back to your website or squeeze pages and change what you’re giving away to get people to opt-in in the first place (your lead magnets). So when a pattern emerges because people keep telling you they need help with Facebook ads you can change your lead magnet to offer that instead which will improve your opt-in conversion rates.

Clever right – so go do it, will take you three minutes to implement…

A NEW WAY OF RAISING CASH

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When Mastermind Member Carole Aldred needed to raise a little extra cash to finance an unmissable business opportunity, waiting for weeks for a reply from her bank wasn’t an option. Instead she turned to a less traditional method of finding investment…I first heard about peer to peer lending – more specifically, an organisation called the Funding Circle – through my Mastermind Group.

I put the word out that I was looking to expand my business by buying up established magazines. I initially expected it to happen one at a time but instead ended up with four publications approaching me at once.

Now, this sounds like a lot to take on and I’d obviously need to raise more money than I originally thought but I knew about these publications and could see how profitable they were so it was an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up. Because of this, I knew I needed to act fast.

This is when I approached the Funding Circle.

The first step was a quick telephone call. They wanted to know my business’s turnover (they’ll lend 25% of this) and we established exactly how much I needed to borrow.

Then I made my official application, which took just 20 minutes online.

I had to write a summary, in 700 characters, about

what I wanted the money for and why they should lend to me. I basically had to sell myself. Then needed to set out in detail exactly what I wanted to do with the money.

When my application was submitted, they said I would hear back from them in two to three days but their answer actually came back in just 24 hours.

Once your application has been accepted and approved, it is put online on the Funding Circle marketplace where investors then bid to lend you money, depending on the interest you want to pay. People can bid at any percentage and each business has its own criteria regarding the optimum interest rate, usually between 7.5% and 11.5%.

Mine was calculated to be around 9.5%.

It’s also worth mentioning at this point that the funding Circle is a great place to invest too because you get better return than most of other places.

So, after my application made it onto the marketplace, it was fully funded within an hour. This meant that, I made my application on the Friday and the money was in my account by the following Friday.

Dealing with the banks is like treading treacle

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When Mastermind Member Carole Aldred needed to raise a little extra cash to finance an unmissable business opportunity, waiting for weeks for a reply from her bank wasn’t an option. Instead she turned to a less traditional method of finding investment…

This just wouldn’t happen with a bank. It was so simple and it was also a great feeling knowing that many fellow entrepreneurs were willing to invest in me.

Another advantage is that 20% of the loan is also funded by the UK government, so in actual fact, you only need 80% from fellow business owners.

When you gain the funding you need, it works like a traditional loan in that you pay back a set amount each month, depending on what you borrow and at what interest rate. You can also pay it back in full at any time.

As I mentioned, the Funding Circle and similar organisations allow you to act quickly. When the magazines came up for sale, I sent an email to my bank at the same time. Within a week the Funding Circle had allowed me to raise the money whereas I’m still waiting for a call back from the bank. When compared with the Funding circle, dealing with the banks is like treading treacle.

It was so straightforward, easy and there was no stress. As somebody else who has raised investment this way pointed out to me, you don’t feel like you’re being grilled as you sometimes do with the banks. And – a massive plus – there’s less chance of them saying no.

If anybody in the Circle is looking to raise money in a quick, easy, stress-free way, I’d definitely recommend they contact a peer to peer lender. Just have a chat, check out the rate and, if you’re happy with the terms, go for it.

In fact, I can honestly say, if I wanted to do it again, I wouldn’t even bother trying the bank. Most business owners want to move quickly, not wait weeks. When it comes to raising the money your business needs, I really don’t think it can get any easier.

Dealing with the banks is like treading treacle

Carole

Many thanks to Inside Track member Jonathan Coleman who sent us this email, which his wife, Christine, received in November from

A buyer is a buyer, is a buyer

As you can see, there’s a brand new cruise ship launching in January and the offer was a one-night stay on-board in Southampton for just £25 per person.

As Jonathan himself says “This is really impressive – they’re going to fill that ship and can you imagine the cruise deals that will be available and be sold during those 24 hours?

The cost per visitor, which I guess is effectively laundering the bed linen, is teeny-weeny. I bet their conversion rate will be really high.”

He’s right. It’s a clever piece of marketing – and I’d expect nothing less from Virgin. Giving stuff away for just a few pounds attracts buyers – which is way more powerful than giving stuff away for free. And that’s why I bet the conversion rates on 15th January will be much higher than any regular type of marketing they do.

