I Wanna Be A Millionaire!

Nick James Nick James has gone from being a Parking Lot Attendant to one of the most successful Internet Marketers in the UK. What makes him so successful? Read our exclusive interview with the man himself to find out what makes him tick.

Also This Month......

Product Reviews.

We take a look at hot products.

The Millionaire Mindset.

What have they got that we haven’t?

List Building.

Why is a list so important?

Financial Independence...

How far are you willing to go to1 get what you want?

ÂŁ35,750 in two days!

The awesome power of duplication!

Inside...

Nick James Interview – Page 10 We catch up with Nick James, a highly successful information publisher from the UK. £35,750 In Two Days! – Page 4 The awesome power of duplication in action.

Financial Independence – Page 31 How far are you willing to go to get the things you want?

The Millionaire Mindset – Page 6 Ever wondered what sets the successful business men and woman apart from the rest?

Product Review – Page 7 We take a look at the Ten Minute Marketer program from Nick James and Tim Lowe.

List Building Secrets – Page 9 List building tips from the experts.

Letters – Page 39 We answer your letters received last month.

Contributors – Page 38 A thank you to this month’s contributors.

Motivation – Page 23 What motivates you to be successful?

The Case For YouTube Marketing – Page 24 Bob Young explains why video marketing is the way forward.

Book Review – Page 26 ‘How To Make Millions Without A Degree’ by Simon Dolan.

Young Enterprise – Page 28 We learn more about the UK’s biggest business and enterprise education charity.

Is Dyslexia a Disadvantage? – Page 32 Why are so many successful entrepreneurs dyslexic?

10 Outstanding Qualities Of Great Landing Pages – Page 36 Penny Knutson explain the importance of quality landing pages.

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£35,750+ profit for two days work!

Last year I attended a seminar with my wife in London. Now I want to make it clear that this seminar was nothing to do with the ‘Make Money’ niche. It was a seminar about enlightenment. You see, my wife is a complimentary health therapist and she was attending the seminar to learn more about calming the mind to help with her own work. I had a free weekend and so thought I would tag along.

Making money from seminars is nothing new. For many of us seminars are a main stream of income and then from cd and dvd sales of the same seminar. But I had never really thought about how seminars are applied to businesses other than the ‘Money Making’ niche. I don’t know why I had never thought about it before, after all, the music industry has been using this business model for decades. Instead of seminars they have concerts. After the concerts they sell cd’s, dvd’s, books, posters and just about anything with the artist’s face on it.

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£35,750+ profit for two days work! (continued) The seminar I attended was probably the best example of duplication outside of my own niche that I have ever seen. It was like poetry in motion. 550 people crammed into a hall in London for two days at the extremely reasonable price of £75 per person.

Now, I’m no mathematician but any decent calculator will tell you that 550 x £75 comes to £41,250 ($64,582). The cost of hiring the venue for a weekend is £5500 (I know because I contacted the venue to find out!). There were about 10 helpers at the event who were all volunteers and the advertising for the event was done via email and social networking sites, so there were no additional costs. The real beauty of the seminar was that it was run as a questions and answers session, so there was no preparation at all!

At the end of the event there was an announcement that cd’s and dvd’s of the event would be available to purchase along with various books.

550 tickets @ £75 = £41,250 ($ 64,582) Venue hire @ £2,750 per day = £ 5,500 ($ 8,613) PROFIT =

£35,750 ($ 55,993)

Plus cd, dvd and book sales.

The best part was that the other 549 people at the seminar had absolutely no idea that this was a money making exercise. I am not saying that the information was not good, far from it. All who attended seemed to be genuinely excited about the information they had gained and felt that they had got value for money.

My seminars are a lot smaller than this but then I often charge far more money for the information I am giving. I also hire smaller venues such as school halls and community centres that are much cheaper. The outlay for a seminar need not be huge and can be done on a shoestring.

There are many of you who are not comfortable with getting up and speaking in public, but you don’t have to. Be a promoter of an event. Some of you may be thinking that you have nothing to teach. Write down all of your life experiences and jobs and you will see just how much knowledge you have to share. Back up your knowledge using Google to become an expert in your chosen field.

The bottom line is, no matter what your field of expertise is, seminars are a great money spinner. Just remember to offer good quality, value for money information.

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The Millionaire Mindset Like myself, you have probably heard this phrase a hundred times before. But do we really understand what the Millionaire Mindset is? Do we really understand what sets the winners apart from the losers?

Many, many books have been written on this subject and I am sure that many more will be written in the future. But is there really anything to learn or is the Millionaire Mindset a myth?

Looking back through history there have been many a successful entrepreneur who has absolutely sworn by the so called Millionaire Mindset. A state of thinking that allows us to achieve greatness and riches beyond those of the non believer.

Some of the greatest names in history have spoken of the success they owe to their state of thinking long before any books were ever written on the subject. Authors such as Napoleon Hill (Think And Grow Rich), Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends And Influence People) and George S. Clason (The Richest Man In Babylon) wrote about the magical power of the mind way back in the 1920’s and 1930’s. More recently T. Harv Eker (Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind) and Gerry Robert (The Millionaire Mindset) among others have picked up the reigns with books of their own. And yet the message never changes.

There is no new magical formula, just the same recurring advice decade after decade. So, can all of these highly successful people be wrong?

If we are to believe what we have read about the power of the mind then it is easy to see why so many people fail in business. You may have the best products in the world, the best marketing money can buy, the best sales pitch ever heard, and yet, if your mindset is not right then none of these things matter. If your mind doubts your success then you will not succeed. The old saying goes that “If you think you can then you can. If you think you cannot then you are already half way to failure”.

There are dozens of books and websites on this subject and much of the information online is free. So whether you believe in the millionaire mindset or not, it must be worth a look. I decided to speak to a few successful men and women to see if there was a common pattern among them, and it was not long before the pattern started to emerge. Some did things slightly differently to others, but on the whole they all had a similar way of thinking, a positive approach to just about everything in life. They didn’t seem to let the petty day to day niggles get to them the way the rest of the population do. If something goes wrong they put it behind them and move on without dwelling on them. I suppose that once something has happened it is history and there is nothing you or I can do to change it, so why dwell on it?

I remember reading about this subject a couple of years ago and the author describing the snowball effect of negative attitudes. For example, if you get out of bed in the morning and stub your big toe on the corner of the bed, you have two choices. The first choice is to put it behind you and move on. The second choice is to rant and rave and dwell on it. The second option tends to lead to more negative things happening to you throughout the day and snowballing. In this sense, successful business people treat unsuccessful ventures as learning curves rather than failures. This way they can learn from the past and move on rather than treating it as a failure and giving up.

All successful business men and women have had their fair share of unsuccessful deals and ventures. It’s not about how many successes and failures you have had, but how you deal with them when they come. The message to us all is to look at the positive side of all successes and failures and to never give up. Just remember that when Edison invented the light bulb he did not get it right the first time. He failed many times, but when asked about it he replied "I have not failed 1,000 times.

I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."

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Product Review We thought that as we had an interview with Nick James in this issue of ‘I Wanna Be A Millionaire!’, that we should maybe take a look at one of his products (this one is actually a joint venture between Nick James and Tim Lowe). I have spoken to Nick recently on other matters and I can safely say that one of Nick’s pet hates is ‘YES’ men, people who say only nice things about a product so as to not upset anyone. So after looking at the program thoroughly I am going to give my honest opinion, good or bad.

I actually clicked through to this offer via Tim Lowe’s email newsletter (Tim’s Lowedown). It took me through to the website http://www.tenminutemarketer.com that has the usual style sales copy with the same pitch and promises that many of us have read a thousand times before. I’m not saying that this a bad thing as we know that it works and works well. But none the less, the copy tells us that this system has the power to make us millionaires and to buy big houses and fast cars and all the usual enticements.

The normal setup cost of the program is £77.00 ($124.00) but a special deal is on offer for just £37.76 ($60.89) with an ongoing monthly payment of £27.00 ($43.00). A really great deal if the system can deliver on its promises. The system comes with a 30 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee, so I figured I had nothing to lose and signed up. I received an email instantly with a link to a zip file and set up instructions. Within a couple of minutes the software was on my PC and ready to go. I went off and made a cup of tea before settling in front of my computer to get stuck in.

The software is broken into three sections, a Quick Start Guide detailing the basics of the system, 6 x 10 Minute Marketer videos and a section named ‘Your First List of 500 Customers in 7 Days or Less’ which consists of 8 bonus videos. I have to say that this is a lot of information for the money it costs but is it useful information? I read every word of the quick start guide and then sat through the videos and bonus videos. The content explained everything that you need to know about marketing information products whether they are your own products or not. Now, you have to appreciate that I am reviewing this product from the point of view of someone who knows this business, whereas the information is aimed at a beginner, but even I was learning something and picking up pointers. This really was useful stuff. The system also comes with a username and password to a member’s website which has even more information and articles. I was impressed with the content of month one and was now looking forward to month two.

An email arrived informing me that month two content was available on the member’s only website. I logged in to find two new videos and seven screencasts. I made the obligatory cup of tea and sat down to start watching what was in store. The videos and screencasts this month revolve around the setting up of websites including registering a domain name and hosting, list building software and squeeze pages. Maybe this month was a little wasted on me as I already know how to do these things, but I couldn’t help thinking that I wished that this information had been available when I started out. This info would have saved me weeks of research. I was still impressed after two months.

My next step was to test out the promised support system. Support is via an email ticket system. I submitted a ticket and had a reply from Nick James the same day. Very quick and spot on with the answer to my question.

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So, are there any negatives? Well, if like me you are familiar with this type of business you will gain a few useful ideas, but from what I have seen so far, this is really aimed at beginners. If you are a beginner then this is great, a real A to Z, hold your hand every step of the way type system. The only negative I can think of is that the content in month one might be overwhelming for a newbee as there is a lot to take in, but then you do have a month to process it all. All in all good value for money. Can’t wait for month three!

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List Building Tips from the experts Yet again we have had some great list building tips coming in from some of the biggest names in internet marketing, but there was one idea that stood out to me purely because it was easy, quick and costs very little money. So today I am going to share this with you. As always, if you agree, disagree or can improve on any of the tips here then please get in touch.

List building is probably the single most important thing to do when starting out in your business. Why? Because without customers you have no business. You will find it difficult to convince anyone to share their list with you unless you have something to offer them. Newbees will need to build up a relationship and trust with other business owners before joint ventures are possible. So how do you build a list from scratch without breaking the bank?

This idea revolves around forums. If you spend any time on the internet you will no doubt know that there is a forum for just about every niche market imaginable. The basic idea is to put together a product or newsletter that will be of value to the people in your chosen niche and then offer to give it away for free to the forum members. The forum post will of course have a link to your squeeze page. Some forums will be free to join and to post on while others will require a membership fee or advertising fee, but we are not talking about vast amounts of money.

