Okay, so it’s not your Birthday, it’s mine... And I’m going to be 26, which Ben, at Sussex Music kindly reminded me, is actually closer to 52, than it is to zero. Thanks muppet!

It also reminded me of when I was a kid... stay with me here. So when I was little, during the month of December, I had a pretty similar conversation with almost everyone I ran into. It went a bit like this:

RandomKidFriend: “Happy Christmas Ads”
LittleAds: “Happy Christmas to you too”

Come birthday time, around 3 weeks later, the conversations would go like this:

OnlyFriend: “Happy Birthday Ads”
StupidAds: “Happy Birthday to you too”

I would at this point, be reminded of my stupidity and told it’s not their Birthday it’s mine. Well, I’m 26 now, so I can make my own rules up, so today I’m giving you a present. It’s nothing major, but it is kinda cool.

I’ve learned a lot over the last few years, so while I was on my little retreat in Tenerife late last year, I wrote down all the things I wish I knew when I started out in business. I called it, ‘The Little Book of Glory’.

It’s not completely finished yet, it needs page numbers and stuff (Thanks Tim). I suspect you could skimread it in about 90 seconds. There’s some cool things in there, just 30 little tricks I’ve picked up over the years. Enjoy.

I do want to say thank you. A lot of you put up with my crazy ideas some of the time, which I hope are sometimes good. I’m grateful that I have a wicked client list, most of which I’d go out for beers with (except Gareth – he’s rubbish). You make my job fun, without you lot I’d be horribly bored, utterly broke and probably really good at Call of Duty.

Anyway, enjoy The Little Book of Glory.

Download it now

When it’s printed up, I’ll send you all a copy in the post.

Thanks for being awesome!

Ads

Tim Coe from Hands-On Properties recently sat down with us to talk about his experience with Advantix. It's only a minute or so long, but it's worth watching!

Enjoy,

 

 

Ever had an email with THAT in the subject line?

We all get them... Thing is, what do you do about it? Personally, if someone sends me an 'urgent' EMAIL. I ignore it for at least 6 hours. Why? A number of reasons:

1. If it's that urgent, they'd pick up the phone, which I ALWAYS answer.

2. People need to learn that everything is the new urgent thing.

What happens, is this: Client emails an urgent email, (which isn't urgent at all). You stop what you're doing (their work) and respond to it. Then another client does the same thing, and the phone rings and another email comes in, and before long - your day is gone!

It's deadline time, your client is super excited to see your designs and his brand new site. You turn up and can't really explain why it's not done, but it's not. He's not happy and the relationship vanishes from there. We're all busy, (unless you suck, in which case you won't have any work) so it's incredibly important to ma

nage "urgent" requests properly. So that begs the question, how do you respond to an urgent email request without acting on it.

Answer: You don't!

It's simple, don't respond. There are a number of ways to do this, you can proactively tell people you're checking email less (Tim Ferriss style). However, I tried this and got complaints for the annoying auto-responder. I've found the best way, is literally to only check email twice a day. It's insane how much more work you get done! What's better, I haven't had a "complaint" or "stroppy email" in over a year and a half. I can assume the reason for this is, we get the work done when we say we're going to do it.

Clients occasionally email with something urgent and I smile to myself and ignore it for half a day, knowing that if it's that urgent, I'll receieve a phonecall.

Last year I spent a month in Denia, Spain to test how well the business worked if I was only working a few hours a day. I learned more about productivity sitting by a pool in 27degree heat than I did reading books or working my ass off back home. People had urgent enquiries, they'd email through in the morning, because I didn't respond immediately (who does anyway) they would solve their own problems!

Bottom line is, every one's happier when you hit deadlines. Nobody will remember their not-really-urgent-but-i'll-pretend-it-is email, they certainly won't consider it a reasonable excuse for not delivering on-time.

Ignore your clients and make them happy!

I've got to be honest, this is a liiiiitle late. I'm also a littttttle drunk. The EasySite is the easiest way to get your site online.

Within 22 minutes you can:

• Upload your logo
• Choose a layout and colour scheme that match your corporate identity
• Be walked through writing the ultimate homepage!
• Connect all your favourite social media accounts
• Submit your site to the major search engines in 3 clicks
• Be ready to promote your site and generate new leads, directly to your inbox!
  
• Connect it to an existing domain, or a new one. (example: www.mycompany.com)

You can sign up free at www.EasySiteHQ.com. It's 100% free. There is an upgradable version, but you can still get a cool, wicked new site completely free, by going to www.easysitehq.com.

Enjoy,

Ads

Many years ago, when I was single, I wasn't that into approaching random girls in the street or that into clubbing so I discovered Internet Dating. After a year or so, I'd got pretty damn good. Very consistent results and lots of happy people later, I decided to write a few ebooks to sell and pass on some things I discovered.

During the time I was writing the books my results skyrocketed! More than I ever thought possible. This random occurance didn't trigger any alarm bells at the time until now.

When you write stuff down, it goes in your head!

What are you great at? Could you internalise it that much more if you wrote about it? I could be miles off the mark here, but this is why I think writing stuff down makes you better.

1. In order to write anything you have to recall that thought, idea or sentence in your head, transform it into legible english and then write it down - further cementing it into your memory.

2. When you're writing anything tutorial based, you often have to start with the basics and most people skip over the basics, learn a few intemediate skills and think they've sussed it. Look at the english football team - all incredible players (except Heskey) but they can't play as a team or pass the ball for toffee. A BASIC football skill taught to 7 year olds on Saturday mornings all over the country.

3. You're reconnecting with your old mistakes in order to relay them to someone else. In turn you're learning from them again.

Bit of a random post this... if I convince one person to start a blog - Great!

Next post, I'll talk about the things we have coming up - Exciting!

First blog, hot topic, I'm on fire already! Social Media... We were just discussing in an intense training session overlooking Brighton Marina in 23degree heat that we couldn't work out what on earth Social Media actually meant, but I digress. I'm hoping after probably too many beers for a paid training session (Sorry Josie and Ro!) that my notes make sense, but I thought I'd share the love. Pick your sites carefully: If you're in the service business, Bebo probably isn't worth focussing on. Stick with what works. Your basic two are Facebook and Twitter. Who, what, where, when? Answer these questions about the content and timing of your uploading.

• Who are you targetting? Your other answers will stem from this.
• What are you going to promote?
• What content? Videos, audios, blog posts, tutorials, articles, what?
• Where?
• Which site?
• When?
• What time will you do your posts? 3am is a bit daft.... unless you're selling electronic downloadable products to the United States, in which case, 10pm when everyone is geeking out at their computers might not be a bad idea!

80/20 Principle: This is new, i've adapted it! The 80, being free content, and the 20 being sales. Nobody wants to follow/friend an e-spammer. Use these sites to DISTRIBUTE VALUE. That's it, occasionally saying "Oh, thought you might like to check this out" and link them up to a sales page. You're after a sustainable marketing effort here, not a quick win. Use it, without it using you: Get something like http://www.socialoomph.com/ which allows you to schedule your tweets, status updates and blogs so you set it and forget it. Get involved! Get a DAILY action plan: Write a daily action plan. Facebook should NOT take more than 15 minutes to maintain. Neither should twitter. Bonus tip: Chatting on Facebook is not work, I don't care who you are, it's not. If you really think it's work, imagine you have to find a grand to pay the mortgage or you'll be homeless. Now do whatever you need to do in order to find that money. That should get you off Facebook pretty quickly!