We’ve recently made some changes to our marketing funnels to bring people in, at very low cost, much earlier in the cycle so that we identify those who are prepared to spend money and we can then focus our marketing efforts on them.

This principle applies to pretty much every business: a buyer is a buyer, is a buyer and making it easy for people to buy from you first by putting together really compelling offers like this one can make a big difference to your customer numbers and conversion rates months down the line.

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LIKE A VIRGIN

THE HOTTEST TICKET IN TOWN

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Get your FREE ticket to the Million Pound Masterplan event 2014There’s a unique opportunity coming up for our members to get involved in one of the most unique and prized events that the EC has ever run – absolutely free of charge!

The Million Pound Masterplan 2014.

Of all the events we’ve ever run, this is the most talked about and requested by EC Members. So we’ve decided to put on another one in 2014. So what makes the Masterplan so groundbreaking? Here’s a quick rundown of what’s involved…

Days 1 & 2Nigel will be onstage sharing his ‘Million Pound Masterplan’ – everything that needs to happen (and the order in which it should happen) to take a business from zero to a million.

Days 3 & 4This is all about making stuff happen. Nigel will be joined by his team of specialists; people who know what they’re talking about.

What other event could you go to where you get all the work done at the event with help from seasoned pros? The answer: none.

The Why Now? EventsIn January, we’ll be running 121 local events all over the UK. They’re called ‘Why Now?’ events and will be revealing the blueprint that will help UK business owners to seize the opportunities coming their way in 2014 and markedly grow their businesses into next year and beyond. And we need your help.

The events are all about introducing business owners and entrepreneurs to the Circle and we thought there’s nobody better to do this than you, our members. After all, you’re the people who know all about what we do and who properly understand what we can do for UK business owners.

So, in return for inviting a non-member of the Circle to a Why Now? event, we’d like to reward you with a FREE ticket – worth £1,500 – to Masterplan 2014.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

1) You invite fellow business owners, friends, associates and suppliers to your local Why Now? event. Point them to www.whynow2014.co.uk so they can watch the video and pick their local event.

2) Once they book their ticket, they’ll be asked to give the name of the person who referred them (that’s you). This is how we’ll know that YOU invited them.

3) If one of your invited people joins the EC at the event and remains a member for three months, you’ll be sent a Standard ticket to the Masterplan 2014 event.

4) But there’s more. If you get two people to come along and join the Circle, you’ll be upgraded to a Gold ticket. Get three people along who sign up as members and guess what? You’ll get a VIP ticket to Masterplan.

What’s more, we’ve made it really easy to get people along by providing you with three sure-fire email templates to send out. Download the emails and get all the info at www.nigelbotterill.com/whynow. There, you’ll find a video of Nige explaining it all.

Currently, you can’t buy a ticket to the Masterplan. They’re unavailable for purchase. But there is another way in which you can reserve your place:

The first event kicks off on the 6th Jan, and some events have sold out, so if you want to get your hands on a completely FREE Masterplan ticket (usually worth £1,500), you’ll need to act fast.

HAVE YOU GOT BANANARAMA SYNDROME?

26

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it

We all know that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. And we also know that not doing things properly in your business is utterly crazy. Here Nigel recounts a meeting with somebody who suffers from a very peculiar – but serious – condition.

I recently did a 1:1 with a member who runs a successful business. She has been going for four years, is turning over well

over half a million pounds but is only making about £40,000 profit. When she came on the phone she told me that she thought she was doing everything that she possibly could, which just didn’t seem congruent with the numbers that she shared with me.

When I asked if she did any email marketing, she confirmed that yes, she did all that. When I enquired about her database, she confirmed that her staff did put customer details into a database. When I asked about referrals again, the answer was, “Yes, we do that” and so it went on.

However, the minute I started to probe more deeply it immediately became obvious that this particular business owner was an acute sufferer of what I call ‘Bananarama Syndrome’.

Those of us of a certain age will remember the second most successful girl band of all time (they lost their crown to the Spice Girls over 10 years ago) who, in the 1980s had a string of top 10 hits. One of the most popular was, ‘It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It’ and it’s this song from which the clinical condition ‘Bananarama Syndrome’ originates.

You see, this particular business owner was not doing any of the things that she thought she was doing properly. Sure, she was having a dabble but dabbling never made anyone super-successful in business. You have to do things properly.

