M & A Rainmaker

Which Business Networking Meeting is the best in Birmingham at the moment ??

I take a trip to the Grosvenor Casino on Rebecca Hyslop’s recommendation to try out this networking event and find it very interesting and professional

I have not been to a networking meeting for some time ( I think the last one was in Burton on Trent a couple of months ago ) and certainly the Business Biscotti meeting at the Grosvenor Casino on Broad Street in Birmingham was the first networking meeting that I have been to in Birmingham for a year or more.

I was introduced to Biscotti by Rebecca Hyslop of Push Media Marketing who runs a number of networking meetings in Birmingham.

I very rarely go to Casino’s so that was also a novelty to me( I think the last one was in Biarritz ).

I hoped that the meeting was going to be more fun than formal – obviously productive aswell – and knowing Rebecca I was pretty sure that it would be.

Online research prior to arriving at the Biscotti meeting indicated that although there was a website, social media activity appeared limited. The Biscotti name piqued my curiousity but I have only just found out that the name is based on the first meeting where Biscotti biscuits were made and served.

I parked in The Nautical Club just down the road and walked around to Broad Street and the entrance of the Grosvenor Casino.

The receptionist was absolutely lovely and I proffered photo id in order to get a Casino card. The receptionist phoned down for the Manager, Paul Bradford, to meet me.

I met him at the bottom of the stairs leading onto the Casino floor and he led me to the group that was assembled, chatting at the bar area.

With Rebecca, the receptionist and Paul I had definitely had a very professional and positive introduction to this networking meeting.

The first person that Paul, very kindly, introduced me to had actually seen me speaking at an event in Marco Pierre White’s recently – so that was a great start.That was Glenn Richardson of Photo Booth Hire.

A chat with someone else and then an introduction to someone who turned out to be with Mattioli Woods – where I am a client !!!! Bit of a surprise and an opportunity to praise them a bit – my account manager there has been brilliant actually.

I loved meeting next with Raphael from HNS Signs – a company that I had come across on twitter during #lichfieldlocal hour run by Sarah Morley. Raphael gave me his bosses card, Michelle Henry, and a lovely booklet promoting their work.

As I get into this post I am thinking about who I met, and what made them memorable and what contact information I came away with. Later on I will say who contacted me and how.

My primary interest is what people are doing online. Their ” Internet Presence ” as I call it. ( A combination of web/blogsite and social media accounts ).

I then met Personal Trainer John Wang ( 07795437716 ) who it turned out had seen me at a Market United Kingdom presentation. Someone at John’s gym was an Unfranchise Owner. ( Actually franchises were much in evidence in this meeting ).

Whilst sipping a glass of water Mike Bowden walked over to chat. ( I am grateful to Rebecca Hyslop for doing a tweet after the meeting that contained Mike’s contact details as well as other peoples ). As well as being a Life Coach Mike was a martial arts practitioner and I go to a Kick Boxing class at Burton Kick Boxing Academy with Chris Squirrel so we had something in common there.

On coming to chat to Rebecca ( and the lady from Best of Birmingham who kindly looked after my laptop bag and coat and another lady from Grosvenor Casino’s ) I got into a conversation with Tom West from Central Telecomms. and Richard Murphy from Bank House Corporate. My background is in Telecomms and M & A so this was an interesting conversation.

I decided to leave after that as it was Remembrance Day and I wanted to spend some time at The Nautical Club and The National Memorial Arboretum.

I should point out that I was given 6 business cards but I didn’t give out any as is my approach of late.

Tom West from Central Telecomms. was the first person to contact me ( by twitter and Linkedin ) and he didn’t have any of my details so I was most impressed with this response. Later on he sent me information on the company. Stellar responsiveness !!!!

Rebecca did a tweet after the event that included ( probably ) every person that had a twitter account that she knew who was at the meeting. This was very useful.

After connecting with people there I had a few conversations.

I also established email communications with Michelle and Raphael at HNS Signs – they just look so well sorted as a company.

All in all this was a great event with some great people at it and I would recommend to anyone ( as I am doing here ).