I thought I would give this a go in my own niche (money making) just to see how it would perform. The money making niche has many forums but the one with the most interest seems to be The Warrior Forum (http://www.warriorforum.com). The Warrior Forum has a main section which is free to all, a War Rooms section for paid members only and a Warrior Special Offers section which is for paid ads (free members can view the Warrior Special Offers but cannot post). The War Rooms section costs $37.00 to join for 20 years and enables you to post in the Warrior Special Offers for an additional fee per ad. To post a Warrior Special offer costs $40.00. Something worth noting is that when you post your Warrior Special offer it will go straight to the top of the page, but as others post their special offers, yours will begin to move down and down until it eventually shifts to the next page. But it’s not all bad news as you can pay another $40.00 to bump your Warrior Special Offer back to the top of page one. Obviously if your offer is not doing well it is not worth bumping back to the top, but if you have an offer that is getting people to sign up on your squeeze page then it is well worth bumping to the top. So I signed up, read the forum rules and then set about putting together my own Warrior Special Offer.

To stay on topic I decided to make my offer about list building via blogging. It is not a subject I know a great deal about so I used Google to do some research and then produced a small five part report. I built a website complete with squeeze page with a link to it on my Warrior Special Offer. It took a couple of days for my ad to be approved before it went live. My Warrior Special Offer stayed on page one for less than two days but continued to get views even on pages two and three. I didn’t bump my offer back to the top as this was just a trial for the purpose of this article, but all in all I had close to 3,500 views and built a list of 427 subscribers, just $0.10 per subscriber. Not bad eh! I dare say that depending on your copywriting skills results could vary dramatically.

I then noticed that on the Warrior Forum someone was offering an ad swap for a list of just 300 people. If you are not familiar with ad swaps, this is where you do a deal with another marketer to send their offer to your list in exchange for them sending your offer to their list. You would usually swap similar sized lists. I thought it was worth a go so I got in contact and we did an ad swap. I sent him a link and some copy and he did the same. The ad swap grew my list by another 46 people which is not fantastic but then again it did not cost a single penny.

I am no copywriter, far from it, and even I managed to build a list of 473 people in less than a week from scratch using a forum and an ad swap. I am sure that some of our readers have much better ways of using forums and ad swaps to grow their lists and I truly welcome their comments and suggestions.

Try searching on Google for forums in your chosen niche and give it a go. As I said earlier, many of them will be free. Once you have a small list try posting an offer of an swap. This is a simple but effective idea that is most definitely worth a try.

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Before this interview I had never met or spoken to Nick James before. I had however bought one or two of his products which I had been quite impressed with so I knew a little bit about him. When approaching successful business men and women for an interview some will be too busy, some will agree to a quick, over the telephone interview and others will do it via email. Very rarely do we get a face to face interview. Nick was very laid back about the options and asked me what would work best for the magazine. I like face to face interviews as I find that the answers to my questions are in more detail and often raise more questions than if done over the telephone or by email. I also like to record live interviews and then have them transcribed after the event so that I can concentrate on the questions and discussions. Nick agreed to a face to face and to a live recording, but to my surprise he contacted me the following day to offer the use of his private recording studio for the interview. I quickly accepted. We agreed that we would meet at Nick’s office where I would park my car and he would then drive me to his studio.

You never quite know what success does to people and I have met a few that have allowed it to go to their heads. On the day we met at his office as planned. As we walked towards his car (a beautiful Jaguar with all leather trim) I wondered whether I was in for a ‘look what I have got’ sort of day, after all I was interviewing him for a magazine aimed at budding millionaires and potentially his customers. I think it would actually be quite normal to tell the readers about his success and to show off a little bit but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Nick was nothing like that at all. In fact, he came across as a very down to earth guy.

When we arrived at the studio, I met his PA, Emma, along with another female employee who were both working away at preparing sales letters and products for Nick’s customers. Nick made me a cup of tea (no he didn’t ask one of the girls to do it!) and we made our way into the recording studio where Nick records a lot of his own products. The room was very professional with the latest high tech recording equipment. We had a bit of a chat to discuss how the interview would proceed and time limits. Nick’s idea was to start recording and just keep going for as long it took. The interview lasted one hour and three minutes. During my time with Nick I came to realise that he was a very genuine and nice guy who had worked hard to get to where he was.

To listen to the audio recording please click here or continue below to read the transcribed interview.

MARTYN: To start with, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today; I really appreciate that. We've already discussed the purpose of the interview being more about you as a person rather than wealth-building tips or a lesson on how to build wealth, so if we can start off with just a brief look into your background and tell me a little about your parents, brothers and sisters, and your upbringing in general.

NICK: Well, I'm the son of a nurse that used to work in accident and emergency or casualty. My dad was a chartered quantity surveyor. I was born in 1975 and went to school and when I came out of school I left with four GCSEs, C grade. I kind of flunked out; I don't think I was a mature student. I didn't think the reason I was at school was really for me, and I guess I really was just immature. When I was at school I was interested, initially, not in anything to do with wealth creation; I was interested in theatre. I thought the best thing to do was maybe get to sixth form and I flunked out of that; I flunked out of theatre studies; I flunked out of going to London and being a theatre electrician. I actually fell into a role of being a DJ. I'm kind of a regular, down-to-earth kind of guy; I wasn’t born with any special skills or anything like that. I actually find reading and writing quite difficult. When I was eleven I was tested and I was found out that whilst I had a high IQ- a higher than average IQ- I was dyslexic, so I don't actually read for fun. I don't read books for fun, I read for information, but even then I need sort of complete peace and quiet in order to do that. So, yeah, I'm just kind of a regular guy. One of the things, though, I remember as a kid that did affect me was a conversation- or something that happened- was my grandfather died, my dad's dad died, when he was 69 years old. I remember whilst I was a kid he was always telling me about all the things that he'd do when he would retire. With his death coming at 69, that kind of stuck with me, about this whole, kind of, working for somebody else, so I wanted to 10

become self-employed. With the DJing I was the first person in my family to become self-employed. I guess even today my family wonder why I wanted to sort of do that myself. So, yeah, I'm not saying that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth or I had any kind of leg up through society or anything like that. But, yeah, it was a chance meeting with somebody that gave me a set of videotapes of a guy called Bill Myers over in the States, and I remember him saying that the most important word for an entrepreneur is the word 'no'. If somebody says to you, 'Give me time for money', the answer is 'no'. And I started looking back at the fact that what I was doing with all my self-employment was, really, I was still employed to my customers.

There's some momentous, I don't know, times in my life, I suppose, when this light bulb just sort of turned on and I wanted to start doing something a little bit differently. They say when the student's ready, the master will appear, and about that time somebody threw an audio book in front of me that was Napoleon Hill's Think And Grow Rich. That, again, turned on more light bulbs for me because I'd always had these wonderful ideas, but it's not until you actually sort of commit those ideas down into written goals that anything changes. I had always thought about doing this and thought about doing that but it's not actually until, you know, I actually committed to it that anything happened. And that's when I fell in love with educating myself again because, as I was saying earlier, when I was at school I wasn't ready to learn, I wasn't ready to receive these new ideas, I didn't see why I was doing it for me; but a little bit later on after reading Think And Grow Rich, that was, again, another light bulb moment.

MARTYN: It's really interesting to hear you say about being dyslexic because it's really amazing just how many millionaires and successful people out there actually come from a background where their education suffered through something like dyslexia or other reasons why people don't do well in school, to do with their background or the area they grew up in. So we can sort of take it that it doesn't matter what background you come from; you can be successful if you really put your mind to it.

NICK: You can, I mean, and I've learned- I don't use dyslexia as an excuse for anything, but I'll tell you now: I don't know what three nines are, but I can tell you what three tens are minus three ones: it's 27. And maybe that's because my brain goes the long way around the houses to get to the same answer. Maybe that makes me different, I don't know. And that's true, by the way; I still don't know what three nines are. I have to do that sort of mathematical sum to get that answer. I don't know if that makes sense but it certainly helps me.

MARTYN: No, it makes perfect sense. So would you say, then- you said you got four GCSEs, so there was no college or university or anything like that; it was just straight GCSEs and leave school?

NICK: No, nothing like that. I mean, as I say, four GCSEs: it was English, maths, literature, and basically woodwork, and flunked out of everything else; and, like I say, I got C grades at those. I just wasn't academic; because of the dyslexia I just didn't really want to sit down and do academic work, which sounds really daft now, because I find that I've overcome so many of my challenges and I found my own way around. If my English teacher from secondary school would now realise that I wrote a newsletter that went out to thousands of people on a monthly basis and I wrote articles on the web and people pay to be a member of a membership site, you know, all these things; I've written a book that's sold almost three thousand copies- we're going to have to order some more in- I think that, you know, she'd be absolutely gobsmacked. But, let's face it: you can spellcheck, you can grammar-check on a computer now; you can even speak into a computer and it writes for you with Dragon Speak and all these software solutions. There are ways to overcome those difficulties and if you've got a story to tell, why not tell it?

MARTYN: Is it safe to say, that your school education hasn't really aided you in any way towards the business that you're now in; these are all skills that you learned after leaving school?

NICK: Sure, I mean, they taught me how to read and write and add up to a certain degree with the use of a calculator; but, no, it was after leaving school that I learned to entertain a crowd with the DJing. It was after school when I read Think And Grow Rich and I started to open myself up to new ideas and to really just educate myself, because if you actually think about education, I don't ever think we stop learning. Even those people that have been to school, been to sixth form, gone to college or university, even maybe got a doctorate, they're still learning on the job; they're still learning every single day, and it was that idea that you stop learning that got drummed into my head, that I know it all now. Well, no, you don't. There's so much more to learn. I mean, I spend probably circa ÂŁ50,000 a year on my education now with Mastermind groups, with home study courses, with subscriptions, with newsletters, with audios, and I'm sucking it all up, all the time.

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MARTYN: I just want to stay with the education, just for a moment. I know that we're continuously bombarded with the belief that when we're at school we need to do well and we need to go to college and we need to go to university and whatever to get the skills we need to be successful in life. Can I just get your thoughts on what you believe to be the correct way with colleges and universities- we don't want to say that we shouldn't go to them, because obviously if you want to be a doctor or an airline pilot they're absolutely necessary, but to be in the type of the business that you're in, would you say that the college or universities, the way they are at the moment, would aid us in that business in any way?

NICK: Well, I think it's difficult to put colleges, universities and schools all in one camp, but what I can tell you is one of the things I'm passionate about is helping out with an organization called Young Enterprise. Young Enterprise go into schools and they teach business skills in a practical way to the students, and I've worked with Young Enterprise at both grammar schools and comprehensive schools. And when I went back to my comprehensive school, one of the ways that this company programme works is the students that want to do this all come in, they sit down, and they form a company, and they sell some share certificates to raise a little bit of capital. Maybe they put on an event or a disco or something and sell some confectionary at that event to maybe buy some stock for the real project that they're working on. So I went into my old comprehensive school; I went back there as a successful entrepreneur, parked my flash car in the car park, went in and said, 'Look, guys, I'm an ex-student at this school. You can be successful. There's a whole world of entrepreneurship out there for you.' And I started asking questions; I said, 'Okay, why not? Why can't we have a school disco?' And the teacher immediately said, 'They'll misbehave, they'll get drunk, they'll smoke; they can't do it.' Okay, right. So the next question was, 'Well, there's a football FIFA game that they wanted to have a competition', and it's like, 'No, can't do that; it'd be too rowdy and if you bring a game Xbox in it'll get stolen. No, you can't do that.' So what I was hearing from this comprehensive school seemed to be along the lines of they were banging kids over the head: 'No, you can’t do that.' 'No, you can't do this.' 'No, you can't do that.' If we then take the same meeting to a private school and we were saying, 'Should we have a social? Should we invite the boys' school or the girls' school or the whatever to this social event?' Yes, why not? So everything became, 'Why not?' in this educational establishment.

