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Small Business Training Programs

David Deutsch has long been regarded as one of the very best of the A-List copywriters. I’ve seen him providing support on trainings from John Carlton and he attended Harlan Corben’s course on NLP Copywriting.

Up until now, he’s kept many of his secrets to himself. There’s no widely distributed book and there hasn’t been a course. A few years ago I bought a series of interviews David did with other copywriters as they talked copy which also meant I received a pdf copy of a book he did write called Million Dollar Marketing Secrets.

Now David has produced a course called…

A-List Copywriting Secrets

[continue reading…]

in 4 – Lead Generation, 5 – Lead Conversion, Copywriting, Small Business Training Programs

David Garfinkel Copywriters Podcast

I’m not sure how I found it but I’ve been listening to the

Copywriters Podcast with David Garfinkel

a great deal recently.

I recommend it very highly and if you’re interested in copywriting, I think it’s well worth your time.

Of course there are a lot of copywriting podcasts produced at the moment and many of them are packed with information. It’s hard to know where to go. [continue reading…]

in Small Business Training Programs

Introducing Ask Drayton from Drayton Bird

Drayton Bird is a legend in copywriting circles as he sold his own agency to David Ogilvy and worked with Ogilvy for many years. At Ogilvy and Mather, he was vice chairman and worldwide creative director of the agency which is now called OgilvyOne, according to his entry at Wikipedia.

Ogilvy is on record saying “Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world.”

Another important point is he’s British.

Why?

Because the British are generally quite reserved and can find the American direct response copywriters as brash. That’s not to say the techniques don’t work in the UK, just that there is more resistance but once hooked… [continue reading…]

in Copywriting, Small Business Training Programs

What Was Your Profit Club?

Before my health problems started. back in 2009, I started working on a low cost membership website to help business owners to improve their performance using my improvement framework, the Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity.

Along with my big health problems in 2009 and 2010 and my partner being diagnosed with cancer in between my two scares, I set up a website called Your Profit Club. At that time I was using the brand name Your Profit Coach so it was a natural extension. [continue reading…]

in Eight Pillars Of Business Prosperity, Small Business Training Programs

The Jay Abraham Giveaway – 50 Shades Of Jay

Jay Abraham is a hero of mine.

When I moved my focus from helping medium sized businesses within groups to smaller owner managed businesses, I became addicted to his marketing ideas and even had a blog called the Jay Abraham Addict.

If you read or browse through my book reviews, you’ll know that I gave two of his books a five star recommendation.

Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got

The Mr X Book aka Money Making Secrets Of Marketing Genius Jay Abraham…

[continue reading…]

in Small Business Training Programs

Income Before You Buy Review

Income Before You Buy is the best low cost business growth training aimed at small business owners that I’ve seen. It is so good that I stopped any plans I had for developing my own because I knew I could never match the scope and professionalism of this website based system.

>>>Income Before You Buy – affiliate link

Background To Income Before You Buy

It is one version of the business growth training websites developed by Karl Bryan and Adrian Ulsh.

>>>Income Before You Buy – affiliate link

In fact, it is Adrian’s own website. [continue reading…]

in Small Business Training Programs

Income Before You Buy With Adrian Ulsh

I review the small business training available in the Income Before You Buy website from Karl Bryan and Adrian Ulsh.

>> Click over to the Income Before You Buy website (affiliate link)

When you get to the website, I recommend you to enter your name and emahttp://www.profitablegrowthstrategies.org/incomebeforeyoupayil address and watch the free video on the three biggest lead generation mistakes made by most small business owners.

I think you’ll find it very revealing.

Who Is Karl Bryan?

Karl is an experienced business coach, consultant and speaker with many years of experience of helping small business owners to increase sales and profit.

He recognised that through coaching and speaking at seminars he had helped thousands of entrepreneurs but it wasn’t enough. If he wanted to help millions of business owners he had to do more… and he did.

He has created an online e-learning system which he has licensed to hundreds of business coaches to use as the basis for how they help their clients.