We are announcing a scheme to fast track 20 selected individuals to Motives Business Director level by the end of 2014

Behind this initiative are $Million earners, startup specialists, small business development experts and digital marketing moguls

The Motives by Loren Ridinger and LaLa Anthony Cosmetics range has taken the world by storm not only for the quality, fashion forward nature and affordable pricing ( typically you get higher quality and more product at half the price of high end cosmetics ) but also for the innovative promotional and marketing techniques utilised.

Loren and LaLa.

The ” Instagram Project ” as it is known within Motives is probably one of the most successful promotional efforts in the world. Avoiding advertising and paying for promotion Loren and LaLa provided product to beauty bloggers and Instagramers and they produced pictures and blogs that generated 100’s of leads within days and carry on doing so.

It is this marrying of Digital promotion with what is quite clearly a product range that needs personal attention and face to face selling that is so powerful.

A Motives Business Director will earn around £144,000.00 ( £144K) a year ( NB A Director earns between £12K and £18K in a 4 week pay cycle ) but to get to that level you have to get through about 10 Business Levels. There are a number of examples of people getting to that level in around 11 months so to get there by the end of 2014, for the right person, putting in the right activity, with the correct level of knowledge and skills, this is entirely possible.

As the C.E.O of Motives parent company, JR Ridinger, says .. what you need to provide is the PASSION !!!!

YOU are going to be someone that is PASSIONATE about the beauty industry. You might be – but don’t have to be – a Makeup Artist, a salon or spa owner, a Nail technician, a hairdresser or a skincare specialist.

You KNOW that the beauty, health and wellness industry is a multi-billion opportunity. You also know that although you love the industry, meeting people and making them look and feel beautiful you are NOT getting properly compensated for the time, skill and effort that you are putting in.  The shop or salon you work in is making some money and the Directors and shareholders of the product company are also making money but YOU are NOT.

If you are a shop or salon owner then you know that you need to MAKE MORE MONEY but you might not know exactly how to do it.

Most people that become millionaires, multi-millionaires or billionaires have done it because they started a business of one sort or another and they either stayed with it until it grew into a big company or they ” exited ” from it – sold or floated it on the stock market.

Some of the ingredients to a successful business are … great products or service, attractive brand, scalability and replicate-ability and some element of divorcing time from money.

You will probably know about the need for a business to have great products, service, branding and marketing.

You might not quite understand the need for scalability ( ability to grow ) , replicate-ability ( repeatable model ) and how to divorce time from money.

They are all tied together and the fact that the Motives business is both an online ( Internet based ) and offline ( face to face ) business is highly relevant here.

So, let me just tell you some of the key people that we have in the team here ( excluding for the moment JR and Loren Ridinger and LaLa Anthony themselves ) :

Lisa and Don Martin – Million Dollar earners with Motives and Market America.

International Business Development and Motives Specialists – Rob and Joyce Jenkins

Small Business Marketing Advisor and former Advisor to the White House – Michael Nelson

Me !!!

and Marketing and Event Management specialist Claire Taylor

Over the next few weeks we will be identifying the 20 people that we want to work with in the U.K. and Ireland to help to build in the UK and beyond ( eg Europe and the Middle East ).

Some of these places have already been filled and we have already started working with these individuals.

Please make contact by twitter @cwindley, skype – chris.windley or mobile +447881 500002 asap.

How can you integrate the Motives Cosmetics line into your Fashion or Beauty blog or business ??

Are you a Beauty Blogger ?? Are you a makeup artist ?? Do you have a Beauty or fashion related business or website ??

Extending the success of Motives in the USA to the UK we are working with selected Fashion and Beauty bloggers to show them how to leverage the power of the Motives and Shop.com Internet Portals and integrate these into their existing business models.

Let’s just discuss the opportunity that exists for the fashion and beauty blogger and their network of related contacts – for example,  makeup artists, salon owners, health spa owners and fashion business owners.

Obviously bloggers have an Internet Presence ( web/blogsite and social media pages ) already. Their contacts may or may not have web or blogsites. It does not really matter whether they do or don’t. The Motives and Shop.com portals can be stand alone or integrated with existing web presences.