'Yes, you can.' 'Why not?' 'Yes, you can.' And over here, in the comprehensives, they were banging people over the head, saying, 'No, you can't do it. No, you can't do it.' So, to me, it's not about necessarily the lessons that are being learned; it's the pastoral kind of care and the messages that are being given on a subconscious level to the youngsters today that are growing up: one hand where the privileged students are being told they can achieve anything they like, and with the state system, they're being told they can't do anything, and I think that is the biggest problem that's going on with education. And now I've got on my hobby horse about this a little bit, but like I say, coming from that background where I was pretty much passed over because I was not producing the results that I should be and almost set aside as a failure, I think the story would have been a bit different had I gone to a better school or something; but like I said, my parents couldn't afford anything like that. So I think the important thing for Young Enterprise, just going back to working with them, is the fact that we can go into schools and we can say that there's an entrepreneurial path for you to take if this academic path isn't right for you. I hope, in a roundabout way, I've answered that question.

MARTYN: Can I just sort of go back to your home life, the way it is now? I don't know if people out there are sort of assuming that you're some sort of a jet-set millionaire playboy, and I think I know the reality of it a little bit more, but could you just describe to us your home life, whether you're married, or children, or anything like that?

NICK: Yeah, sure. I mean, I live with my partner Kate, soon to be married. I hope she doesn't hear this yet because I haven't proposed to her; that's all being planned for a nice trip to Paris.

MARTYN: We'll keep that back for a while.

NICK: I've got a boy- I've got a lad who's now 14 from a previous relationship, and I'll talk to you a little bit about how I started this and the breakup with his mother in a little bit, but I now live with Kate and she's got a boy called Josh who's 12. And, yeah, we've got a family life here, and it's one of the most important things in this or any business to have a good work-life balance. I struggle with it from time to time, but it's important to be able to relax and leave the business alone; I know my mind ticks over every once in a while but it's important to realise why we do anything, and that's to have a caring and sharing home environment. Very much got my feet on the ground; when I go in I'll be told in no uncertain terms it's, you know, it's my job to take the trash out and sort out the recycling or whatever; make the beds. It's not really a rock-and-roll lifestyle; very, very down-to-earth.

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MARTYN: Does Kate get involved in the business at all?

NICK: She's my rock; we bounce ideas off each other all the time and I'd love her to become more involved in the business.

They say behind every successful man is an organised woman and she does keep me organised; she enables me to bounce lots of ideas around so, yes, she helps in that respect.

MARTYN: Going back to when you left school, can you just give us a rundown of the jobs you've had from, obviously, leaving school up until the marketing business that you're in now?

NICK: Yeah. The DJ side of it opened a lot of doors for me, not only because it brought in regular cash on a weekly basis when I was presenting discos or karaokes in pubs and clubs and that eventually led to black-tie work up in London- it led to a bit of radio work- but also I subscribed to a service that was a mail-order service at the time where I would receive on CD twice a month all the records that this company thought would be in the charts in the next few weeks or the next few months, so we would get them ahead of general release in HMV or Virgin. When one of these discs was a little bit late, it was also about the same time I needed to buy a house and settle down with my little boy's mother, and when I phoned the company to find out why this disc was late, they actually said to me, 'Well, actually, the guy that used to put these discs together has left the company.' To cut a long story short, I actually went for a job interview with that company up in London; it only lasted for about eight or ten months. I feel a little bit like I'm probably psychologically unemployable with my mindset, but I went to London and I got the job as a music programmer for a company called Entertainment Resources. They made these discs for DJs, and it was my job to make three CDs a month. So without knowing it, this was almost like a little bit of a preparation for me for the product development business. I was making three products a month for this company, from contacting record labels to editing, doing the artwork, writing up the inlay card, and then obviously putting them out by mail order. And I worked for them for a little while, and that all ended with me resigning after about eight months, I think it was. So I did that for a little while; I've also worked for a couple of guys that were trying to set up a local radio station in Reading, and what happened there was they were putting all this money into trying to start this radio station, which was based on me trying to be on the air for them as a radio presenter. They would say to me, 'Well, if you want to do this part of the job, then the part of our company that makes the money is the gravel car parks.’ At the time, Reading had sort of a big area to be developed in the town centre which turned into the Oracle Shopping Centre. Right next to that was a big gravel car park where all the contractors would park their transit vans and whatever during the day, and I was working there and I was working in another car park on Napier Road for them.

And it was at that car park that I met this guy that gave me this Bill Myers videotape. So, the whole thing- you can actually see how, by being willing to do all these various jobs, the wilderness jobs that I had, eventually ended up in me having a chance meeting with a guy and knowing about Bill Myers.

MARTYN: Looking at your previous jobs and going from a DJ and a car parking lot attendant, it was very difficult to see how any of those experiences would have aided you in the business you're in now; but obviously, as you said, product development came from putting together these CDs earlier on in your career. Is there anything else in those previous jobs that you think has helped you in any way in the business that you're now in?

NICK: I think learning how to put those products together certainly helped, and thinking back, that I'm not afraid of being in front of a camera; I'm not afraid of turning on a microphone; I'm not afraid of hard work. When this business really took off for me I was actually in a position with my little boy's mum who said, sort of, 'I don't want you to get involved in this information publishing, Internet marketing lark. Over my dead body', so eventually it was like, you know, sort of dink, we kind of split up, and I found myself moving out from the family home. And I actually kept a lot of these jobs going all at the same time. I found myself in a position where the disco business wasn't working properly and the government didn't want to help because I was self-employed and they were saying, 'Well, you've technically made yourself unemployed if you haven't got any work.' So dole or Jobseeker's Allowance or whatever it was called back then wasn't available, so I worked between 6:00 and 10:00 in the morning in this car park; between 10:00 and 2:00 I worked with the guys in the radio station; between 2:00 and maybe 5:00 or 6:00 I worked on trying to set up my Internet marketing and my publishing business; and in the evenings, maybe four nights a week, I'd go off and do a disco. So I would be working all the hours to try to pull myself up because I had to pay the rent on my own accommodation, plus for a certain time I was still trying to pay the mortgage on the house where my ex-partner and son were living. So I think that was actually the focus for me that actually said that if I don’t do this myself then nobody else is going to do it for me. It was through grit and determination, and I just wanted to focus on something that was not related to my 13

personal relationship status at the time, that allowed me to put all that energy into doing something for me and sort of pulling myself up.

MARTYN: Could you describe the turning point for you- so, obviously, you had all these things going on at one time, but can you describe the turning point when you actually realised that this is going to work?

NICK: Yeah, I mean, I remember my first customer. When I put an offer out I had licensed three videotapes for sale through the post and I remember my first customer; he paid £49.90 for a set of three video tapes, plus £4.95 for the postage and the packaging, and his name was Anthony Hoshing. That, to me, was my epiphany moment, and I thought to myself, 'Well, if I can get one customer to pay me for something that I've advertised, then I can get ten customers. If I can get ten customers, I can get a hundred customers, and there's no stopping me. That was what I call my epiphany moment where a complete stranger bought some information from me as a result then of a direct mail campaign, and I haven't looked back since. I mean, I love getting those little prepaid envelopes back. I remember when we came to start this interview I collected some post and I know there were at least half a dozen of those prepaid envelopes, and inside them will be standing order forms or cheques. It's a wonderful feeling that customers buy information and software based on the relationship we have with them.

MARTYN: So that first sale was the real light bulb moment. Did you sort of think that maybe there was a chance it wouldn't work before that first sale? Was that the real sort of light bulb moment for you?

NICK: I think, like all businesses, business is like gambling. There's no guaranteed, sure-fire answer to anything, but if you've been given a recipe or you've been given a plan and you're following a plan, it's fair to say, like baking a cake, that if you follow the steps you will get a similar result. But you walk away from those rules or those steps at your peril. I remember getting carried away with something and not taking credit cards and not adding bonuses to an offer, not testing what I was doing, pricing high, and what I eventually did was I eventually made a complete mess of something. I changed too many of the ingredients at once, and of course it didn't work. So I think I was confident that I was following a plan that would work. I also know with the way that I could put this thing together that I was running a few tests and the best thing that happened was when I put this out by direct mail in the early days, one list pulled 0.7% response- and I don't know why I remember these numbers- and this other list pulled about 3.5% response, and then there was a bit of middle ground with these other tests. And I remember thinking to myself at the time that if I'd only done one test and it was the list that pulled 0.7%, I'd have thought the business didn't work and I'd have thrown me toys out the pram and I'd have given up. But, likewise, if I'd only mailed the list that pulled 3.5%, I'd have thought this was easy, I'd have got carried away, and risked more than I could have afforded to lose.

So it was nice to see a spread of everyone had the same offer on the same day with the same price and I could see a difference in the people that I was writing to. So everything in business that I do is mathematical, it's systemised, there's always a plan to follow, and if you follow the rules then that's 90% of everything that you'll overcome.

MARTYN: In just the short time that we've been talking I already get the feel that you're a very down-to-earth guy. You've got your feet on the ground; you know exactly where you've come from and where you're going. Can you just tell us the effect that your success has had on your family and children and just those people around you?

NICK: Well, I think I've got my feet placed firmly on the ground, absolutely. Dan, my son, I think he sees a balanced view of life. I don't want to let too much of the personal life out in this interview but he lives with his mum most of the time and comes and stays with me at weekends. His mum has taken a very different path to the path I've taken, and I suppose friends change and also relationships change. Dan's mum is in rented accommodation; unfortunately, with the house that I left her with, she fell into arrears with payments and her head financially is not in the same place as mine. It took me a long time to realise that throwing money at this problem was not helping her. But Daniel can see, from where he lives with his mum, what it's like to have with and without, so I think he's got a very balanced view. It is difficult to kind of balance those expectations as well. On one hand you don't want to be taken for a ride; on the other hand you don't want to be seen as not being generous or what have you. So because of the situation now I'm kind of very down-to-earth with finances. With friends, it's odd; I've still got a friend from school that I talk to, Barry, and his situation is very different as well. He's probably £50,000 in debt, lives in rented accommodations, got two girls; he's 36, 37, same age as me, so he's running out of time to pay his debts off and be able to put a deposit down on a house and have a 25 year mortgage before he retires. So there's a clock that's ticking with him. But friends have changed; I'm not saying that I don't have friends, I'm just saying that you mix in a different kind of circle of people. But I’m 14

still very much passionate about helping people to get started with this business. I can't pay back the person that taught me how to do this, but I can pay that favour forward to other people that want to learn, and that's a big thing with my customers.

I'll match them pound-for-pound about getting this business started and I enjoy helping them to get started, but if they don't want to know, if they don't want to understand, if they're not interested, I won't ram it down their throat because there's nothing worse than meeting somebody at a party or something that's ramming down some latest multilevel marketing thing that nobody wants to sign up to or what have you. When you look at my family, my family don't really understand what I do.

My dad can't understand; I make money out of thin air on the Internet, and bless him, he probably never will. My mum doesn't want to know about it; she says, 'Oh, it's just too confusing, don't tell me'. But if anyone that wants to listen and is eager to learn wants to know, I'm quite happy to help. But I think the key here, Martyn, is just not trying to preach to people that don't want to know about it.