Her email marketing consisted of just seven emails in the whole of 2013. Seven! I send that many in a week – and so should she (at least on some occasions when she’s got special promotions going on, etc).

Her business served over 5,000 customers last year, yet her database has only 700 people on it. Classic Bananarama Syndrome. She hasn’t got a SYSTEM in place to ensure that her staff systematically collect customer contact information. This information genuinely has the potential to become the single most valuable asset in her business – IF she collects it and IF she uses it. On its own it can transform her turnover and her P&L.

With regard to referrals – without giving too much away as to the type of business this is, she has a huge opportunity to be handing out cards when people leave her premises inviting them back, with an appropriate discount within the next two to three weeks. It turns out that she has actually done this on one occasion and, “It worked quite well…” but she has never done it again (this is actually called ‘Bonkers Syndrome’ and it is much more serious than Bananarama Syndrome!).

I hope my point is coming across really clearly here. It genuinely is not about what you do when it comes to marketing your business but, much more importantly, about the way that you do it. And that’s about having the systems, routines and rigour that is sadly absent in all too many businesses. It really ain’t what you do – but the way that you do it...

27

Andy Willcox - 07792 368366Cardiff/Swindon/Hereford/Worcester/Wells/ Weston-Super-Mare/Taunton/Truro

Julia Bramble - 01395 349201Exeter/Plymouth

Chris Olchawski - 01550 739053Carmanthan/Swansea/Haverfordwest

Julia Canham - 01543 406115Leicestershire/Staffordshire

Chris Richards & Steve Allen - 01235 843272Preston, Lancaster & The Fylde

Karl Anscombe - 07792 368309Brighton/Worthing/Southampton/Portsmouth/Winchester/Crawley/East Grinstead/Tunbridge/Croydon/Bromley/Chichester/Worthing/Weybridge

Clare Szurek - 07792 368270Kidderminster/Wolverhampton/Shrewsbury/Telford/Derby/ Sutton Coldfield/Peterborough/Huntingdon/Cambridge/ Bury St Edmunds/Ipswich/Colchester/Kings Lynn/Norwich

Keith Haynes - 01234 731488Milton Keynes/Bedford

Damian Mark Smyth - 07792 368348North London/East London/South London/West London/Central London/Essex/Watford & Hemel Hempstead

Leona & Vida Barr-Jones - 01462 757327Bishop’s Stortford/Hitchin

David Cambridge - 01727 789010Luton & St Albans

Mark Greig & Nick Howes - 02476 419576Coventry

David Wimblett - 0208 9707447Richmond & Kingston

Martin Norbury & Chris Waters - 0118 9680869

Farnborough/Caversham/Maidenhead

Emma Melhuish - 01460 240773Bristol

Paul Chapman - 0115 9717061Nottinghamshire

Gemma Toner - 07792 368257Newcastle/Washington/Glasgow/Edinburgh/Carlisle/Middlesborough/Barrow/Kendal/Stockton/Sunderland/Aberdeen/Fife & Dundee

Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis - 01865 389934Leamington Spa/Oxford/Shipton

Ian George - 01843 347010Maidstone & The Medway Towns

Robin Sharpe - 01604 269533Northamptonshire

Ian Jackson - 0289 0160498Northern Ireland

Sam Flynn - 0161 4513016Manchester

Ian Prowse - 01527 531394Bromsgrove/Reddich/Solihull

Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant - 01759 359076Scarborough/York/Hull

Jay Allen - 07792 368318Harrogate/Leeds/Barnsley/Chester/Sheffield/Doncaster/ Macclesfield/Oldham/Stockport/Wigan/Bolton/Halifax/ Lincoln/Bradford/Huddersfield/Blackburn/Wakefield

Sue Benoke - 01425 622441

Bournemouth & Poole

Jerry Walsingham - 01225 458404Bath & West Wilshire

Tim Savage - 01264 839777Newbury/Basingstoke/Andover

Jill Chitty - 01242 639144Cheltenham & Gloucester

Vanessa Lanham-Day - 01483 426577

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Jonathan Davies - 0151 2686122Liverpool

BGA DirectoryThere have been a few changes to our BGA network recently. Here’s a definitive list of our current BGAs for your reference...

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M

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I

J

I WANT TO TELL YOU A STORY...

28

Did you hear the one about the $2bn sales letter?

“Poor management and the lack of financial information are two of the biggest threats

to the wellbeing of your business. If your decision

making is based on no numbers or those numbers are out of date, then your

business is in danger.