To get some ideas let’s look at some people already doing this ( this is just a random selection from Googling Motives Cosmetics ):

Here’s Lily & Vanessa Lewis  from Australia. Did you see the ” Shop in MY store button ” ??? What a lovely site.

Here’s another site from someone in America. See the advert on the right hand side at the top ?? Takes you straight to this person’s Motives Portal.

This one from Emily Eddington of the USA is a Blogger site and perhaps more typical of the ones that we have seen in the UK so far. Emily has written a review for Lauren Page so you’re are actually being directed to her Motives site.

So, the way you use the Motives and Shop.com portals is flexible and non-exclusive. – which means that you can carry on doing independent reviews and you can also carry on recommending other products from other companies.

What is important to understand is that these ladies have ” monetised ” their sites. This basically means that you are giving people the opportunity to buy the things that you like and recommend.

SO MUCH effort goes into reviewing and writing about products. Why not give them the opportunity to buy some of them from YOU ??

In this video here we are going to hear from Makeup Artists, Coach/mentors TO Makeup Artists and Salon owners and particularly from Ethnic, darker skinned ladies ( African American and Latino ) who love the line created specifically for them by La La Anthony 

Did you hear that phrase ” Trading Time for Money ” from Carlos ???? Your blogsite is on 24 Hours a day – people are looking at it from all around the world all the time. Why not have it so that, if they want to, people can buy from it all the time ?? Where will you be ?? Sleeping ?? On the beach ?? Shopping ??? When you get an email message saying that someone has bought one of your recommendations.

By the way – I know that most of the people that you are seeing here are in the U.S. ( Some of the web and blogsites I showed you earlier were, for example, in Australia ).

We are leading a Digital Marketing initiative into the U.K. but there are already people here that are doing great business as Shop.com and Motives partners and affiliates.

Here’s Kristina Thoedoris with Stooshe ‘s Alex Buggs:

Kristina is in London.

So,  Let’s see what else you can do with Motives by going to this website >>>>> HERE <<<<<<<.

If you are a blogger or journalist then we have a PRESS KIT for you here. This has this Autumn and Winters lines in it.

So, I hope you have enjoyed this information and if you have please contact me:

My Shop.com Shopping Portal is >>>> HERE <<<<

My Motives Shopping Portal is >>>> HERE <<<<

So please browse around them and let me know what you think.

Skype me : chris.windley

Call me : +447881 500002

email me: chris@mandarainmaker.co.uk

or just GOOGLE me and connect on one of the social networks.

TAKE SOME ACTION !!!!!!!

HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing system is amazing. Started by ex-Venture Capitalist Brian Halligan and web architect and blogger Dharmesh Shah who basically saw that startups and growth companies needed a new way of marketing, HubSpot is a truly revolutionary concept ( Inbound Marketing ) and system.

As a business angel and sales, marketing and business strategy specialist with startups and growth companies I have recommended HubSpot to a number of my clients. Some have installed HubSpot and I have been privileged to be involved in the installation and operation of the system. One has changed from HubSpot to WordPress. This was a change that I resisted as I was sure that HubSpot style Internet Marketing was the future and would, eventually, lead to great results for my client  but as I debated the pros and cons of HubSpot and WordPress with my client I could see that it just was not going to work for them. It was too expensive and required skills that they and I did not have. Neither did they have the skills required in their partners.

In fact it turned out that HubSpot was moving upmarket -away from S.M.B.’s and towards larger companies and enterprises. I don’t think that it is any mistake that HubSpot’s pricing page’s –   http://www.hubspot.com/pricing/ – highlight a professional package that’s going to cost $600 per month plus, potentially, $1000’s in setup and consulting fees. You would probably be looking at $20,000 per annum as a typical spend. I think HubSpot are being very fair in highlighting that on top of the licensing fee there are other costs aswell. If you don’t have certain skills in house e.g. Landing Page and Call to Action design skills and analytical skills then you will need to find a partner for this and pay them aswell.