MARTYN: So we talked about the effect that it has on the people around you and your friends and family. What about the effect it has on you? Do you become complacent with the money you're earning, or are you very aware that, obviously, with the financial climate in this country, things could change?

NICK: I don't think I'm complacent. I believe in the law of attraction and I believe in the fact that money comes easily to me.

When I started this business in 2001 I had an 18-month financial year, and in that 18-month financial year I worked 18 months to turn over £50,000. I think it's rare now that I'd have a month where I don't turn over that much money. So whilst I don’t become complacent that money goes through the company; it's expected that it comes through the company or I'm doing something wrong in the business. To a certain degree I suppose everyone starts to live to the lifestyle level that they're used to living. I'm not complacent about it, but I think it's the job of an entrepreneur and an Internet marketer or an information publisher to continually navigate and steer their business where there's market demand, and you're not really doing your job properly if you kind of go off in the wrong direction. You should always be listening to customers, listening to the marketplace, working out what the next sort of big idea is or what have you, and then positioning yourself ready to catch that wave. So, complacent, no; we've learned new strategies and tips and techniques for marketing both online and offline in the recession. I would say that we're working much harder to get a sale, but I'm thinking from an educational point of view it's great that we're learning these new tips.

MARTYN: You mentioned the law of attraction, which brings me up really nicely to my next question. I know a lot of people out there have got this burning desire to be rich and be successful. Would you say that that desire is enough to make you successful, or is there a certain mindset that you really need to be able to succeed in this type of business?

NICK: I think there's a couple of questions in there. Firstly, I would say that people are driven and people are motivated to do things for different reasons. Money is only one of possibly three reasons why you would want to do anything. What gets me out of bed is because I enjoy what I do, so enjoyment of running my business is the first thing, not making money. I would also argue that the second most powerful motivation trigger for many people, whether they want to admit it or not, is some kind of recognition that they're doing something; whether they're donating to charity or whether they're the leader of a forum or a forum moderator or they're speaking on stage at something or they've written a book, they want to be recognised. So I would be lying if I said that it wasn't nice to have my club online where I'm the- I won't say the pharaoh, but the leader. So that's quite nice to have that and be respected and what have you. Money comes third, I suppose, unless when you haven't got it. I suppose if you haven't got money then money is a very emotional drive for you. I think Warren Buffett was interviewed once and he said that he loves the process of making money or the process of his business just as much as the proceeds of his business, and that kind of echoes what I'm saying about the fact that I enjoy what I do. Yeah, the money's great, but you need to do it for more than just the money, and I think it's the same because when you start a business you haven't got all that money coming in anyway, so you need to do it for the enjoyment of the processes that you've put in place.

MARTYN: I know that a lot of successful people in the past have talked about being either time-rich or money-rich.

NICK: Money-rich and time-poor.

MARTYN: Yeah, absolutely. Would you say that the type of business you're in gives you the time now to do the things that you want to do, as opposed to if you were in a normal job, let's say, and you'd be working nine-‘til-five every day. Can you actually step outside of your business now and find the time for the hobbies and the things that you want to do with your family?

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NICK: You can. I mean, that work-life balance- I've always found it tough because I enjoy what I do so much. You will find me working sort of nine-to-five, but it's the freedom of taking the time off when you want to. When I go back and think back to that conversation with my grandfather, one of the things that I wanted to do was to be able to retire at an age that I wanted to.

But the thing is, I could retire now and have an income that would keep me to a moderate standard of living, but I don't want to do that. But it's the freedom of choice: if I want to take the day off I can take the day off. If I don't want to work over the weekend, then I won't; if I do, then I will. It's the freedom of sitting down at your desk after lunch and you think, 'I just can't be bothered today. I just want to go for a walk.' Why not? Go and walk the dog; just go and do something else. It's that freedom that's the most enjoyable thing, but it doesn't mean that that freedom means that you don't work. The fact that you can take several holidays a year abroad with the family is fantastic, but let's remember that 'no' is a very hard word for an entrepreneur to use because I get a lot of joint venture opportunities, I have a lot of ideas, and sometimes I need to actually write them down and then say, 'Well, if I do this, will it have a detrimental effect on my freedom?' And so that's an important sort of part to make, that you can do anything you like, but if you do this, does it mean it stops you having to do something else?

MARTYN: I know your business takes you both on- and offline; I just want to look at the online aspect of it. If we go on the Internet we can go onto Google and put in 'Millionaire Systems' and we will find millions of people out there trying to do exactly what you're doing, and we know that the majority of these probably never made a penny in their lives, but they're all trying to aspire to be the same sort of person as you. Would you say that these people have saturated that market? Is the market too saturated for a newcomer to step into now?

NICK: I think it's complicated for anyone that wants to start an Internet business to actually find somebody that walks the talk, and I think it's harder now than it has been. But I also believe that you can quite easily spot somebody that's just bought a resale license to a piece of software and is trying to make their first ÂŁ10,000 by selling ten courses at ÂŁ1,000 or $1,000 or what have you. I think that's easy to spot because of the way that the Internet is now moving. We've had this Web 2.0 around for a little while now; we're not hearing that term as much these days as we're hearing the term 'social media'. I think social media, and more importantly, video is helping the average new customer that wants to start an online business know who has a particular following and a particular case history and those that haven't, because the want-to-bes that come along haven't got as much social proof. The other thing I've realised with the way that video is taking over the Internet is if you were only judging an offer by text and pictures, I think it's quite easy for somebody to put something up that's quite honestly not true. When we look at video, I think it's harder for anyone that isn't ethical and honest and hard-working and wants to help; I think it's harder for those people that aren't those things to then make video, and video is the future of the Internet. With the high-speed bandwidth and the Internet connections and everything coming into play, video is playing a much stronger part. So I think it's going to be harder for the unethical types to continue doing what they're doing, all those guys that have just bought resale rights to a product and are selling it. So it's going to get tougher for them again. But what I will say is: anyone who's looking to start an Internet business, you don't need ten people telling you what to do. Maybe pick one or two personalities and check them out. Go and look for testimonials and comments, particularly video comments, about that person. Look on Facebook; what are people saying about them?

MARTYN: Do you think this proof trail has been aided by the social networking sites over the last few years?

NICK: Yeah, I mean, social networking is like that conversation down at the pub. Facebook is a great way of just having an offguard chat, and the same with Twitter; comments on YouTube videos, likewise. I think it's all now about brand awareness or making sure that you know what people are saying about you, and that's a good thing. Word of mouth has always been very, very powerful, and if you're not who you say you are and you don't deliver what you say you do, then I think you'll quickly get shot down in flames. Now, there's a big difference between being a rogue and being shot down in flames and dealing with a lot of customers, having one or two unhappy customers. I don't think that you can please all of the people, all the time. I think that's one of the things that we should touch on here, that running an Internet business can be very profitable for you, but you have to put in some work. Where most of the complaints will come in is if you try and tell somebody that it's too easy. The fact is that the Internet gives you the same size shop window as some of the largest corporations on the planet. I can have the same size website as IBM, as Microsoft; it's the same space on the same screen. So it gives me this equal footing, but it takes hard work and determination and effort and a plan in order to be able to set a business up. When it comes to promoting any kind of coaching program or Internet home study course or whatever it is you happen to be selling, there is then the argument of copywriting. So when we look at copywriting, if you imagine that there's this imaginary straight black line down this path, if you 16

go too far to the left, then everything would be too grey and too boring and it'll be very dull and there'll be a list of 101 things you have to do in order to start your business. If we then go too far to the right, then people are going to imagine they're telephone numbers; you can't turn over that much money working from home. Or it's a pipe dream; you're selling a unicorn; it's never going to work. So the way I liken this is the fact that you need to keep it exciting enough while still keeping it real, and if you can do that and you can make sure that your prospects understand that nothing's going to happen unless they do anything, then you won't upset people when they realise that it didn't work because they didn't do anything. Customers like to blame other people if things don't turn out, but remember, this is information that you, as an intelligent adult, should then interpret and put into practice. Just to go back to the book I mentioned earlier, Think And Grow Rich: the big secret, of course, in Think And Grow Rich is you can't just think and grow rich. You need to think, you need to act, and you need to do. So it makes sense that you can't just buy a home study course and expect to become a millionaire. You need to put in practice all those principles and tactics that were in that home study course for it to have any effect, and that, I think, upsets a few people when they suddenly realise, 'Oh, I can't just buy a course.' So in a roundabout way, I hope that answers that question.

MARTYN: We're talking about the guys that sort of flooded the Internet trying to get a footing in the business, just to get a start in the business. Now, going back to when you first started, can you describe the challenges you faced in trying to get your message out to potential customers?

NICK: Well, I guess I started offline. My first product was a set of these videotapes featuring a guy called Corey Rudl, who was the head of the Internet Marketing Center at the time, over in Vancouver. And I remember these videotapes were about email marketing and running an Internet business, so of course I just thought to myself at the time, 'Well, I'd better get myself a website then'. And I had to learn how it happened; I remember right-clicking and looking at the source code that put a web page together and wondering why that image appeared on the screen. I was lent a book, which I've still got over in the office somewhere, called Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours. I didn't finish the book. I read the first three or four chapters and I was away; I kind of understood it. But like anyone else, I wanted to learn; I didn't realise how much I didn't know. And then, obviously, it's that whole kind of curve; you don't know what you don't know, then you begin to learn what you don't know, then you don't understand how much you've learned until you've fully understood what you've learned. So I had to get around that learning curve, but I was passionate about it, and it just goes back to, like you say, that motivation; I enjoyed that whole experience because if I'm honest, when I started, I thought the computer was a glorified typewriter. I thought the Internet was pretty much, I don't know, the AOL Intranet, or a load of mucky websites. I didn't realise that you could make money with a computer. I had to learn because computers at school- we had about a dozen of those old BBC computers, those great big giant floppy discs, and there was always a ton of students in front of me that were, I don't know, spending weeks programming to make a clock on the screen or something. I just didn't get a chance to sit down at a computer, so I had to learn from the ground up. But again, it was that desire to learn, because I fell in love with learning again, that was, I guess, the reason why I wanted to sit down and read that book about learning HTML in 24 hours.

MARTYN: I can actually remember reading the exact same book, and I certainly didn't learn it in 24 hours. I can also remember, years ago, reading Bert Weedon's Play in a Day for the guitar and that was probably 20 years ago and I still can't play the guitar, so I think you're absolutely right: don't always read the cover, there is some work to be done too.

NICK: It's like that Play in a Day; it also takes practice. If you now say, 'I haven't practiced every day since I bought that book', then it's understandable why you still can't play.

MARTYN: Absolutely, absolutely. Now, if I was to bring one of these newbies in now to sit in front of you and for them to say to you, 'I would like to start an information publishing business, the same as you', what single piece of advice would you give them starting out?

NICK: Ask questions. The winners ask questions. If you can become a member of a community- I run a community site online, Nick-James.com, that has a discussion forum that's a caring and sharing environment- ask questions. Also try and make sure you qualify the person that's giving you advice. That's really important. I've given marketing advice and publishing advice to people and when I've seen them again, I've said, 'How'd you get on with that project we spoke about?' 'Well, I haven't done it. I spoke to the bloke down at the pub and he said it wouldn't work, so I never bothered trying.' It's like, why did you ask him?

