The best thing I learnt after 8 years and what you can too... In one.

A couple of months back, I had my Great Marketing Works work anniversary. I know this as lots and lots of people congratulated me on LinkedIn. Which I am forever grateful for.

But it all got me to thinking? After 8 years what had we done? So I started looking at it all.

How – the big question. 

How many clients? More than 100.

How many training sessions and talks. More than 500.

How many consultancy gigs. More than a 1000.

How long did clients stay for ? Between 1 talk and 8 years!

Which sector did I get client from? More than 70% of our clients came from the education and training sectors. Ironically, for us,  they were also the worst paying sector per client. But I do love education so...

So… How much a day? From £50 (once) to £5000 (once.) But with the public sector paying less and less each year. And the private sector paying more and more.

All interesting stuff BUT…  None of this really informed me about me. It was just the business.

The What’s. The bigger questions. 

But then I found an old piece of paper. On it I had written down answers to an exercise my mentor had set me many moons ago. I had kept this piece of paper on my wall but never really looked at it and I now had the chance to do the exercise again and compare and contrast my answers.

Was I really on track?

My simple suggestion is that you write down the answers to the questions below.

And then in a year or two (probably not 8) come back to them and do it again. Have you changed? Are you on track? Should you take a day off to celebrate or commiserate?

My mentor questions. 

1. What activities do you like to be doing? 

2. What skills would you like to be using? 

3. What impact would you like to make? 

4. Who would you like to work with? 

5. What would you like to learn about? 

6. What values would you like to live out? 

7. What environment do you want to work in? 

8. What would success look like to you?

These are my answers separated by the 8 years since I started Great Marketing Works. 

1. What activities do you like to be doing? 

2009:  Talking, writing, doing tech stuff with big screens.

2017:  Inspiring people. Talking with people. Being inspired myself.

2. What skills would you like to be using? 

2009:  NLP, public speaking and teaching.

2017:  My talking skills, writing, marketing strategy around startups.

3. What impact would you like to make? 

2009:  On my bottom line and become slightly famous.

2017:  On my family / personal life and health.

4. Who would you like to work with? 

2009:  Honest people, proactive people, front runners, creatives.

2017:  People I like and respect and can go for a beer with.

5. What would you like to learn about? 

2009:  Google, PPC, Social, Mailchimp and Salesforce.

2017:  Myself. How to raise my daughter well. AI. Probably coding and tech. And finances.

6. What values would you like to live out? 

2009: Love, Respect and Creativity.

2017: Love, Creativity, Respect, Integrity. Kaizen if possible.

7. What environment do you want to work in? 

2009:  A fun one, a high tech one, a stable one.

2017:  A warm one. A dry (ish) one. A safe one. A progressive one.

8. What would success look like to you?

2009:  2 houses, 2 offices, family living near the beach with a stable work environment.

2017:  Living abroad, warm and safe, with a happy family, with no real money worries.

So had I changed that much? 

Should I take a day off to celebrate or commiserate?

To commiserate: From the last 8 years. 

- We never moved to the beach. But we did live near one for 4 months.

- I didn’t work with many front runners. But had some very cool clients.

- I got "ripped off" - a lot – so not all my clients or business partners were honest.

To celebrate: From the last 8 years. 

- Became a paid public speaker and trainer.

- Touched the lives of over 50,000 people.

- Became an expert at digital marketing and social media.

- Co founded other businesses like Follogro and FFFlip.

- Went on the BBC many times – heck – so perhaps I became slightly famous.

- I did at one point have 2 houses and 2 offices.

- With my clients now I have a stable work environment.

So today I took the day off. 

A HUGE thanks to all those who have been on the journey with me. Some of you as clients for Great Marketing Works. Some as friends and peers. Many of you as both.

All you have been part of it.

Thanks. 

And thanks to you for reading this too. Now get something from it. Copy and paste the above questions and quickly do the exercise. Write down the answers to the questions above. Come back to it in a year and thank yourself for doing it.

Mistaken Identity, HeartBleed, Happiness, Advertising and a Vow to do something different.

I watched Mistaken Identity last night with my lovely lady. The film is really not that funny and a bit sad really, in ways, I think, the creators probably hadn't thought.

But anyways - it contains a few nuggets of wisdom.

One about identity and passwords and things that we should protect. Which means this morning I updated most (if not all) of my passwords. With fear of what heartbleed is doing. 