Despite all this I am STILL going to recommend that you look at HubSpot and understand what it offers and can achieve before making any decision not to use it. You HAVE to understand what the HubSpot system is trying to achieve ( Visitors, prospects and customers ! ) and you have to understand most of the ways that it achieves this. The HubSpot mantra ” Get Found, Convert and Analyse ” should be burned into your brain in the same way that it is burned into mine.

You must understand that a website is virtually useless if it is not FOUND, if it does not CONVERT visitors into prospects and customers and if you cannot ANALYSE how you managed to get FOUND and CONVERT  visitors to customers.

I can tell you that it is very exciting watching the traffic building to your website which results from the creation of great content and the distribution of that content through social networks.

It is also fantastic to watch how many visitors converted to leads and how many of those converted to orders.

Unfortunately when you are spending around £250 a month ( as my client was doing ) you are not getting the Professional package and you do not get much support so if you can’t do a number of things in house then you are never actually going to achieve the results that you need which means that you will never actually pay for the cost of HubSpot.

This is why I have spent months and months developing the WordPress based Internet Marketing Ecosystem which I believe is more suited to the average SMB and even large business. Of course in the last year or so HubSpot has developed the HubSpot plugin for WordPress and also Dharmesh has emphasized the importance of the WordPress world by investing in WPEngine ( the WordPress focussed Hosting company ).

STOP PRESS !!! January 2013 – The Internet Marketing Ecosystem ( mentioned below ) has now been incorporated into Centripetal Network Consultings’ Digital Marketing Ecosystem. Watch this video >>>> HERE <<<< to see how a system that provides all of the functionality of a HubSpot system at a much lower cost has evolved over the last couple of years.

Silicon Crossroads is the High Tech. business area established between Lichfield, Tamworth, Sutton Coldfield and Walsall in Staffordshire, England, U.K. The crossroads referred to is the ancient crossroads of Watling Street ( the A5 ) and Rykneld Street ( the A38 ) which cross one another just below Lichfield.

Notably Tamworth is dominated by Tamworth Castle and Lichfield by Lichfield Cathedral and these are ancient seats of power in Middle England.

The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard may well add to the evidence for the Lichfield and Tamworth area being an area of influence and innovation and Silicon Crossroads and the Silicon Crossroads VCT continue this tradition.

The Silicon Crossroads VCT is a High Tech. Investment fund with a particular focus on areas like Social Media, Inbound Marketing and Cloud Computing.

We have established strong connections with entrepreneurs, business angels and venture capital funds in some of the main innovation areas in the U.S. and Canada like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Vancouver, Austin, Toronto and other emerging High Tech Innovation areas like Baltimore.

Aside from Early Stage funding the VCT provides support for start up and early stage companies from the U.S. and the U.K. Included in our support services is ” Outsourced Business Development ” to assist companies to identify target customers and sectors  and to establish contact with them using state of the art Marketing techniques like Inbound Marketing, the creation of Internet Marketing Ecosystems and therefore the use of Social Media and Social Business Media.

It became obvious a few years ago that the rise of companies like Salesforce ( SaaS CRM ) , Google ( Search and Social Media ), Facebook ( Social Media ) and Twitter ( Social Media )  would give rise to other companies like HubSpot ( Inbound Marketing ) , Hootsuite ( Monitoring multiple social media channels )  and Twylah ( Twitter brand pages ).

It was less obvious that there would be such huge angel and venture capital investment in the U.S. but there has been and it is only increasing.

There has also been a revolution ( from necessity ) in funding methods for start ups in the U.S. with companies like KickStarter and the concentration of Angels and so called Super Angels onto lists like AngelList.

In addition companies like SecondMarket have created liquidity in markets like pre-IPO shares and debt.

You can get more information on some of these companies via this blog and my Twylah page   http://www.twylah.com/cwindley.

This is a holding page for more information on Silicon Crossroads and the Silicon Crossroads VCT and websites, blogs and Twylah pages will be developed for these over time.

My contact information is on this blog on the Contact page.

Lichfield businesses have been subjected to an incredible outbreak of Wahooliganism. Wahooliganism first emerged in Minneapolis in the U.S. last year and then spread globally via highly connected individuals and internet influencers.