Why didn't ask somebody else that's published an information product? A cabinetmaker friend of mine was talking to this 17

woman about low-level cabinets and adjustable bookshelves. I said, 'Are you going to go ahead with it?' 'No, I spoke to the trash man and he said it wouldn't look right.' It's like, why are you speaking to somebody that's not qualified to answer the question? Why didn't you speak to an interior designer? So always ask the person or evaluate whether they're qualified, but it always helps to mix with like-minded people and people who have actually achieved what it is that you're looking to achieve. If you can find a discussion forum or a support group or a Mastermind group, then you'll be onto a winner and just ask lots of questions. I know it's an old saying that the only stupid question is the one that's not asked, but I know that winners and movers and shakers ask lots of questions, and if you’re not asking questions then there's something wrong.

MARTYN: We tend to find that the newcomers seem to put all of their focus into a product; that's the first thing that they aim for, is the product. In your experience, what would be the starting point for you? Would you start with a product? Would you be looking at a list, or...?

NICK: The problem with starting with a product is it's a bit like putting the cart before the horse because you can fall in love with a product idea and then realise that nobody wants to buy it. So it's much better to maybe go back to those discussion forums where I've suggested you hang out and actually look at the questions people are asking. I'll give you an example: in 2004, do you remember that all of a sudden the Internet was no longer a silent place? And when we went to people's websites we would see a picture of the webmaster and maybe there were two or three buttons underneath his picture and he would speak a message to you, sort of, 'Hi, welcome to this website.' Well, I was looking at this, and I was thinking to myself, well, I've got a choice to make. I either need to go and learn Macromedia Flash and how to make these little Flash objects that talk to you, or I need to go and spend $30 a month on this piece of software that an American guy called Armand Morin was selling called Audio Generator, and I didn't have $30 a month that I wanted to spend on that. So I then decided that I would go and look for a different solution, and I searched the Internet for a whole three or four days looking for an answer to this problem and I couldn't find one. Eventually I found a German piece of software called Sound Nails, and I had to learn German to be able to use the software. And I realised that I was not the only webmaster that perhaps didn't want to pay $30 a month for this piece of software or have to buy and then learn how to use Macromedia Dreamweaver. So I thought, 'There's going to be a lot of people that have this problem.' So what I did was I went to Script Lance, which is a freelancers' website, and I found a programmer, I drew a picture of what I thought the software should look like, I told him what I wanted the end effect to be, and I made a piece of software called Flash Audio Wizard that was an easy way of putting those audio buttons on a website. So I'd identified the market, I'd worked out I could even write an ebook about how to use Flash, I could write an ebook about how to use Sound Nails, I could maybe just become an affiliate for Armand Morin, but I didn't. I put this piece of software together and I sold it on the Internet for $67, and we have sold thousands of those pieces of software, and we've updated it several times. But the fact was, I found the marketplace before the product, and that is the golden rule: you always have to look and see what people are having problems with or the questions they're asking, and then just put the answer in front of them and then it's so much easier to sell something.

MARTYN: So by you identifying one problem, you've actually come out with half a dozen products from that one problem.

NICK: Yeah, because, I mean, I sold the software; after I sold the software, I sold the resale rights to the software, and then I actually wrote a products about how to make products and used Flash Audio Wizard as one of the case studies that was in that product. So, I mean, the whole thing kept on playing forward, and repurposing the experience that I had making that piece of software, how we marketed it, how we then extended the product life, then, obviously, how we told a story of how we did everything to that product.

MARTYN: I just want to talk a little bit about the importance of building a relationship with customers, but before we do that, we've already spoken about the amount of newcomers who are pretending to be who they're not and sort of flooding the Internet with pretending to be millionaires. Do you think that these people are ruining the Internet for you, and is there a way to actually govern that? Is there a system to be put in place to govern what these people are allowed to say?

NICK: I think it's- policing the Internet- there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to policing the Internet with, I don't know, things like terrorism and child pornography and all these other things, so I'm not necessarily looking at a way of policing the Internet, but what I would say is if these newbies were to only sit back and think about what they're doing, they wouldn't say, 'I'm an expert.' I was mentioning earlier on with this Flash Audio Wizard example about having a generation of the product or a timeline of the product. I also had a generation one and a generation two and a generation three of me and what I was doing, 18

and if any beginner is listening to this, then perhaps you should sort of use this as an idea. Firstly, in a sales letter, if you lie, you will eventually get caught out; and when we talk about relationships with a list, if you lie, then you've burnt that relationship.

It's gone; you'll never get it back. However, thinking a little bit smarter about things, if you were to license a product- and this is what I did with the Corey Rudl example- what I said when I wrote my promotional piece was, 'Here is a guy that's done really well with email marketing. Now, if you and I copy him, we can have a similar result.' Now I'm playing the part of the news anchor man, reporting on a story from over in America, and there was nothing wrong with that. And even when it came to customer support, I used to say, 'Well, I don't know. He's the expert; go and ask him.’ So I was still able to make a sale, I was still ethical and honest, and I copied the figures from his biography and his stats; everything was aboveboard, but I didn't say, 'I'm an expert', I said, 'There's an expert', and that's a big, big difference. So you can get started with affiliate marketing that way. And then when your affiliate earnings start creeping up, your joint venture earnings start creeping up, then you can actually write a book ethically and honestly about how you started with nothing and started getting big, fat affiliate cheques.

And you can do that with authority. So there's a right way and a wrong way to do that, and I believe people that do it the wrong way will probably sooner or later give up anyway, and the people who do it the right way, who fall in love with the business and do it because they love what they do and they're doing it ethically and honestly, they will prosper.

MARTYN: Excellent. I know that your relationship with your customers isreally important to you and building up a trusting relationship. Can you just explain to us a little bit about how you go about that, how you keep that relationship going over what seems to be a number of years? I mean, you keep the same customers for quite a long period of time.

NICK: I think the answer to that is being available and answering emails. I mean, the thing that winds me up the most is when you try and you ask a question and then you just don't hear anything, and I know from the number of emails I get from customers saying, 'I can't believe you reply personally', or some emails come in saying, 'I know you'll never read this, but...' and I try and make sure that every single email gets answered, and if it's not by me, then it'll be by a member of the team. For example, I'm not the best person to talk about why your subscription payment didn't go through. That'll get assigned to Emma who deals with the admin. Technically, if it's, 'I can't install my WordPress blog on the webposting; why not?' I'm not the best person to answer that either. The technician's the best person to answer that, so I'll assign it to him. But if you were to ask the question, 'This is the marketing problem I'm having', or 'I've read your book and I don't understand this', I'm the person that answers that. Now, some other marketers have said that I'm wrong for being available and answering those questions when I could be off creating something else, but as you rightly say, I think the customer acquisition is expensive; customer retention and building that relationship, it's a time investment rather than a financial investment by this point, and if you treat people like you want to be treated yourself and you pick up the phone when they ring and you talk to them or if you reply to their email personally because they wrote you personally, that helps to cement those relationships. Likewise, I sometimes talk directly, and it's like, 'What do you think of my website?' It's like, 'You need a facelift. You need to go and get a graphic designer to make it more beautiful. You haven't got the skills to do it yourself; go and find somebody to do it for you', which is exactly what I have to do because I've got the graphic design skills of a three-year-old with a bunch of crayons, so I have to go and get somebody to make my own websites look beautiful. But I'll be direct and honest and it won't be condescending, but it'll be, 'Well done for what you've done; now think about doing this. What was the result from that? Try doing this and you might find that'll improve.' But just keeping in regular contact with customers is important. Just to finish off on that, a few years ago I got involved with a bit of PR and I asked a girl called Zara to help me with some national newspapers and some magazines and things like that, and the first thing she said was, 'Right, Nick, tell me who's been successful.' And I said, 'Well, I don't know Zara; I put an offer out, the customers order, I send them the product, if they want a refund I send them their money back.' I was very reactive to customers because that's what I was taught to do. What Zara suggested I do was start being proactive with talking to customers in the meantime, to start a discussion forum, to ring up every once in a while or send an email saying, 'Hey, how are you? How's it going? Can I help you with anything? What happened with that product that you bought?' And when I started to make those phone calls, I remember the first phone call I made was to a couple called John and Elvirafantastic name. Now, they were up in the Midlands area, and they were selling rocks and crystals on eBay, and they'd bought a videotape or a CD from me, a DVD, called eBay For Fun and Profit. When I phoned John, he said, 'Absolutely crazy around here.

We're doing about 50 grand a year selling rocks and gems and little crystals', you know the kind of things that come in a little box and, yeah, and they look pretty and you put them on the sideboard. They were off to one of the race courses, Kempton Park I think it was, for a rocks and crystal show, and they had a stand there and business was really taking off with them. So they were a success story because they'd bought a DVD and now had a 50-grand-a-year business. I wouldn’t have found that 19

out unless I made that phone call. So becoming more open and available for your customers to communicate- I'm not saying you shouldn’t be managed; all my email communication is now handled by a support desk system and we can open tickets and close them and put them on hold and you get a little notification when I've replied to your question. There needs to be systems in place, but that doesn't mean that you're not available. By making myself available I know that I've got a good relationship with my customers. If anything was to go wrong, and things have gone wrong in the past, I'm not a saint and I don't pretend that I haven't made mistakes or there haven't been problems with customers, but what I will say is that when things go wrong it's generally because of a communications problem. Either I haven't received their email, they haven't received my email, or they bought something and something's got lost in the post; they're the kind of things that go wrong. But other than that, if you can handle that situation properly as soon as you find out about it, then you can turn somebody that was originally very upset into one of your biggest raving fans because you took the time to put the problem right.

MARTYN: Even though I'm interviewing you for the magazine, I myself am one of your customers. One of the things I've noticed from any communication from you with new products is the fact that you never seem to promote this 'Get rich quick' or 'make money overnight' type thing that we see in the mail and on the Internet every day of the week. In your experience, can you tell us what you think about systems that try to promote this 'get rich quick' and 'make money overnight' type of product?

NICK: Well, we were mentioning earlier that there are sales letters that promise that you can make money in your underpants and not have to do anything for that, and I'm sure there is a marketplace for that. It's not the marketplace that I want to be in.