You can learn more about Karl from his LinkedIn profile.

Who Is Adrian Ulsh?

Adrian is Karl’s right hand man as the CEO of Karl’s company Leader Publishing Worldwide. He is the co-creator of the system and also the presenter of many of the training videos in the Income Before You Buy system.

Before teaming up with Karl, he worked for Y2 Marketing and OneCoach. He has won many top salesman of the year awards for his ability to create excellent results.

Income Before You Buy is Adrian’s own version of the website system. It gives you the chance to gain access to this business-building system for a very reasonable monthly fee.

You can learn more about Adrian from his LinkedIn profile.

Who Will Benefit From Being A Member Of Income Before You Buy?

It is a website that provides marketing, sales and business growth training for businesses who sell online and offline.

I believe every business owner who manages his or her business and has the prime responsibility for marketing will get excellent value from it, provided you watch/read the training materials and take action on the ideas that fit your business.

Many years ago, I started to create my own small business growth training system but unfortunately a combination of factors including the site being hacked, the brand name being stolen and used for advertising malware and serious health problems stopped me in my tracks.

Then I discovered this system and realised that I could never hope to match its content, scope and design.

If you don’t trade online and offline, you will still benefit from many of the ideas but it may be better to join one of the other training programs I recommend.

What Makes Income Before You Buy So Special?

  1. The concept – through their first video, The 3 Biggest Lead Generation Mistakes Small Businesses Make… And How To Overcome Them All and their follow up videos, the idea is that you will get enough ideas to start improving your business before you make any financial commitment. The home page also features a training video which changes every week.
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  2. The deal – you can try it for 30 days for $97. If you stay, you continue to pay $97 per month. This is a low risk way for you to see what it’s like inside the website for yourself. While reviews help, there is no substitute for trying something yourself and making up your own mind.
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  3. The breadth and depth of the high quality training – when you join, I’m sure you’ll be astonished by how many business growth and profit improvement options you have in front of you. The approach is based on direct response marketing which is the most cost efficient and effective marketing for small businesses to use.
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  4. The variety of structured ways for you to work through the training materials. Karl and Adrian are very aware that the immense volume of tips and techniques is overwhelming if you aren’t given some direction. The website system has been cleverly designed to give you the flexibility and structure you need to manage your business.
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  5. The Quick Start Program is designed to give you immediate results. Ten lessons have been selected to help you deal with the most common problems that hold small businesses back and gently introduce you to the training. The aim is to help you to generate an extra $10,000 from the training delivered in the first month on the basis that you will implement.
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  6. You can be guided by the Weekly E-learning series of videos and written briefings. If you prefer learning by taking a structured course, you will receive two emails per week, one pointing to a video and the second directing you to a written lesson. These are designed to help and guide you to build a better business step by step, week by week. Unless you have an urgent need that must be resolved, I believe this is the easiest and best way to work through the marketing and business growth training. It has the big benefit of reducing it to bite-sized pieces.
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  7. The Customized Roadmap option focuses your attention on the training that will help you to resolve your biggest constraints first. You will be encouraged to work through a questionnaire about your business. This gives you the chance to assess where the biggest problems are and then the system automatically calculates the best place in the training for you to start.
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  8. You still have control and can use your own judgement about the training you want to take. The main content is separated into six categories: More leads, more conversions, more transactions, higher prices, more profits, building a million dollar business (about systemising it).