Entrepreneurs know that cash flow is king!

You can be really profitable on paper, but unless you get your invoices paid

promptly, you will get into serious trouble.

Accurate and correct management accounts

give you the tools to monitor your cash flow bottlenecks. They will also allow you to ask probing questions.

Do you have too much money tied up in stock?

How much are you losing through wastage? Who owes you money? How

long are they taking to pay? All these numbers are the lifeblood of your business.

Late payers and bad debt will cripple your business.

Keeping a tight rein on who owes you money,

when payments are due and a robust credit control

policy will all help build your company’s defences.

As accountants, we know how

important your processes and

systems that deliver these vital business

metrics are.

Extend the fears. If your invoices aren’t paid promptly, your cash flow could suffer and you’ll find yourself in trouble – fast.

Bear in mind that fear and pain sell five times more effectively than aspiration. I can wait for my Ferrari until next week, but I need my bad back fixed TODAY.

To build trust your reader needs to know that you understand their problems and that you have the solution; that you have a silver bullet.

Your readers don’t want to discover or be taught – they want answers.

Once you have highlighted the problem, reveal your solution.

We’re not selling at this point, simply describing the solution. Don’t talk about yourself and don’t talk about features. Instead, focus on benefits.

Describing consequences is a powerful way to develop fear. Try to use graphic words: cripple; defences; robust.

And don’t forget, your solution must offer the answer.

People connect better when you mention specific problems. Pick the main one and extend the feelings of fear, lack of control and ignorance.

The most successful sales letter of all time sold $2bn worth of the Wall Street Journal.

The letter was a story about two young men returning to a college reunion.

It started like this:

On a beautiful late spring afternoon, 25 years ago, two young men graduated from the same college.

They were very much alike, these two young men. Both

had been better than average students, both were personable and both as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams

for the future.

If you’re like us, just these few lines will have you desperate to read on. That’s the power of a good story.

For 20 years the publication used this marketing piece as a control, testing others against it – yet nothing performed better.

So, why are stories so good for marketing? Simple. Because we love them.

Here’s Doodle Ads’ David Kyte to explain a little more about how to craft stories in your marketing...

First you need to identify your audience and seed problems. Describe the fears that a small business owner has.

You’re trying to create feelings that the reader can relate to – for example, not making the pay roll or being able to pay their VAT bill.

29

For more examples of inspiring storytelling, visit www.doodle-ads.co.uk/EC

Everybody has a story to tell but you need to

grasp a few rules and understand the structure that lies beneath the surface.

If you are thinking “emotional sales don’t apply to my business,” here’s a fact:

No business has ever bought anything.

People buy stuff.

To show you what I mean, let’s review a story I wrote for a marketplace that might be considered a little dry – accountancy.

When we write scripts we ask who is the target market, what is their problem and how do they feel right now?

The important thing we need to understand is that, when we buy, we do so emotionally.

In our accountancy case study, for example, you might be thinking

“Accountants, emotions, really?”

Absolutely! You see, it’s not about the accountant, it’s about the prospect.

Below is an example of one of my scripts that tackles each of these questions in turn, with each paragraph followed by the thinking behind it.

Once you’ve read the script, try taking a marketing piece you’ve created and ask:

• Is the piece about you or your prospect?

• Does it describe the benefit they’ll receive by using it?

• Are you developing emotional triggers?

• Are you using colourful words or is your language dull and unemotional?

If you need a friendly ear or want to take your bookkeeping,

management accounts, tax advice, business planning

or pensions to the next level, pick up the phone. If we can’t help directly, we’ll

almost certainly know someone who can.”

Not only will they make our job easier and cheaper,

they’ll deliver the critical numbers you need to make decisions. The next tool you

need in your bag is a well thought through business plan – we can help there

too.

One of the first jobs you should consider delegating

is your bookkeeping. It is simply a cost centre. If you want to offload this time

consuming but vital activity we can run it for you, or find

you a bookkeeper to help.

Understand that, as we deal with many

local businesses, we have built up a great

contact database of local suppliers. When you

look for local services, often we can recommend

someone to help.

You can sleep easy knowing that all your

usual regulatory paper work is covered: like preparing and filing

annual accounts, audits, stock checks and so on.

But the one job that will hit your pocket the most is ensuring that you only ever

pay the tax that you should and not a

penny more.

By taking the time to get to know you and your business, we identify all your legitimate expenses

and then defend your position with

the tax man.