The other term that I've heard as well is 'you need to be careful who you bait your hook for', and I think that was a GlazerKennedy expression; that if a customer wants to make money in their underpants, they're not my customer. What I'm looking for are customers that are prepared to put in some work and some effort, and instead of having short-term gains of a little bit, they have long-term gains of a hell of a lot. The business works in the way that when you have a good relationship with your list, with your customer database, you can make a lot of money in a shorter space of time, but it takes an incubation period of a few months to build that relationship up to start with. It's a little bit like building a snowman: you need to wait for it to snow and then you can nurture a small list in your hands, but if you push it along a little bit every day it grows and it grows and it grows and you get self-referrals and the thing gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You just need to be prepared to understand that there's this incubation period when you get started; you know, a list starts with one person on it, and then maybe at the end of the week you have five, and then you have a list maybe a month later of 50. If you can keep you your list growing and self-referrals at that same rate, then it will become a big list. It's your most precious asset, so if you spend time making that asset, it'll pay you back in great dividends in years to come. Somebody once told me that each person on your database is probably worth a dollar a year to you, and I remember at the time I was looking at my own statistics, my own numbers, and thinking, 'Well, yeah, that's about right', but now, no. Each person on my list now is probably worth $10 or $50, but it depends because you grow and your ideas change as time goes on, but always look after your customers. Likewise, if somebody wants to unsubscribe, that's great. The more unsubscribers you get from people that don't match your newsletter, the better it is for you, and I'll tell you why. You get higher email deliverability when you get less spam complaints, and if people really didn't want to hear from you, then let them click the unsubscribe link in each email that you send out; don't hide it. It's a mistake to put lots of carriage returns so the unsubscribe link isn't in view after you say sort of Kindest Regards, Nick, if they can't see unsubscribe because to unsubscribe, they're probably going to put it through as a spam complaint. And the more spam complaints you get, the less email deliverability you get, etcetera, etcetera. Have a great relationship with people, but don't be sorry to see them go. If you're not the right person for them, that's fine. Maybe my views on this come back from the DJ days; I knew that I couldn't have all the people dancing on the dance floor all at once, you know. You just had to try and please most of the people most of the time.

MARTYN: Just going back a little bit, you said for someone new coming into the business, your advice would be 'Ask lots of questions', which sort of leads me on to: I know you run a coaching and mentoring programme. Could you just explain a little bit about what you do and how that would benefit a newcomer to the business, or indeed someone that's been in the business for some time?

NICK: Sure. Well, firstly, let's talk about Nick-James.com. Nick-James.com is a membership site; there's thousands of articles on there, video tutorials and audio interviews like this one, and a discussion forum where you can become a member of a community of like-minded people, and that's a great way of getting out of the sand pit and off to the high jump. Membership there starts at ÂŁ15 a month and it goes up to ÂŁ97 a month for sort of a high-end membership. That's a great way to 20

get started, especially if you're a little bit worried about your monthly expenses. But you're quite right; I also have a private protégé program which you can see if we're still accepting new places at privateinvitation.co.uk. This is a huge home study course, and the reason we've put the home study course together is to make sure that you are on the right page or you've reached a minimum standard of learning before you and I sit down and we go through one-to-one coaching about how to get your business to the next level and the next level and the next level. So it makes sense that I don't spend four hours of coaching just telling you the basics that were in a home study course. So I put this home study course together to show you how to do your research so you're making sure you’re finding the marketplace. We then show you how to make the products; we then show you how to market those products. But as you can imagine, direct marketing and Internet marketing is quite a fastmoving landscape, so it then goes to prove that just having a box of home study materials that sit on the shelf will go out of date quite quickly. So what we do is we then link that to updates to the private protégés members’ area on Nick-James.com for all the updates. So it's always being sort of added to with new tips and techniques about how to use social media or YouTube, etcetera. But the real value is where you and I can sit down and actually chew the cud on your specific project, and that's not something that I know any other wealth creation or Internet marketer is prepared to do with people at the moment because it's very much kind of a 'We don't mind sending you a box or kit, but one-to-one time is very expensive.' So I'm happy to do that with customers that want to go at that extra speed or reach that extra level.

MARTYN: So there's actually help and advice there to suit every pocket, really, so if you're just starting out and you haven't got a great deal of money, there is help and advice at the lower end that people could then sort of cut their teeth on, if you like, and then start to move up. Is that right?

NICK: Absolutely; there's a wealth of information within the members of Nick-James.com. We have customers there that are turning over up to 5, 6, £700,000 a year businesses that hang out in the discussion forum. We've got technical guys that program huge pieces of software that still hang out in the membership site. So whatever your problem is, if you ask the question there, you'll get a decent and responsible answer. Likewise, there are some newbies that come in as well, so you don't have to be an advanced person to ask a question. Just saying, 'Hi, I've just joined; I've got no idea how to put a PayPal button on my website or how to set my new digital downloadable product or ebook up on a thank-you page', that kind of help and advice is there; likewise, anything to do with starting a web business. So I think it's important to become a member of that community.

There are a lot of forums online; like I say, Nick-James.com is backed up with ten years of experience in the business, thousands of articles, lots of videos. Like I say, access starts from £15 a month, £27 a month for premium memberships. So it's a wealth- I mean, it's an Aladdin's cave of information; there's lots of free bits and pieces on there as well, so it's well worth checking it out.

MARTYN: Well, Nick, I know you're a very, very busy man, and I'd like to thank you for giving up your time to speak to us all today and just give us an insight into the man behind the website, really. Thank you very much, Nick; it's been an absolute privilege and I hope we can do this again someday.

NICK: Martyn, the hour's gone really quickly. I enjoyed talking to you and if there's anything that I can help with, you or your readers, then do just get in touch. Thanks very much.

MARTYN: Thank you very much.

If you would like to know more about Nick James or any of his home study courses, mentoring or private protégé students then please check out the vast array of information at www.nick-james.com

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Do you know what the easiest thing is to find in business today? I’m not talking about advertising, marketing or promises of vast wealth. No, the easiest thing to find in business today is that person that tells you that you can’t do something. I’m talking about the negative people that surround us each and every day that, because of their own failures and their own mindset think that everyone else is the same as them.

The type of people reading this article, and indeed, this magazine, are a very unique class of people. Although we may all be from different countries, social classes, religions, education and skill levels, we are all in a class together. That class is of belief. A belief that we can succeed while others are failing. A belief that even during a time of world recession, we can still succeed.

Unfortunately the whole world is not of the same mindset. So who are these people who tell us that we cannot achieve the things we want in life? They are the very people who have never achieved their own dreams and ambitions. The guy who earns $25,000 dollars a year is the same guy who will tell you that you cannot earn $50,000.

It’s the guy who earns $250,000 a year who will tell you that you cannot earn a million dollars. But it’s not just about money. Jim Maynor of Amway wealth once said that in the boy scouts it’s the tenderfoot that will tell you that you cannot be an eagle scout. It’s the college flunky that tells you that you cannot get a degree, and it’s the guy that’s never been in business before that tells you that you cannot start a business and be successful.

The sad thing is that the people we are talking about here are not strangers to us. We are surrounded by these people every day. It might be your next door neighbour. It might be your mother or father. It might be your brother or sister. It might be your very best friend. But one thing is for sure, we all know one of these people. They are not trying to put us down for trying. They truly believe that we will fail because they have failed.

A very sad fact is that many of us will hear that we cannot achieve our goals and ambitions so many times from those around us that we start to believe that we cannot achieve and finally give up. An even sadder fact is that we often ask these people for their advice or opinions rather than asking the advice of the people who actually know the answers.

So, how do we stop these negative influences? To start with it is important to only ask advice from those who have succeeded in business rather than asking our nearest auntie who has never run a business in her life. Secondly, we need to find the thing that motivates us to keep on believing and to keep on pushing forward. And thirdly we need to set ourselves realistic targets and goals and use those targets and goals as stepping stones to the ultimate prize, whatever that may be.

Finding the thing that motivates us will be different from person to person. For some people, just making money is enough of a motivator. For others it is the free time created by wealth that motivates them. I spoke to one guy who actually used the negativity of his family as a motivator. He took an enormous amount of motivation from proving his family wrong and being able to change their way of thinking. It might even be motivation enough if you are passionate about a service or product that you sell.

Reading motivational books and watching or listening to motivational dvd’s and cd’s seems to be a favourite among successful business people, and there are no shortages of motivational material for sale on the internet. Some say incantations to themselves every morning and every night. The point is, there is no one set way to get motivated and everyone is different. But one thing is for sure, you need to get motivated if you are to succeed.

Before you dive head first into your chosen business, stop and think about why you want to go into business in the first place. Is it purely for money, time, passion or something else. If you are not passionate about your business then motivation will be a long time coming.

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The Case For YouTube Marketing Is it even necessary to make a case? C'mon, it's here and it's growing like gangbusters and if you don't get on board... well, what can I say? Here are my top 3 reasons for making videos an essential part of your online strategy: 1. Google likes it.

2. Google loves it.

3. Google adores it.

When starting a home business nothing is more important than visibility. What location is to the offline business, visibility is to the online business. Getting your blog or video about your business visible and attracting traffic is essential. Google owns YouTube. Google loves videos. You do the math.

More reasons for using videos: Over 2 billion - the number of YouTube views per day.

15 - the number of minutes the average person spends on YouTube a day.

Over 35 - the number of hours of video uploaded each minute.

Wow! 35 hours of new video uploaded every minute is a little intimidating. How are our business videos going to compete with all the bizarre stuff that people love on YouTube?

Well, the good news is that you don't have to. Just make your videos relevant to what your business is about and what your potential customers need. Just like blogging, your videos should provide useful and valuable information for your viewers.

In fact, video is a great companion piece for your blog. People who are more visually oriented, like I am, will appreciate a video that demonstrates what is being explained by your blog.

There are many options for using video.

Starring You - Most of us are intimidated by going on camera and talking to a lens. The thought of it is just too much and it is probably the number one reason people shy away from video marketing.

We have a tendency to think it takes natural talent and we don't have it. Truth be known... most people you see on videos that seem to be naturals are not. It is an acquired skill and they likely have spent hundreds of hours practicing in order to look like a "natural." You can do that too if you want. It just takes practice and patience.

But don't lose "you" in the process. Be yourself. Don't try to be that really smooth-talking "natural" that you admire. People can spot a phony and they want to connect with the real you. Until you feel comfortable going on camera personally (still working on that myself), there are other options.

Slide Shows - Create a PowerPoint slide presentation and walk your viewer though your presentation with just your audio voice-over. You can create your slides using bullet points from your blog. Some suggest that you can just read your blog as you advance through your slides. Personally, I think it would be best to just talk from your bullet points.

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The Case For YouTube Marketing Continued....

Screen Captures - This is similar to the slide show but with the appropriate software such as Jing, Screencast-OMatic, or Camtasia. Jing and Screencast-O-Matic have free versions and Camtasia has a 30-day free trial. The software will capture your computer screen so this is great for "how to" videos.

For the novice, Animoto is a good place to start creating videos. Just choose appropriate photos and graphics, add some text, select some music and you've got a video.

The next challenge in YouTube marketing is getting your video seen.

Videos are no different from blogs and websites when it comes to getting them found by people who are searching for what you have to offer. Well, there is one difference. Google loves YouTube! Getting your video ranked may be easier and faster than getting your blog or website ranked.

Keywords are still important. Even though Google loves YouTube you still have to do your due diligence. The more effort you put into finding the best keywords for your niche and topic, the more successful you will be in getting your video ranked.

Use your keyword in your title and don't forget about the "description box." In the description box, lead with your website or blog URL hyperlink, and include your keyword in the first sentence of your description.

And don't forget that YouTube is a community of people. You will want to be an active member of that community in your niche and topic. You can do that by commenting on other videos and participating in groups in your topic and niche.

Another essential ingredient is establishing a channel. Your YouTube channel is like a home page and you can change the background and color scheme to suit you and your brand. But more important, your channel is where your viewers can subscribe to your channel and they will be notified when you post additional videos. You also have the ability to send messages to your subscribers.

Don't let fear, or a perceived lack of skill keep you from reaping the benefits of YouTube marketing.