The other point I but here for my daughter Mia to read later on in life.

It's that money simply does NOT buy you happiness. 

The lady in the film steals people's identities and then their money.

But for me it's more about the lack of happiness this brings her and the fact that she only buys things to interact with the very shop assistants selling her things.

Anyhoo this is what someone MUCH wiser than me has to say about it all...as Mr Chopra has pointed about about modern life...

"This is where a very bad idea enters the picture. It holds that money buys happiness, and the more money you have, the happier you will be. In a sense, capitalism runs on this idea, but I'm not writing to outline the flaws in capitalism. Every economic system generates its own myths and is blind to its own defects if you believe in the system. The real problem with "money buys happiness" is twofold.

First, it's not true beyond a very limited point. Having enough money to be comfortable produces more happiness than living with the stress of poverty and want. Beyond this fairly modest state of financial security (not so modest if you were born into a poor country or have an impoverished background in a rich one) money brings more stress than it's worth.

Positive psychologists seem pretty sure about this finding, looking at a broad range of subjects, although of course there are exceptions - rich people who seem exceedingly happy and poor people who seem the same. Even so, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account, you shouldn't devote your life to the pursuit of wealth, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologizes the wealthy as if they live in a paradise on earth.

The second reason that "money buys happiness" is such a bad idea is subtler. The pursuit of money prevents you from finding happiness another way. I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness depends on our state of awareness, and to find the highest state of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness.

The same view has been held for centuries by all the world's wisdom traditions, and ironically, now is the best time to test it out. In the past, the average person was helpless in the face of poverty, war, and disease. That's no longer true for millions of people who have enough control over their destiny to pursue happiness rather than simply try to survive.

It would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity by thoughtlessly adhering to such a bad idea as "money buys happiness." From the seed of this idea grows offspring, such as the idea that poverty means that you are an inferior person, a loser, or the idea that winning is everything, since winning implies monetary rewards.

Then there's the idea that you can use your money to buy so many glittery toys and distractions that these will constitute happiness, and so on. The truth is that happiness is an inner pursuit that is very different from the pursuit of pleasure or the amassment of a fortune. No one should accept this as a given; it needs to be tested out personally.

In the end, the message of the world's wisdom traditions is a call to find out the truth for yourself.

 It just helps to clear away the underbrush of untruths, and "money buys happiness" is just that.


Deepak Chopra, MD, Founder of The Chopra Foundation, Co-Founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, coauthor of Super Brain with Rudolph Tanzi and for more information visit The Universe Within. Come to the Chopra Foundation Sages and Scientists Symposium 2014."

To end I leave you Mia (and others that might read this) with a lovely advertisement from a country far away. 

Which proves for me two things: 

1. Advertising CAN do something positive.

2. Far away places are somehow much better than ours.

The advert is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZGghmwUcbQ

The other reason is that at 14.04 today I am going to vow (whilst outside) to re start my own business.

Doing something outside of my time with  Justaxi - Manchester's taxi comparison app

Why 14.04pm you wonder? No reasons apart from it being 14.04 and 14.04.14.

I hope 4's are powerful. 1024 seems to be doing well with them :)

As the idea is in mobile gaming - perhaps it is something I can do with Justaxi as well?

Three habits I wish to pass on to my daughter... to make her richer...

Maybe not richer as a person (who knows) but when she follows them (and that's you honey if you are reading this some years after I first posted this) then she will statistically make more money because of them.

They come from a great blog from...Janrey Cantos the extended version is here. One of the main differences between wealthy people and poor people are their habits.

Our habits will determine our results in life so it is very important for us to study the habits of highly successful people.

Based on a study by Thomas C. Corley involving 233 wealthy and 128 poor people, we can learn interesting habit differences between them.

Wealthy – defined as those earning at least Php 7.2 million per year ($160,000).
Poor – defined as those earning at least Php 1.35 million per year ($30,000).

(Remember these figures are from Feb 2014. In case you are reading this in 2024 and inflations gone crazy)

Habit #1. Maintain a to-do list. 

• 81% of the wealthy do this 
• Only 9% of the poor do this 

These figures tell us a lot. Not all but most of the wealthy people maintain a to-do list. They know how to prioritize and they focus their attention and energy to accomplish what is on their list.(Mia you have probably already seen Daddy's to do lists for a few years now...)