Reinforce that level of trust with additional benefits.

You’re trying to persuade your audience that they want you on their team.

We are all afraid of making mistakes – your job is to prove that you can deliver. We are social beings and we need to be in a crowd where we feel safe. Social proof offers this comfort.

Make it clear that your solution offers so much more than the basics. The goal of this piece is to develop trust, to highlight a problem and persuade the reader that you can solve their problems.

To take the next step and effectively turn prospects into clients you have to offer a promise and a guarantee and tell them exactly what you are going to deliver.

Entrepreneurs never have enough time. Spell out that, by choosing your solution, they’ll have more control, better information and more time.

This sentence lays out what prospects stand to lose. You can also make it more powerful by describing how their saved money could be spent – cars, holidays, family etc.

Your story needs to finish with a strong call to action. Write your story with a purpose. What do you want the reader to do at the end?

David

30

Ask NigelHow Do I Answer these Emails?

Ken Fuller

Nige says:

“Many of my incoming emails from potential customers start ‘How much does your service cost?’

If, as you say, ‘How much?’ is a buying signal, but you want to avoid giving them a price until they have asked, how do you get to the point of asking intelligent questions and understanding the customer?”

This question has come about as a direct result of my presentation at the National Event in Basingstoke in November where I talked about the importance of understanding your customer and not giving a price until they have asked for it. This holds true even in the situation you describe.

The fact is, the people sending you these emails are interested in buying what you have and the way to respond to them would be something like the following:

“Thanks for your enquiry – it’s great to hear from you. There are a number of different levels of service that we can provide and

the truth is we have a solution to suit most budgets. Before I can tell you what the price

would be, I’d need to understand much more fully exactly what it is that you’re looking for, so if you can give me a call

on … or, if you prefer, just hit reply to this email, send me your phone number and a

convenient time for us to have a chat.”

A response like that moves you onto the next step without really pushing any control on the sales process.

I hope that helps.

31

If you’ve got a queston that you’d like answered, just log on to the members website and ‘Ask Nigel’.

Should I Outsource my PPC?

Julie Souter

Nige says:

“Nigel, I understand that Google AdWords will almost certainly be an effective marketing pillar for me, but I also know enough to understand that to do it properly and well it will require a lot of time – time that I simply don’t have. Is there a way to effectively outsource your AdWords or is it true that ‘nobody will ever care about your business as much as you do …’ and therefore I have to find a way to do it in-house?”

The key to outsourcing anything is to be an informed client. With regards to AdWords, what that means is that you have to know your way around it. You have to understand how the campaigns work, what the reports mean, how frequently your negative keywords should be updated, how to spot new negative keywords that need adding, what a good CTR is, etc. In that respect you cannot abdicate acquiring some knowledge but it is possible to find the right outsource partners. There are people around who will do a good job.

Unfortunately, there are also lots of people out there simply in it to make a quick buck and the fact is they won’t give your AdWords account anything like the amount of time and attention that it needs. On the December Botcast (available for Club members and above), David Brown of the Scottish Shutter Company spoke of how he regularly spends one or

two hours A DAY on his AdWords account but that the impact that he’s having on his business more than justifies that time. The reality is you’re unlikely to find many outsource providers – especially those who want to charge you based on a percentage of what you spend (run a mile from them!) giving anything like this amount of attention.

So shop carefully, make sure you’re properly informed and ask the right questions.

Jo Davies who has run my AdWords accounts for over eight years now has some capacity to take on a small number of new clients during the first quarter and if that is of interest then you should email her at support@entrepreneurscircle.co.uk.

32

Thurs 2nd Central London Damian Mark Smyth

Mon 6th Newcastle Gemma Toner

Harrogate Jay Allen

East London Damian Mark Smyth

Tues 7th Barnsley Jay Allen

Wolverhampton Clare Szurek

Kidderminster Clare Szurek

West London Damian Mark Smyth

Leamington Spa Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Washington Gemma Toner

Brighton & Worthing Karl Anscombe

Wed 8th Chester Jay Allen

Glasgow Gemma Toner

Milton Keynes Keith Haynes

Watford & Hemel Hempstead Damian Mark Smyth

Carmanthan Chris Olchawski

Oxford Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Southampton & Portsmouth Karl Anscombe