Bob Young retired from regional management in the computer service industry and now devotes his time and energies to helping Boomers and others find and develop alternate or second careers. He is an Executive Affinity Group Leader at Small Biz Incubator, LLC, offering mentored training for online business owners.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_L._Young

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7016395

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How To Make Millions Without

A Degree Book Review

'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' is a book written by businessman and entrepreneur Simon Dolan. This book plots Simon's journey to building a £100 million empire and is a practical guide for how you could do the same... without a degree.

About the Author: Simon Dolan Twitter Dragon Simon Dolan's business empire encompasses aviation, motor racing, publishing, recruitment, and lifestyle products. There is also a branch of his accountancy firm, SJD Accountancy, in every major UK town and city. His fortune was recently placed at £100 million.

Dolan gained his first entrepreneurial experience at the age of 13, buying and selling scratch cards in the school playground.

He took an early morning paper round, before gaining a part time job at his local market on the cheese and egg stall. There, the young entrepreneur learned that running your own business takes hard work and dedication, but that the rewards are there for the taking.

His inquisitive and questioning nature led to clashes with authority figures at school and Simon was asked to leave at the age of 16. There followed a period spent trying to break into the music business, before eventually joining a firm of accountants.

After leaving this role, Dolan spent several years trying out different jobs, until he found himself aged 23, unemployed and living off credit cards.

When the money and credit ran out, he was racking his brains for ways to make money and spent his last £10 placing an advert in the local newspaper offering to complete people's end of year accounts. Three weeks passed before he received a call and SJD Accountancy was born.

Away from the office, Simon Dolan is a former kickboxing title holder and current motor racing champion with his team Aston Martin Jota Sport.

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The Book: How to Make Millions without a Degree 'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' proves Simon Dolan has achieved a lot in his life, so much so, his business empire is still growing. From starting SJD Accountancy from the ground up to forming Jota Sport and The Drivers Club (offering private, high performance driver training and driving events), Simon continues to be successful.

These are just some of the companies that have helped Simon build his ÂŁ100 million empire, but it was by no means an 'overnight' success.

Simon Dolan's entrepreneurial tendencies were realised early and has seen Simon taking on countless jobs picking up valuable 'life lessons' along the way. But one thing has always been present: determination.

Throughout 'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' you will see how Simon Dolan has always worked hard and how he identified a niche market that allowed him to start the SJD Accountancy business.

Detailing Dolan's early life, from selling cheese and eggs, a photocopier salesman, to actually building the foundations for the multi-million pound SJD Accountancy, 'How to Make Millions Without A Degree' gives you the confidence and understanding to start your own empire. Simon Dolan is a serial entrepreneur and looks into what an entrepreneur is, tips on how to run your business and an insight as to how he made his pennies into millions.

'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' details how other entrepreneurs like Simon have made it without a degree. Richard Branson, Sir Philip Green, Stephen Marks and more prove becoming a millionaire is achievable, even without a degree.

A great insight into one of the UK's leading entrepreneurs, 'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' is a must read for business owners or anyone dreaming of success.

'How To Make Millions Without A Degree' can be bought at amazon.com Or Kindle version at amazonkindle

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www.young-enterprise.org.uk Young Enterprise is the United Kingdom's largest business and enterprise education charity. Every year we help 250,000 young people learn about business and the world of work in the classroom under the guidance of volunteers from 3,500 companies.

We believe in ''Learning by doing' Young Enterprise's mission statement is "to inspire and equip young people to learn and succeed through enterprise." Its guiding principle is to do this through 'learning by doing.' Our programmes range from 'Ourselves' for Primary school pupils as young as four. It takes students on an engaging story-based journey exploring the world of work, saving, earning, decision making and teamwork.

They culminate in Young Enterprise's flagship Company Programme which enables 30,000 15-19 year olds run their own real companies for a year with help from business mentors. Many of the scheme's alumni have gone on to outstanding business success.

We were created in 1963 Merchant banker Sir Walter Salomon founded Young Enterprise in the 1962/1963 academic year. It was based on the American Junior Achievement programme. The concept proved hugely popular. By the 1973/1974 academic year, branches had sprung up in twenty-two areas of the country running Young Enterprise programmes. In the Spring of 2011 12 of Young Enterprise's regional organisations merged to form a single, streamlined and even more efficient body. Scotland and Northern Ireland remain separate but closely associated members of the family.

We campaign for young people's empowerment Young Enterprise argues that an excessively narrow focus on academic skills and exams risks sidelining other approaches to learning and can fail to give young people the employability skills they need - such as teamwork, practical thinking, punctuality and businesslike behaviour - to succeed in the world of work.

Here are some statistics and links: Each year, 5,000 business volunteers inspire young people aged 4 to 25 years. Our programmes empower the next generation with the confidence, ability and ambition to succeed in a rapidly changing global economy.

With the support of more than 3,500 businesses and over 5,000 schools, colleges, universities and local communities, we are a major force in preparing the next generation to run the British economy.

With almost 50 years’ experience, we are an active member of Junior Achievement Worldwide and a founding member of JA-YE Europe.

Young Enterprise is supported by many volunteers, supporters and fundraisers including some prominent names such as Neil Makin, Chairman of the Cadbury Foundation, Peter Bull, Head of HSBC in the Community, BBC Young Apprentice star Harry Hitchens and Virgin’s Richard Branson.

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www.young-enterprise.org.uk How do we know Young Enterprise programmes work?

In 2008 we asked research company Fresh Minds to evaluate the impact our programmes on the lives of Young Enterprise alumni.

Here are the headlines Participation in the Young Enterprise Company Programme correlates with better future earnings In particular in the 30+ age group alumni earn a third more than their peers.

Young Enterprise Company Programme alumni are twice as likely to start their own business as their peers.

Alumni had a greater appreciation of their skills and the opportunities available to them on leaving school.

The YE alumni are more passionate about their jobs than their peers with 77% of alumni fulfilled and engaged by their jobs, compared to only 59% of the Control Group.

YE alumni are more successful in their careers than their non-participating counterparts (even when taking into account family affluence).

YE alumni are more likely to get involved in voluntary work (55% compared with 39% for the Control Group).

Amongst business-owning alumni, Young Enterprise was ranked as the most significant experience they drew upon when establishing and building their venture.

Overall, YE alumni felt that Young Enterprise contributed to their skill development more than anything else, including work experience, extra-curricular activities and school.

Read more about the Fresh Minds analysis by clicking here: http://bit.ly/pCpFnz To read the latest Start something ... newsletter go here: http://bit.ly/GRi1Xi Volunteer for Young Enterprise Experience an exciting new challenge by volunteering with Young Enterprise. Bring your knowledge, passion and experience to inspire the next generation of young people to discover their potential and make a lasting impression.

Support us Engage your business and colleagues in making a real difference to the lives of young people. Join more than 3,500 UKbased businesses and organisations already supporting Young Enterprise through funding and employee volunteering.

Run a Young Enterprise programme Our flexible range of programmes for students aged 4-25 empower young people with the confidence, ability and ambition to succeed through enterprise. Discover more about running a Young Enterprise programme at your school, college, university or education centre.

Fundraise for Young Enterprise From events like sponsored challenges in a number of countries across the world and cricket competitions to one-off personal donations and corporate payroll giving, the fundraising possibilities with Young Enterprise are virtually limitless.

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What are you willing to do to gain financial freedom?

This may seem like a silly question but many of us already have the knowledge and the tools to do it right now. So why is it that all too often we do not act on it? My theory is that we do not like to come out of our own personal comfort zone.

I heard a story a few years back about a travelling salesman in Alabama in the US. He stopped at a gas station and while the attendant was filling his car the salesman went into the washroom to freshen up. While combing his hair in the mirror he happened to glance down at the toilet to see a dime (10 cents) at the bottom of the pan. He continued combing his hair but every now and again he would glance back down at the dime sitting in the bottom of the dirty toilet water. He was a man never to pass up an opportunity but for the sake of 10 cents was it worth it? He finally got to a point where he could no longer bare it. He took a quarter (25 cents) out of his pocket and threw it into the toilet and said “for a dime no, but for 35 cents yes!� I think the moral of the story is that we all have a price or something to get us motivated to take action. We just need to find out what that price or motivation is that will make us act outside of our comfort zone.

Over the years we have all bought various money making systems and programs and many of them were deemed as failures or a waste of money. But how many times did we ignore the advice we were given and try to do it our own way because we were uncomfortable with the instructions? How many times did we think that it was just too much work? I know that for me many of the systems failed because of me. I learned the hard way. But now, whenever I look at a new system I follow the instructions to the letter, no matter how hard the work seems or how uncomfortable it makes me. That way I can truthfully say whether the system works for me.

Public speaking used to be way out of my comfort zone but after standing up in front of a crowd a couple of times I no longer felt the knots in my stomach that I had experienced before. If you truly want to be successful then you will need to step out of your comfort zone. The only way to get the things you have never had is to do the things you have never done.

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Is Dyslexia A Disadvantage?

Reading through some old articles, I found something from way back in 2003 about dyslexia in millionaires and thought it was worth another airing. According to the 2003 study, Self-made millionaires are four times more likely to suffer from dyslexia than the rest of the population. So is dyslexia really such a disadvantage?

Of the 300 millionaires studied it was found that 40 per cent were diagnosed with dyslexia. The study also showed that the 40 percent identified performed badly at school and still do poorly in aptitude tests.

Experts believe that dyslexics, who tend not to be good at details, learn to excel by grasping the bigger picture and producing original ideas. They may also be more motivated because of the social exclusion many feel.

Business psychologist Dr Adrian Atkinson, who assisted with the study, said: "Most people who make a million have difficult childhoods or have been frustrated in a major way. Dyslexia is one of the driving forces behind that."

Dyslexia affects the skills that are needed for learning to read, write and spell. But the question is, although dyslexia is seen as a disadvantage in learning, is it really a disadvantage? Are those without dyslexia that many experts would deem as ‘normal’ at a disadvantage?

So what is dyslexia? I found a couple of definitions that may be of interest. The first from dictionary.com says: ‘Any of various reading disorders associated with impairment of the ability to interpret spatial relationships or to integrate auditory and visual information.’

The second from Wikipedia says: ‘Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid naming.

The interesting thing to note from both definitions is the wording ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’. We always think of dyslexia as a disability and yet studies over the years have actually proved otherwise. A quick search of the internet will show that there are a million cures and remedies for dyslexia, treating it as if it were a disease. Many articles refer to people with dyslexia as ‘sufferers’. So after reading about the study above, would anyone with dyslexia want it cured?

I did a quick Google search to see if I could find some examples of rich and famous dyslexics and was blown away by what I found. The list on the following page shows my findings and I am sure that there are many more that I have missed. Anyone with dyslexia should take an enormous amount of encouragement from the people on this list who have laughed in the face of the stigma attached to dyslexia.

If you have dyslexia and would like to share your experiences, then please get in touch.

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Actors & Entertainers

Writers & Journalists

Artists, Designers, & Architects

Orlando Bloom Harry Belafonte Tom Cruise Danny Glover Whoopi Goldberg Susan Hampshire Jay Leno Keanu Reeves.

Kiera Knightley Oliver Reed.