    These screen captures show how well the website has been designed.
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  9. The training is provided in multiple formats. The weekly video training helps you to learn with your eyes and ears but if you have a strong preference for listening or reading, the mp3s and slide presentations can be downloaded.
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  10. The offer currently includes access to weekly coaching calls. Each week Adrian (usually) digs into a new topic to give you more tips on how to build your business or more guidance on how to implement the training.
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  11. Done for you marketing examples across many different industries and trades. Training on theory is fine but how do the ideas apply in your type of business? This tailored help and advice is usually the big advantage that one-to-one coaching has over the best training. Astonishingly Income Before You Buy has it covered through a small business resource library that shows you advertisements, elevator pitches and other marketing collateral for different types of business. If your particular business type isn’t covered, I think you’ll find examples of similar types of products or services sold to your type of customers.
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  12. The lessons have been turned into easy to use templates where you fill in the gaps. For example, you may be struggling to define your niche but it’s much easier if you think of it as “what do you sell” to “what type of customers”. E.g. “we sell car repair and regular maintenance services” (what do you sell) to “customers with little knowledge of how cars work and who therefore need a service they can trust to do it right first time and to charge a fair price” (what type of customers).
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    Can you see how a simple template, when it’s explained, can help cut through the confusion of marketing your business?
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  13. Income Before You Buy is fairly evenly balanced between online and offline marketing. It is ideal for businesses that must compete in both arenas and for business owners who don’t want to be confused by conflicting methodologies that are common if you use two different training programs.

What’s Wrong With Income Before You Buy?

No training programme is perfect.

I believe that a review has to fairly present the good and the bad, so here are the reasons why this training might not be suitable for you.

  1. You must work through the training and take action to get the benefits. The is the big drawback of all stand-alone training. Your financial payback depends on you being sufficiently self-motivated to do the work.
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    Sadly, this is the #1 reason why business owners waste money by buying training. The big advantage of working with a coach is that you will be held accountable at each meeting (and sometimes in-between) but the downside is that it’s expensive. With training, you’re left on your own to implement the ideas.
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  2. You might resist the look of direct response marketing. Owners and managers often have a desire to make their advertising look pretty and professional because that’s what big, brand-based companies do. This has led many to waste a lot of money individually on marketing that doesn’t work.
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    The only relevant test of an advertisement is “did this make potential customers take action?” A marketing piece is better if more, qualified people respond and buy, worse if fewer respond and buy.
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    This aversion to “ugly marketing that works” is a particular problem for British business owners who don’t want to be seen as pushy or using hype. Don’t worry. These techniques also work in the UK and you can prove it for yourself by seeing what marketing tempts you to either buy or at least to make contact and find out more.
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    Let’s be clear about hype. My definition of it is “big claims that don’t come with proof”. If you can prove your claims (and you should), your marketing is credible and will genuinely help customers. Holding back by making your marketing less persuasive than it can be is hurting your customers because they may buy from inferior competitors and it’s hurting you because you miss out on the profit of the ongoing relationship.
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  3. You might not like the style of presentations. People have very personal tastes. Just as different people like different musicians and comedians, we can like or dislike different speakers and trainers.
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  4. You might feel overwhelmed. Karl and Adrian have built different ways for you to work through the training but even then, it might seem too much. Even the weekly emails can feel relentless if you’re really busy. Getting behind can make you feel frustrated.
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    Business owners are usually short of time and whilst Profit Before You Pay includes tips for getting more out of your time, there is a physical limit to the time you can spend working.
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    How you organise your time will come down to your priorities. How important is it that you improve the financial performance of your business? If it is really important, you must make the time available. If this is a potential problem for you, I’d like to introduce you to a technique I use with my coaching clients, the Stop Start More Less Process (the link takes you to another of my websites).
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  5. The done-for-you marketing may limit your thinking. It’s great that Income Before You Buy has examples of marketing for so many different businesses. Many people will find it very helpful to see the principles applied in areas that they know well.
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    However our minds can be lazy and prefer easy options.
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    The best marketing will be unique to your business and reflect the features and benefits that make it special. Copying marketing campaigns designed for other businesses may give you more effective marketing than what you have at the moment but it won’t be the best you can do.
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  6. Mindset Issues are not covered explicitly. For some business owners, the problem is different from normal. They know what to do and even, how to do it, but they still don’t take the necessary actions. Whilst there are many reasons why this might happen, negative beliefs about either or both making more money or marketing (manipulation) may be the cause.
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  7. If your business is all online or all offline, you may be better with one of my other recommendations. Please go back to my training reviews and read about other programs.