Thurs 9th Bradford Jay Allen

Edinburgh Gemma Toner

South London Damian Mark Smyth

Winchester Karl Anscombe

Fri 10th Ipswich Clare Szurek

Colchester Clare Szurek

Cardiff Andy Willcox

Mond 13th Sheffield Jay Allen

Scarborough Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant

Bedford Keith Haynes

Peterborough Clare Szurek

Huntingdon Clare Szurek

Richmond & Kingston David Wimblett

West London Damian Mark Smyth

Bishop’s Stortford Leona & Vida Barr-Jones

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Carlisle Gemma Toner

Tues 14th Manchester Sam Flynn

Macclesfield Jay Allen

Middlesborough Gemma Toner

Nottinghampshire Paul Chapman

Derby Clare Szurek

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Bournemouth & Poole Sue Benoke

Swindon Andy Willcox

Farnborough Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

Bath & West Wiltshire Jerry Walsingham

Wed 15th Liverpool Jonathan Davies

Oldham Jay Allen

York Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant

Barrow Gemma Toner

Shrewsbury Clare Szurek

Telford Clare Szurek

Maidstone & Medway Ian George

Hitchin Leona & Vida Barr-Jones

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Your Local Meeting DatesJanuaryDate DateArea AreaBGA BGA

Topic: Writing your email campaigns for 2014

The monthly local meetings are your opportunity to get hands-on, practical help for your business.

Bournemouth & Poole Sue Benoke

Hereford Andy Willcox

Worcester Andy Willcox

Luton & St Albans David Cambridge

Crawley & East Grinstead Karl Anscombe

Bath & West Wiltshire Jerry Walsingham

Thurs 16th Wigan Jay Allen

Essex Damian Mark Smyth

Wells Andy Willcox

Swansea Chris Olchawski

Kendal Gemma Toner

Tunbridge Karl Anscombe

Fri 17th Kings Lynn Clare Szurek

Norwich Clare Szurek

Mon 20th Halifax Jay Allen

Stockton Gemma Toner

Northamptonshire Robin Sharpe

South London Damina Mark Smyth

Tue 21st Bolton Jay Allen

Newbury Tim Savage

Sunderland Gemma Toner

Bristol Emma Melhuish

Cheltenham & Gloucestershire

Jill Chitty

Cambridge Clare Szurek

Bury St Edmunds Clare Szurek

Croydon & Bromley Karl Anscombe

Wed 22nd Huddersfield Jay Allen

Hull Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant

Essex Damian Mark Smyth

Shipton Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Basingstoke Tim Savage

Leicestershire Julia Canham

Caversham Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

Thurs 23rd Leeds Jay Allen

Haverfordwest Chris Olchawski

Staffordshire Julia Canham

Fri 24th Lincoln Jay Allen

Weston-Super-Mare Andy Willcox

Mon 27th Blackburn Jay Allen

North London Damian Mark Smyth

Northern Ireland Ian Jackson

Solihull Ian Prowse

Tues 28th Doncaster Jay Allen

Watford & Hemel Hempstead Damian Mark Smyth

Bromsgrove Ian Prowse

Chichester & Worthing Karl Anscombe

Wed 29th Stockport Jay Allen

Coventry Mark Greig & Nick Howes

South London Damian Mark Smyth

Taunton Andy Willcox

Weybridge Karl Anscombe

Thurs 30th Wakefield Jay Allen

East London Damian Mark Smyth

Truro Andy Willcox

Maidenhead Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

33

Mon 3rd Harrogate Jay Allen

Bedford Keith Haynes

Tues 4th Barnsley Jay Allen

East London Damian Mark Smyth

Brighton & Worthing Karl Anscombe

Wed 5th Chester Jay Allen

Milton Keynes Keith Haynes

Central London Damian Mark Smyth

Thurs 6th Bradford Jay Allen

South London Damian Mark Smyth

Cardiff Andy Willcox

Fri 7th Hereford & Worcester Andy Willcox

Mon 10th Sheffield Jay Allen

Cambridge Clare Szurek

Bury St. Edmunds Clare Szurek

Tues 11th Manchester Sam Flynn

Macclesfield Jay Allen

Nottinghamshire Paul Chapman

Ipswich Clare Szurek

Colchester Clare Szurek

Maidstone & The Medway Towns

Ian George

Leamington Spa Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Bournemouth and Poole Sue Benoke

Southampton & Portsmouth Karl Anscombe

Wed 12th Oldham Jay Allen

Derby Clare Szurek

Sutton Coldfield Clare Szurek

West London Damian Mark Smyth

Oxford Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Bournemouth and Poole Sue Benoke