Billy Bob Thornton Vince Vaughn Henry Winkler Loretta Young

Scott Adams, Cartoonist Hans Christian Andersen Avi Jeanne Betancourt Stephen Cannell John Corrigan Larry Chambers John Edmund Delezen Andrew Dornenburg Agatha Christie Fannie Flagg F. Scott Fitzgerald Gustave Flaubert Byron Pitts

Leonardo da Vinci Ansel Adams David Bailey Chuck Close Ignacio Gomez Tommy Hilfiger Ian Marley Pablo Picasso Robert Rauschenberg Auguste Rodin Bennett Strahan Jørn Utzon Andy Warhol Willard Wigan

Athletes

Entrepreneurs

Political Leaders

Muhammad Ali Duncan Goodhew Bruce Jenner Magic Johnson Greg Louganis Bob May Diamond Dallas Page Steve Redgrave Nolan Ryan Rex Ryan Jackie Stewart

Richard Branson John T Chambers Henry Ford Sir Peter Leitch O.D. McKee David Neeleman Paul J. Orfalea Charles Schwab Ted Turner Robert Woodruff Frank W. Woolworth

Winston Churchill King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden Michael Heseltine Andrew Jackson Thomas Jefferson John F. Kennedy Gavin Newsom Nelson Rockefeller Paul Wellstone Woodrow Wilson George Washington

Musicians & Vocalists

Filmmakers

Law & Justice

Cher Brad Little John Lennon Nigel Kennedy Bob Weir

Robert Benton Nicole Betancourt Walt Disney Søren Kragh Jacobsen

David Boies Erin Brockovich Jeffrey H. Gallet

Inventors & Scientists

Military Heroes

Physicians & Surgeons

Ann Bancroft Alexander Graham Bell John Britten Thomas Edison Albert Einstein Michael Faraday Carol Greider Willem Hollenbach Jack Horner Dr. James Lovelock Paul MacCready Archer Martin Pierre Curie John R. Skoyles

Thomas Jonathan Jackson George Patton

Harvey Cushing Fred Epstein

Tools In this issue of ‘I Wanna Be A Millionaire!’ we are looking at email marketing and more specifically list building. For those just starting out, this can be a daunting subject. How do I manage a list? How do I communicate with my list?

How do I place a form on a website to collect email addresses? Hopefully we can answer these questions for you by looking at some of the companies out there offering the solutions.

Aweber is probably one of the most well known companies offering subscriber / list management and is used by many established marketers including the team here at ‘I Wanna Be A Millionaire!’. Aweber currently have a deal running where sign up is just $1 for the first month. Thereafter the price rises to a very reasonable $19 per month for up to 500 subscribers. Unfortunately the price rises in stages dependant on how many subscribers you have.

501 to 2500 subscribers = $29 2501 to 5000 subscribers = $49 5001 to 10000 subscribers = $69 10001 to 25000 subscribers = $149 over 25000 contact Aweber for price

Mailchimp is another well known and established company with tools for building a list and sending email projects, custom forms, email templates, Facebook integration, user guides and result tracking. If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers you can join the ‘Forever Free’ plan and send up to 12,000 emails per month for free. They also offer a ‘Pay As You Go’ account based on pre-paid credits. Emails can then be sent for between $0.01 and $0.03 depending on the amount of credits you bought. The monthly plan is as follows:

0 to 500 subscribers = $10 501 to 1000 subscribers = $15 1001 to 2500 subscribers = $30 2501 to 5000 subscribers = $50 Aweber have a very good track record and are well 5001 to 10000 subscribers = $75 established. They also offer form templates for squeeze 10001 to 25000 subscribers = $150 pages, follow up and broadcast mail to your list and blog broadcasts. www.mailchimp.com www.aweber.com

Your Mailing List Provider offers a similar service to Aweber and Mailchimp but their pricing differs in as much as they charge based on how many emails you send out to your list each month. They offer a free trial, free, pro or pro plus account. The free account allows you to send up to 1000 emails per month.

Emails 500 2500 7500 12,500 20,000 www.ymlp.com

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Pro £2.65 £5.25 £10.50 £15.75 £21.00

Pro Plus £3.50 £6.50 £14.00 £24.50 £35.00

IATHAO is little known and I cannot even explain what the letters stand for. It is one of many free providers that I found by doing a Google search.

I have to admit that I know absolutely nothing about this company other than the fact that they offer a completely free service. Free, unlimited campaigns, unlimited emails, unlimited subscribers, unlimited everything! I can’t say what the quality of service is, but if you are just starting out then maybe this one is worth a look. www.lists.iathao.com

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10 Outstanding Qualities of Great Landing Pages Want to Gain Your Reader’s Trust and Increase Your Credibility?

Let’s say you’re piloting a small airplane to a vacation hotspot. Your passengers expect you to land the plane safely and without incident.

In your articles, readers have the same expectations when they click on your links.

Meet their expectations to gain their trust, increase your conversion rate, and build your credibility by ensuring their landing and stay on your website or blog is outstanding.

10 Traits of Quality Landing Pages (and Websites Too!) 1. Relevance: The most stellar quality is the relevance a landing page or website has to the article or page from which the user arrived. This is also critical when search engines are taken into consideration. Like you, search engines must ensure a good user experience by providing search results relevant to the user’s search query. Hence, your content is indexed by relevance and potentially booted when irrelevant.

2. Navigation: Ease of use and intuitive navigation are paramount. Skip frustrating methods like exit pop-ups or other methods that either prevent or delay the user from leaving your website or landing page. Let fresh content be your main attraction to keep visitors on site and encourage their return.

3. Transparency: Create an “About Us” page on your website that is accessible on your landing page. Illustrate the who, what, where, when, and why of your business or service and include pictures of the key members of your business. Be transparent and include background information on your company to build trust.

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4. FAQ: Develop a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your website to anticipate questions about any products, services, etc. you provide. This will help leverage your credibility and you will become a point of reference for your audience.

5. Blog: Establish a blog to increase your exposure, as well as give your visitors insight into the personality of you or your business. Putting a face and tone to your name is a great way to establish a relationship with your visitors.

6. Opt-In: Give visitors a reason to return and stay in touch with you and your business or service with a universal opt-in to build a list of subscribers for newsletters or alerts to new posts, ebooks, specials, etc.

7. Shop: If you have products for sale on your website: o

o

o o o

Safety: Ensure a safe payment method. Anytime credit card information is requested, consumers are naturally suspicious. Try trusted brands, such as PayPal. Security: Obtain rights to include security seals from reputable online consumer protection programs such as the Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, and/or SSL certificate providers to ensure further protection.

Service: Include a customer service contact form or contact link to ensure visitors can ask questions or provide comments/concerns.

Quality: Include high-quality images of your products; take it a step further with close-ups and size comparisons if appropriate.

Transparent: Clearly document your Return and Refund Policy.

8. Feedback: Provide a page on your website where visitors can post feedback and reviews. Reviews and feedback will ultimately further your credibility and increase audience participation.

9. Content: Related to 1 and 5, providing unique and relevant content is key to building a loyal audience (and loyal customers), as well as improving your ranking with search engines. Be consistent and informative by providing fresh content on a regular basis.

10. Overall: Consider the overall aesthetics. Compare your website or landing page to websites or landing pages you’ve visited – both credible and dubious. Does yours look credible? Does it work properly? If not, establish an overall well-designed, userfriendly, and trustworthy website or landing page. Trust is everything!

Visitors expect an easily navigable, rich, relevant, quality link. Help make their landing safe by using these 10 outstanding qualities to great landing pages and websites.

by Penny Knutson, ezinearticles.com 37

Contributors A big thank you to all of those who have contributed to this issue of ‘I Wanna Be A Millionaire!’

Martyn Wilson Martyn is an entrepreneur, information publisher and Editor of the best magazine money can’t buy. This one! Although fairly new to online marketing, Martyn has been marketing offline for a number of years as well as coaching public speaking students. http://www.martyn-wilson.com

Nick James Nick James has been at the forefront of Internet marketing and online product development for the past seven years. Specialising in new media marketing and innovative web based technologies, Nick James also runs this website (NickJames.com), the UK’s number one destination for online entrepreneurs. http://www.nick-james.com

Simon Dolan Simon is one of the UK's most successful entrepreneurs, who made headlines in 2009 for becoming the UK's first Twitter Dragon and more recently for his book 'How To Make Millions Without a Degree'. http://www.nodegree.co.uk

Bob Young For 28 years Bob's "Plan A" worked just fine until his job was eliminated and he was "retired early." So much for "Plan A." Plan B? He didn't have one. Bob now devotes his time and energies to helping others find and develop their Plan B. Bob is also an author on ezinearticles.com

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Young Penny Knutson Penny says that great thinking requires hard work and she is not one to shun away from a little dirt. Penny works to make significant gains and encourage teams to think and act intellectually.

http://www.facebook.com/PennyLKnutson

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Your Letters Please feel free to send us your thoughts, comments, complaints, ideas and anything that you think will benefit our readers.

you have read the general release version of the magazine rather than the review copy and you will have noticed that yours and other’s comments were taken on board regarding advertisements.

As you have mentioned, we do need to cover our costs. We want to keep the magazine as a free publication and to do this we rely on the revenue from ads. We have, however, scaled down the advertising as much as possible.

We thank you for reviewing the magazine and for your honest comments.

to the contributors web sites which we feel is a fair exchange for the useful content they provide. If you have something of use to contribute to the magazine then please feel free to get in contact.

There are no shady deals to go through to get an article published, but the content must have useful information for our readers rather than just a sales letter.

Thank you for your letter, your Editor comments are very much appreciated. Please stay in touch Dear I Wanna Be A Millionaire to let us know what you think of Magazine future issues.

I am curious to know what the relationship is between the Editor magazine and the people who submit articles. Is the magazine To the Editor earning from joint ventures with I was fortunate enough to review these people? In other words, is your magazine before general the magazine just an advertising release, and although very tool for the owners?

I wanted to write in and congratulate your team on a wonderful publication. It’s good to see the successful people in our line of business sharing their experiences and advice with the newcomers, and it is your magazine that has supplied the stage for this to be possible.

Dear IWBAM I just wanted to say thank you for your magazine that, in my humble opinion, has been a long time coming.

Of course there are other business magazines out there but none like this one. I found the tips and articles really useful and will recommend to others.

Steph Simmons Sussex, UK Dear Steph

informative, I found that the number of advertisements was a Steve Gibbs little much. I appreciate that you Melbourne, AUS need to cover costs but just felt Dear Steve that the ads took over a little.

Editor Dear Editor

Helen Parker London, UK Dear Helen Thank you for your kind words.

Our intention has always been to provide a medium for sharing ideas, experiences, tips and general advice, and it is good to know that we are achieving our goal. If you have any ideas on how we can improve the experience for all then please let me know.

Thank you for your letter. Let me set your mind at rest. The owners of the magazine do not enter into any financial relationships with the Dear James article writers and contributors than for paid Thank you for your letter and other advertisements.

The articles in comments. I am sure that by now the magazine allow for links back Editor 39 James Jackson Texas, USA

We need your help! We are always on the lookout for articles, advice, tips, comments, opinions, stories and recommendations for the magazine.

If you think you have something to say that might help our readers to find success then please get in touch. We are happy to place your website link on all articles submitted. We look forward to hearing from you soon. editor@millionaire-mag.com 40