My Overall Conclusion About Income Before You Buy

I was absolutely amazed when I saw the contents of the training and started to work through the materials.

I share Karl and Adrian’s vision of making proven marketing techniques available to many more business owners so that they can stop wasting so much money on marketing that doesn’t work.

You and I probably haven’t spoken or emailed about your particular situation but I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t take up the offer of the 30 days access for $97.

The best, most convincing proof is for you to see the system for yourself and to put a few of the ideas into action.

How To Join Income Before You Buy

Click over the Income Before You Buy Website (affiliate link)

I urge and strongly recommend that you enter your name and email and MAKE the time to watch the free video on the three biggest marketing mistakes made by most small business owners.

You will then receive more free videos over the next few days for you to judge for yourself the quality of the ideas and training.

How To Cancel Your Membership Of Income Before You Buy

It may seem strange to talk about cancelling your membership before you’ve joined but I know from my own experience that I am concerned about how easy it is to get out of a commitment before I make it in the first place.

The contact information for the website is:

Adrian Ulsh
Telephone: +1 913 851 0525
Email: adrian@noresults-nofee.com

If you pay for your membership with Paypal, you can cancel the regular payments by following these instructions.

I’ve found Karl and Adrian to be very fair in my dealings with them and I don’t expect you to have any problems. However, in the unlikely event of you not receiving a response from their customer service people, if you are one of my affiliates, I will get involved on your behalf if you want to cancel but can’t.

So go ahead, I recommend you give it a try.

>>> Join Income Before You Buy (affiliate link) <<<

I Am An Affiliate And Will Earn A Commission If You Buy

Throughout this website, I’ve tried to make it very clear that I am an affiliate.

If you click on my link and then join and keep paying, I will earn a commission.

This doesn’t affect how much you pay if you were to go direct. I see the commission as the equivalent of the margin retailers make on selling their products.

Some people may see my recommendation as biased because I profit if you buy.

That’s true of anyone who does any selling and is common amongst those who make recommendations and referrals. Often the financial incentive isn’t made as explicit as I make it but I believe that it’s best practice to make you aware of what is happening.

It’s in my interest to gain your trust because I usually want you to buy more than one training product. However Income Before You Buy is so good and so comprehensive that I don’t believe that you’re going to need anything else.

Give it a try.

>>> Income Before You Buy (affiliate link) <<<

in Small Business Training Programs

Ian Brodie’s Momentum Club

I will review the Momentum Club from Ian Brodie.

>>> Click over to the Momentum Club (affiliate link)

Who Is Ian Brodie?

Ian is a UK based business coach who specialises in helping consultants, coaches and other professional service businesses to get more clients.

He rejects the hard sell approach that some coaching marketing specialists recommend that is such a turn-off to professionals who want to spend their time working with clients rather than marketing to them.

In their place, he uses an approach he calls Pain Free Marketing (affiliate link) and writes an excellent blog at IanBrodie.com (affiliate link).

Ian is a good friend and, when I decided to form a mastermind group of coaches I respected, he was one of the first people I invited to join.

Who Is The Momentum Club For?

Ian sees his core market as coaches and consultants but ideas that apply to these two professions also work for many of the other professional services.

He loves the Internet and is active in social media and has over 107,000 followers on Twitter. However he also recognises that the traditional offline marketing methods have their place too.

What’s Different About Selling Professional Services?

Why would you want this training instead of or as well as Profit Before You Pay?

Because selling services and especially professional services can be very different from general marketing and sales.