Swindon Andy Willcox

Carmanthan Chris Olchawski

York Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant

Farnborough Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

Winchester Karl Anscombe

Thurs 13th Wigan Jay Allen

Peterborough Clare Szurek

Huntingdon Clare Szurek

Fri 14th Wells Andy Willcox

Mon 17th Halifax Jay Allen

Scarborough Steve Bentley & jon Olivant

Aberdeen Gemma Toner

Northamptonshire Robin Sharpe

Shrewsbury Clare Szurek

Telford Clare Szurek

Richmond & Kingston David Wimblett

West London Damian Mark Smyth

Bishop’s Stortford Leona & Vida Barr-Jones

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Tues 18th Bolton Jay Allen

Fife & Dundee Gemma Toner

Cheltenham & Gloucestershire

Jill Chitty

Kidderminster Clare Szurek

Your Local Meeting DatesFebruary

Date DateArea AreaBGA BGA

Topic: Delivering great presentations that sell

Wolverhampton Clare Szurek

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Bristol Emma Melhuish

Crawley & East Grinstead Karl Anscombe

Bath & WestWed 19th Liverpool Jonathan Davies

Huddersfield Jay Allen

Hull Steve Bentley & Jon Olivant

Glasgow Gemma Toner

Kings Lynn Clare Szurek

Norwich Clare Szurek

Luton & St Albans David Cambridge

Essex Damian Mark Smyth

Hitchin Leona & Vida Barr-Jones

South Surrey, Sutton & Epsom

Vanessa Lanham-Day

Weston-Super-Mare Andy Willcox

Leicestershire Julia Canham

Tunbridge Karl Anscombe

Thurs 20th Leeds Jay Allen

Edinburgh Gemma Toner

North London Damian Mark Smyth

Swansea Chris Olchawski

Solihull Ian Prowse

Staffordshire Julia Canham

Croydon & Bromley Karl Anscombe

Fri 21st Carlisle Gemma Toner

Lincoln Jay Allen

Mon 24th Blackburn Jay Allen

Central London Damian Mark Smyth

Basingstoke Tim Savage

Northern Ireland Ian Jackson

Newcastle Gemma Toner

Sunderland Gemma Toner

Bromsgrove Ian Prowse

Tues 25th Doncaster Jay Allen

Watford & Hemel Hempstead Damian Mark Smyth

Newbury Tim Savage

Taunton Andy Willcox

Caversham Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

Wed 26th Stockport Jay Allen

Coventry Mark Greig & Nick Howes

South London Damian Mark Smyth

Shipton Rob Banfield & Susan Lewis

Truro Andy Willcox

Chichester & Worthing Karl Anscombe

Thurs 27th Wakefield Jay Allen

East London Damian Mark Smyth

Haverfordwest Chris Olchawskiw

Maidenhead Martin Norbury & Chris Waters

Weybridge Karl Anscombe

The meetrings are all free to attend for members and timings and venues can be found by contacting the relevant BGA whose number you’ll find on page 27.

34

THE FINAL WORD

Whoa!BackupOh sh*t – two members in December had the rug metaphorically pulled from under them when their websites, on which they depend for huge amounts of leads, enquiries, etc were suddenly no longer available. In one case their web designer had gone AWOL and, unbeknown to them, not paid his hosting bills so, after apparently many warnings (to the web designer – not the business owner), the hosting company pulled the plug and the business owner had no way of getting his website back up again. The only thing he could do was rebuild it and re-launch it on another domain. It took two weeks and cost him an estimated £50,000 in lost business.

The other one was slightly less serious but involved corrupted files and, again an uncooperative web developer.

Both these individuals did not have ownership of their own domains and neither did they have a back-up of the code on their website. These two simple steps are your insurance policy against you also having that genuine nightmare scenario impacting and affecting you.

If you own the domain name (and I mean are actually the registered owner – not just paying your web guy to have it for you) AND YOU HAVE A COPY OF THE HTML CODE FOR YOUR WEBSITE SAFELY BACKED-UP IN A FILE THAT YOU HAVE ACCESS TO, ON YOUR SERVERS, then, even if the worst happens and you get let down by the developer or the hosting company somewhere you’ll be able to get backup reasonably quickly. But if you don’t own the domain and you have no backup then you really are screwed.

It’s a simple thing. Think of it as an insurance policy, almost.