Habit #2. Read 30+ minutes each day. 

• 88% of the wealthy do this 
• Only 2% of the poor do this 

As Daddy always said (well I will do from 2014) “Leaders are readers.” As a leader we must be a learner by reading a lot. I spend at least 30 minutes a day learning more and more about digital marketing.

Habit #3. Listen to audio books during commute. 

• 63 % of the wealthy do this. 
• Only 5% of the poor do this. 

Mia - so if you are not into reading physical books (or if it is all holograms by 2024) then listening to old fashioned audio books is a better option for you. You can search some amazing podcasts on iTunes and listen to it for free.

The Digital Marketing Podcast By Daniel Rowles & Ciaran Rogers is pretty up there in my mind - and hopefully I will get to appear on it talking about how at JusTaxi - Manchester's taxi fare comparison app - we did what we did with geo locational marketing and social media advertising.

What Janrey - the writer of this original blog - likes to do is "download podcast episodes into my tablet for me to be able to listen anywhere and any time I want even when I have no mobile connection. "

A really good tip Janrey and one I am using from today. In fact as I type this :) 

Mia - my last thought is: 

That hopefully with me and your mum by your side - you will become healthy, wealthy and happy. But if I am not there with you - I want you to remember - that if you want to become one of the wealthy (and that IS an IF), then read the above and develop some of the habits that will eventually lead you to riches. 

Here are 7 P's I can believe in from James Caan from Start up Loans

In my marketing training courses, I laugh about how bad the 7 P's of marketing are.

They maybe a teaching aid - but not a great learning aid - and add very little to real marketing on the ground.

But.... Here are 7 P's I can believe in from James Caan who's start up loans company got Great Marketing Works to do a social media training workshop for their clients the other week.

Small world... the great 7 P's for starting your own business.... I wonder which ones we have at Justaxi - Manchester's taxi comparison app?

The full article is here... 

Perseverance

No one is going to become a millionaire overnight and there are plenty of entrepreneurs, including myself, who have suffered failures. If you fail the first time around then don’t just give up. Pick yourself up, dust yourself down and then start all over again. I believe you never stop learning and growing and even the low points have been important to my development.


Patience

Every journey has to start somewhere and businesses have to be nurtured and developed. It takes time and effort to build up a successful company and you should not expect to make huge profits immediately. The main thing you should be focusing on is getting a stable foothold in the market and making people aware of your brand. All the best companies take time to develop and you need to understand that Rome was not built in a day.


Positivity

There is a very thin line between confidence and arrogance but everyone who is successful in life has to have their fair share of self-belief. Business is about making people have confidence and belief in you and the service or product you are offering. If you do not believe in yourself then how are you going to get other people to believe in what you are doing?


Prudence

I have always been a big believer in keeping overheads to a minimum. Of course, being successful in business comes with its rewards but in the early days you should put as much back into the business as you can. When those payments first start coming in don’t fall into the trap of splashing out on expensive items that are not necessary; concentrate on the basics. The first rule of business is always to keep a close on eye on profit margins so you can build a company that is going to survive if and when the hard times come along.


Panache

Obviously, you don’t want to be the kind of person who stands out in the crowd for all the wrong reasons but there is no harm in having a bit of style and panache. Business is all about selling yourself as much as anything and I believe even in the business world, people like someone who has a bit of character and a certain sense of style.


Perceptiveness

If you understand what makes other people tick then it can be a great help when it comes to sealing that all important deal or landing a new piece of business. Making a successful pitch or presentation is all about being able to understand exactly what your client wants and then being able to deliver on your promises.


Passion

The most important quality of all. You should wake up every day raring to get out there and do business. It’s tough but it should never feel like a chore and you should have absolute belief in your ability and your business. If you want to be the best at anything then you have to really care and even make some personal sacrifices along the way. If you're not prepared to dedicate yourself to the business it then there is no point in setting up on your own.

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Ok we have 5 of them.... I would like us to be a bit more perceptive and passionate. As I truly believe that with the right customer feedback, the right branding and marketing and the right app experience we can create some new and amazing for taxi rides not just in Manchester but in the world. So it's not just about getting the best taxi prices in Manchester but something else.

An app that could really help people too i.e be safer and be happier. Both more important that money saving, don't you think?  What do you think?