  1. Services are intangible. With a product, you can see what you’re getting before you buy. You can judge the product attributes and decide if it looks as if it meets your needs. That’s very hard to do with services which are “squidgy” around all the edges and hard to define without a lot of effort.
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  2. It is hard to judge quality, even after the service has been delivered. Do you really know how good a job your lawyer did? If he made sure that you were found not guilty, it was “mission accomplished” but how well did he do drafting those terms and conditions or advising you on your intellectual property options?
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    What about your tax accountant? Even if he saved you tax, did he save you all the tax that it was economical to do or has he opened you up to potential trouble in the future by using a loophole that is being challenged?
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    Sometimes the results are tangible and will give buyers comfort but other times, it takes something going wrong to identify a poor service. In theory a problem avoided will point to a good job done (e.g. a computer software house using four digits for the year and thus avoiding future costs caused by the millennium bug scare stories) but the buyer will very rarely identify these situations.
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  3. Market size is a poor indicator of quality. Apple grew because of the high quality innovations like the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Growth comes naturally and causes economies of scale that help consolidate consistent quality. That doesn’t necessarily happen in professional services. As firms get bigger, sales staff and those who do the work are disconnected. More people get involved and knowledge and insight gets divided amongst the team. Clients keep having to repeat themselves to different people. But dealing with a high quality one person consultant or coach, it all seems so simple and straightforward.
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  4. Price is a poor indicator of quality. Bigger professional service firms usually charge more than small firms but buyers have to be careful about following the rule that “you get what you pay for.” At the same time, no one should buy professional services on the basis of the lowest price.
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  5. Professional standards and associations damage opportunities for differentiation. While the intention is to assure a high quality service, they tend to turn a service into a commodity where it’s hard to judge which will be most suitable.
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    At the same time, sometimes professional qualifications are assumed when they don’t necessarily exist. For example, in the UK, accountant is not a legally protected word so anyone can work as an accountant, regardless of their knowledge and experience.
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    Worse, some professional sounding bodies don’t have the legitimacy that an uninformed person might assume.

These issues result in a “buyer beware” situation which makes it hard to convince sceptical buyers unless it is a forced purchase, required by law or situation.

There’s ls also the issue that marketing too hard creates the impression in the buyers’ minds that “they can’t be much good if they always need more work.”

As a professional service supplier, you can’t abdicate responsibility for marketing and the profitability of your business. You might want to because you don’t want to spend your time marketing. You’d much rather provide the service.

The end result is that marketing professional services is difficult. There’s a balance that needs to be found.

That’s why I recommend you consider carefully the specialist training provided by Ian Brodie in his Momentum Club.

What I Like About The Momentum Club

  1. Ian’s character and approach. Some coaches and trainers are too full of themselves and will put you off an idea, even if it has merit. Ian is softly spoken (with a Geordie accent), well researched and never over the top with fake enthusiasm. He’s very approachable and welcomes questions and feedback.
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  2. The low cost, no risk trial for the first month. At the moment it only costs £5 and if you decide you don’t like the training, you can even ask for and receive a refund.
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  3. The Core Marketing lessons are available from the start. Ian has put together a series of videos to help you to get the basics of your marketing right including your mindset, your value proposition and the idea of adding value in advance to prove your worth.
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  4. The monthly implementation projects. Ian wants you to change your business and how it makes contact with, attracts and converts clients. To help you to take action, he has created step by step guides that walk you through the process. Each month a new project appears.
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  5. The monthly masterclass webinar.There is more general training on marketing and selling topics that give members the chance to ask and get answers from Ian.
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  6. The gradual introduction of the training each month means that you don’t get overloaded. If you buy some other training you might not know where to start because there is just so much there.
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  7. There is a balance between online and offline strategies but favouring online. At the moment I’m 21 months into the webinars and 18 months into the projects although I’m lucky that Ian has given me free membership. (I did say that we were good friends at the start). It wouldn’t be right to tell you what’s coming each month but Ian covers a wide range. There is a bias towards online but that’s what is changing most often.
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  8. All the training can be downloaded as a video or pdf slides. You can watch from Ian’s website or you can transfer the training to another device that isn’t dependent on Internet access. This also means that you still have access to any downloads even if you decide to cancel your membership. It may be a small point but Ian has made sure that all the files are downloaded with clear, sensible names. In my experience, this is far too rare but it shows the care and attention Ian has given to his Momentum Club.