Of course, it will be easy for you to ignore these words of wisdom and think, subconsciously at least, that “it won’t happen to me – my guy’s great…” All I can tell you is that the two gentlemen I’ve spoken about also thought that, but boy oh boy are they regretting it now, and that’s the final word.

Protect your website. Own the domain and back up the code. Now.

3535

Make your notes & action plans here…Please use this space to map out the things that you’re going to be doing over the next four – five weeks to move your business forward. Hope it helps …

Club level membership is the perfect next step for switched on entrepreneurs who are serious about seeking out the support they need to grow their businesses.

Sign up for a 12-month Club membership and you’ll get all Starter member benefits PLUS:

• A GUARANTEED 30-minute 1:1 meeting or call with Nigel

• Access to our PRIVATE Club Class Facebook group

• Exclusive member sessions at National Events

• Priority booking on ALL events

• Two Marketing Critique vouchers worth £145 each

• Exclusive advanced content in The Vault

• Your monthly Botcast CD

• Nige’s Notes – our special done-for-you reading service

Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneur’s Circular | January 2014

“The widest read business growth publication in the UK”

3 Olton Bridge, 245 Warwick Road, Solihull, West Midlands, B92 7AH / t. 0121 765 5551

www.nigelbotterill.com

Nigel Botterill’s Entrepreneur’s Circle

Starter

The ideal starting point for start-ups and smart business owners looking for practical help that will help them and their business grow.

• Access to National Membership Events

• Marketing critique sessions

• 1:1 with one of Nigel’s expert team

• Access to The Vault

• Fortnightly phone-ins giving you the help you need

• The monthly Entrepreneur’s Circular delivered to your door

• Regular online webinars with renowned experts

January 2014

March 2014

There are currently four levels of EC membership. Look out for new Club+ in 2014!

For information on any of the above events or to book on, call 0121 765 5551

February 2014

(by invitation only)

Inside Track is the invitation only package for serious entrepreneurs, offering up close and personal access to practical hands-on help from Nigel and his team.

Inside Track members get all Starter and Club benefits PLUS:

• Three full-day Business Success Events in Nige’s Boardroom

• 10 round table meetings, chaired by one of the EC team

• Monthly Friday lunch with Nige’s experts

• Scheduled 1:1 meetings or calls with Nigel, Mark, Thom, Phil, Jo or Paul

• Priority consideration for Mastermind groups

(by application only)

Available to join on an application-only basis, our Mastermind level membership is for those entrepreneurs who are deadly serious about transforming their business.

• 6 full on one-day meetings including direct access to one of Nige’s team

• Your personal Mastermind coordinator

• Direct access to Nigel’s team and specialists

• £1,200 credit to spend with our in-house design team, Botti Creative

• VIP privileges, including exclusive discounts and ‘queue jumper’ passes

• Direct access to Nigel, including 60-minute 1:1 meetings via phone or in person and one emergency ‘999’ call if you need to talk urgently

• Private 2-day Mastermind Summit at a luxury hotel

Tuesday 7th Mastermind Group 1 – Solihull

Thursday 9th Mastermind Group 2 – Solihull

Friday 10th Inside Track Round Table event – Solihull

Tuesday 14th Mastermind Group 3 – Solihull

Wednesday 15th PPC with Jo Davies – Solihull

Friday 17th Inside Track/Lunch with the Experts – Solihull

Saturday 18th &Sunday 19th ‘Unlocking the Will to Act’ with Terry Gormley - SOLD OUT

Wednesday 29th Platinum Mastermind Group 1 – Solihull

Friday 31th Platinum Mastermind Group 2 – Solihull

Monday 3rd Inside Track Round Table event – Solihull

Tuesday 4th Mastermind Group 1 – Solihull

Wednesday 5th PPC with Jo Davies – Solihull

Thursday 6th Mastermind Group 2 – Solihull

Tuesday 11th Mastermind Group 3 – Solihull

Friday 14th Inside Track Lunch with the Experts – Solihull

Thursday 27th Platinum Mastermind Group 1 – Solihull

Monday 3rd Inside Track Round Table event – Solihull

Tuesday 4th Platinum Mastermind Group 3 – Solihull

Monday 10th National Event – It Must Be Love - Midlands

Saturday 18th &Sunday 19th ‘Unlocking the Will to Act’ with Terry Gormley

Friday 21st Inside Track/Lunch with the Experts – Solihull

Thursday 27th Inside Track Business Growth Day – Solihull