It gained serious Klout along the way but suffered a setback in early February. It is expected to re-emerge over the coming weeks stronger than ever and businesses in Lichfield and indeed globally are advised to prepare.

What is Wahooliganism ??

A short description proffered by Wahooly founder Dana Severson is  ” Accelerating Start-up growth through online influence. “

There’s a good description of Wahooly in TechCrunch here:

http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/wahooly-launches-its-crowdfunding-experiment-with-first-3-startups-ready-for-social-capital/

Wahooly ( a start-up itself ) is helping it’s first 3 start-up’s ( actually on the website there are 4 now – http://wahooly.com/ ) to gain traction by having ” influential people ” invest time, effort and skills in them and promote them on a global basis.

Does this actually work ???

Well I think it does. Word of Mouth Marketing,Networking and Referrals are established ways of ” getting the word out ” and ” growing the business “.

For those of you who have read Gladwell’s ” The Tipping Point ” you will know that “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.” These people are Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople.

According to Gladwell, economists call this the “80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the ‘work’ will be done by 20 percent of the participants.”

The 20% are defined by Klout ( arguably ) as those who have a Klout score of greater than 45. ( Klout is only one company that is measuring Internet ” influence ).

This is not really rocket science – you get influential people ( in real life and virtual life ) to promote your company, products and services and this helps you grow your business.

Let’s take two examples:

Twylah ( http://www.twylah.com/ )

Twylah is a company that wants to take your Twitter Tweets and ” Tell your story and get you noticed ” by making an awesome looking website out of your Tweets. Twylah is based in San Franciso and is a start-up with co-founders Kelly and Eric Kim. Kelly is the community manager for Twylah and the marketing face of @Twylah.

Twylah has some VERY famous clients already ( see http://www.twylah.com/featured ) which include Lady GaGa, Britney Spears, Bon Jovi and Arnold Shwarzenegger !! This might give you the impression that only famous people need apply ! Here is David Skok of Matrix Partners Twylah page http://www.twylah.com/bostonvc/topics/matrix ( A Boston based VC investor  ) and here’s my Twylah page  http://www.twylah.com/cwindley .

From small beginnings Twylah has spread globally – mainly by using Twitter. Kelly has some 13,000 or so followers on Twitter. By picking certain people ( famous, influential, interesting ) Kelly has spread the word on Twylah and now Twylah users are spreading the word further.

Coco Meli Bakery ( http://www.cocomelibakery.co.uk/ )

More locally, Meli Nicolaou, of Coco Meli Bakery is using various means to promote her Artisan Bakery business and newly launched refreshments van at Trent Valley Railway Station.

Meli (  @CocoMeliBakery on Twitter )

has a relatively small ( well at least to Kelly !! ) Twitter follower base ( 500 odd ) but she has used this to help spread the word about her business. She now has a Twylah page http://www.twylah.com/CocoMeliBakery .

Again, physically and online she is spreading the word and others are spreading the word for her – some of them are influential people.

The involvement of influential people is having an actual positive effect on the growth of the business. What is the value of a new Twylah customer or a new Coco Meli Bakery customer ?? I don’t know but Eric Kim’s background is in the monetisation of Internet platforms and to him ( and the industry he has worked in for the last 10 years or so ) each follower, retweeter, circler, favouriter, liker and email address has a dollar or pound ( or part of ) value !!

Lichfield in Staffordshire has a very Internet aware local government ( e.g. Lichfield District Council uses Twitter for Planning Applications ) and local business population. I thought it would be interesting to use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader software to grade the Internet Marketing Performance of a random selection of Lichfield based businesses.

I chose my random selection not so randomly, mainly from HubSpot’s Twitter Grader for Lichfield on the basis that if people were on Twitter then they were likely to be pretty Internet savvy and social media aware. Hence my selection was ( in order of best performing ) Lichfield Live  , Lichfield District Council , Executives on the Web ( our ” web ” company ) , InterVallum ( Paul Hooper-Keeley has the most Twitter followers in the area ) Hellmann ( Logistics ) and finally Framework Gallery ( who I spoke about in an earlier blog and who performed well in a local search on ” oil paintings “.

http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/staritems

I wanted to get a bit of a ” spread ” of results i.e. from high end results like Lichfield Live ( who you would sort of expect to have a comprehensive Internet presence ) , through Lichfield D.C. ( who probably have a team of website specialists and as mentioned before are very pro. social media and the Internet ) to Executives on the Web ( who again, as a web based business, you would expect to be pretty high ranking )  to Hellmann’s ( who arguably don’t need a particularly strong web presence ? ) to Framework Gallery who, as I say performed well in some earlier searches.