What I Don’t Like About The Momentum Club

No training product is perfect and it wouldn’t be a review if I didn’t point out some of the negatives.

  1. You won’t get value for money if you don’t take action. I say this on each of my reviews but I am guilty of spending money and not following through and I suspect that most people who are regular purchasers do the same.
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  2. There is a lack of natural flow and structure in the projects and webinars. For example, an early project is about getting more traffic to a website which is fine if you already have a good website but a problem if you don’t. Three months later, there is a project for improving your website. An early webinar is about Linkedin, the how to do it project is some months later. This means that it will suit existing coaches and consultants better than new start-ups.
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  3. The delays in providing the training mean that your big problem may have to wait. The downside of introducing training gradually so that you’re not overwhelmed means that the order Ian delivers it may not suit your needs. I’d encourage Ian to consider offering a version that provides everything for one much larger payment. As Ian thinks of new things, it can be expanded for free. This wasn’t an option at the start as Ian was working one or two months ahead of publication but he now has a lot of training provided.
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  4. There is a little used forum. The idea of a forum and members asking questions of Ian and each other is great but it’s not used much,. I’ve seen this with much more expensive training but it is a waste of an opportunity to engage with Ian and the peer group. I feel guilty because I promised Ian that I would do more to get this off the ground.

My Overall Thoughts On The Momentum Club

Coaches, consultants and small professional service firms should pay attention to Ian and his ideas.

He is very practical and avoids any marketing that smells bad. I’m sure you know what I mean.

The initial offer with its low price and money back guarantee means that anyone who is short of work and needs more clients should give it a try.

>>> Click over to the Momentum Club (affiliate link)

How To Cancel Your Membership

If you join, you will pay a monthly fee until you cancel. I think it’s important that you know how you can stop it before you start.

The club has a contact form that is accessible from every page that lets you email Ian and he also gives you his telephone number – 0161 408 0984. He doesn’t have any support staff so you’ll be dealing directly with him.

If you’re an affiliate of mine and you’re having trouble I’ll also get involved but I can’t imagine that happening. Ian is one the good guys.

I Am An Affiliate

If you join, I will earn an affiliate commission.

That gives much a financial incentive to persuade you to buy but that’s no different than retailers of products who earn a margin. I’ve made my affiliate status very clear because I believe it’s the right thing to do but other people may hide it.

I only recommend training programs that I believe can help you and I try to make it very clear that you must take action.

>>> Click over to the Momentum Club (affiliate link)

in Small Business Training Programs

Copywriting Master Formula by Robert Stover

Hold on to your hats, this is going to sound complicated but it’s worth putting the little grey cells to work by understanding the Copywriting Master Formula.

What I particularly like is that it has the buyer’s decision making model at its centre and how, through copy, you can help the prospective customer make a sensible decision.

Getting into the buyer’s mind is a very sensible way to think about copywriting and is a very different approach to something like AIDA (Attention – Interest – Desire – Action) that will talk about first creating great headlines to attract attention by interrupting the buyer.

The Formula

It was developed and promoted by copywriter Robert Stover.

Copywriting Master Formula

What do the letters stand for? [continue reading…]

in 3 – Your Strategic Positioning, Small Business Training Programs

Rich Schefren Audio Dispatches

If you’ve been a member of Rich Schefren’s Founders Club, you’ll know how good his audio dispatches are each week.

Rich is probably the most thoughtful of the Internet marketing gurus and one of the three that I give most attention to (the others are Ryan Deiss and Glenn Livingston if you wondered).

Each week he sends out a short, thought-provoking mp3 recording with a pdf transcript if you prefer to read.

These are the short briefings he prepares for his private coaching clients before he starts the Q&A sessions and he thought it would be a good idea to share them with Founders Club members. [continue reading…]

in Internet Marketing, Small Business Training Programs