I don’t propose to go into any detail on each of the reports ( they are all listed below if you want to take a look at them ) but you probably need to understand that these grades are relative to thousands of other websites around the world i.e. 78/100 means that the Lichfield Live website in conjunction with it’s associated blog and social media memberships  has a better internet marketing performance than 78% of the web presences reviewed by HubSpot. That’s pretty good !!

You also need to understand that HubSpot takes a pretty ” salesy ” view of life. Terms like Top of the Funnel and Middle of the Funnel may not mean much to some business people but they will be familiar to most salespeople. HubSpot’s mantra is ” Get Found ( on the Internet ), Convert ( Visitors to leads ) and Analyse ( how you did it and how you could do it better ).

To achieve this HubSpot recommends the establishment of what I call an ” Internet Ecosystem ” i.e. a combination of a website, a blogsite and various social media memberships and other sites that essentially drive visitors back to your website. ”

Marketing Grader Reports

http://marketing.grader.com/site/lichfieldlive.co.uk  – 78/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.lichfielddc.gov.uk – 68/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.executivesontheweb.com – 60/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.hellmann.net – 39/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.intervallum.co.uk  – 31/100

http://marketing.grader.com/site/www.framework-gallery.co.uk – 12/100

If you are going to UC Expo 2011 and looking for SMB products and solutions then I recommend that you visit the Cisco Stand ( Stand 504 ) and also visit the Small Business Communications Theatre

http://www.ucexpo.co.uk/Seminars/Small-Business-Communications

to hear presentations from Andy Brocklehurst

http://www.ucexpo.co.uk/Seminars/Small-Business-Communications/Tuesday-08-March-2011/Breaking-Down-the-Physical-boundaries-between-businesses

of Cisco and also Clare Jenkins of FutureLine

http://www.ucexpo.co.uk/Seminars/Small-Business-Communications/Wednesday-09-March-2011/Simplifying-VoIP-the-key-to-wide-spread-adoption-is-simplicity

FutureLine is a Hosted Voice system being provided in conjunction with Cisco. Andy says:

“We are seeing an increasing demand for managed and hosted solutions in the voice space and this is especially the case for smaller businesses with less than 20 employees. FutureLine have a refreshingly new approach by addressing the key fundamentals of quality, security and ease of use and deployment. This is all underpinned by partnering with Cisco who fully understand how to manage different media provided by the various consumption models.”

Andy Brocklehurst
RSM Cisco Small Business

Cisco’s theme for the SMB products and solutions aspect of the UC Expo stand will be that Cisco SMB products can be purchased for less than the price of a cup of coffee and that Cisco’s 0% financing goes a long way toward achieving this.

There will be some exciting new Cisco product launches and appearances at UC Expo 2011 including the new UC 320 SMB telephony system.

Visitors to the Cisco stand will be offered the chance to win a fabulous coffee making machine.

If you are looking for small business phone systems and you live near Telford or Shrewsbury in Shropshire then I highly recommend that you talk to Vanilla Communications

http://www.vanillacomms.co.uk/

who have recently become a Cisco FutureLine Partner

http://www.futureline.net.uk/

and who are able to provide a full communications solution. They say :

” VANILLAcomms is an independent and whole market provider of Business Communications solutions. We work with you to provide the entire communications platform, comprising of Mobile, Fixed Line, Data, Conferencing and IT Services.

Let VANILLAcomms take the stress out of Business Communications for you, allowing you time to focus on your business.

Whether you are simply looking to save money on your monthly mobile telephone costs, undertaking a full audit and reconfiguration of your communications infrastructure, or somewhere in between, VANILLAcomms will create relevant and effective solutions for you.”