I have recently had some pretty bad experiences with so called Hotdesking facilities in Birmingham, UK and this got me thinking about the subject.

I think part of the problem is that they are more experimental models than professional businesses and the people that are running them are just not up to the task. Simple questions,enquiries,suggestions and even help given get very weird responses and you just wonder where these people have been, are coming from and why they are suddenly hosting Hotdesking facilities. Desperation springs to mind ??

In all the years that I have been meeting people in Birmingham in hotels I have never experienced any negative issues. In fact the reverse. As I cast my mind back over hundreds of meeting I can only remember positive experiences.

Over the last year I have used The Malmaison and Marco Pierre Whites in particular. Both are great but of course MPW has the advantage of the amazing views. I have always had good service at the Ibis Chinatown and there is another hotel where I had amazing support from staff with my laptop connectivity – will update soon.

It really begs a few questions:

– Why would you use a Hotdesking facility rather than e.g. a Hotel or Coffee Bar ??

– What are the most important criteria for a venue to meet with somebody ??

– What is the best place to open up your smartphone, notepad or laptop and get a bit of work done ???

There are probably a few other questions that could be asked aswell.

I am going to leave this article for further updates soon.

Unleash the Digital Entrepreneur in YOU and choose one of these training and mentorship options

Success in Digital Marketing is about a system, great products and constantly improving the performance – conversion rates of your system

I always say to people that it took me about 8 years to find a really effective digital marketing system. I sort of hate saying that because I am not unintelligent but it is what it is – having started learning how to get found on Google in around 2004 it was not until 2012 – when I found the Six Figure Mentors – that I really had a system that delivered leads and orders in a systematic way.

As soon as I saw it I started saying to people that I saw 3 main opportunities with this system:

1. To use the system to sell the system

2. To use the system to sell other products and services ( probably while still doing Action 1. )

3. To use the system to help business owners put in place a system that was customised to their business.

For Action 3. we set up a company called Centripetal Networks adding some specific products and services  and processes to make the system suitable for small, medium and large businesses.

We also decided that we were going to take a very team orientated approach to helping our SFM/DEA newbies. They could join and use all the fantastic support offered within that community or they could ask us for help and we would ” FastTrack ” them through the different levels.

Some people surprised us at the speed with which they acquired the skills ( of course the SFM/DEA system is built to make it easy so in some ways we should not have been surprised ) others needed a bit of help whilst others just asked us to help them build their systems or do it for them. We really don’t mind. At the end of the day what is important is to acquire the skills necessary to become a Digital Marketer – not just any Digital Marketer but one that knows how to get Traffic, Leads and Orders.

People who join SFM/DEA have 4 levels that they can come in at once they have been accepted into the community:

Digital Experts Academy offers four levels of membership designed to take you from an opportunity seeker all the way to digital expert. We looked at everything that someone starting from scratch would require to successfully transition to full time digital marketer and beyond.

Each level was specifically designed to move the member through the next phase of self-reliance by teaching a new set of marketing, leadership and entrepreneurial skill-sets.

SILVER Membership

Transform yourself into a cutting edge Digital Entrepreneur with this 12 Month Digital Entrepreneurship and mindset training program.

Success always starts on the inside. It’s unrealistic to expect a different result applying the same logic. SILVER gives you the foundational success-mindset and skill-sets required for your digital life. Training is delivered via a proprietary, e-learning portal featuring the latest space-repetition learning technology helping you quickly absorb and apply the expert information.

GOLD Membership

Master the skill of Digital Marketing with a 12 month membership to this cutting edge marketing mastermind and live workshop.

GOLD members participate in an intensive digital marketing training program designed to teach you how to become a full time, professional, digital marketer. GOLD also includes a three day digital marketing boot-camp.

PLATINUM Membership

Present yourself as an expert caliber professional with this “done for you” Digital Brand building solution.

PLATINUM establishes you as an authority by giving you your own, unique, expert brand. Featuring an intensive online brand building workshop, we help members identify their unique gifts and talents and create an expert online brand image for them. Unlike SILVER and GOLD which are primarily educational in nature, this is primarily a done-for-you solution.

BLACK Membership

Connect, partner with, and leverage our network of Digital Experts at our annual DEA Mastermind & Retreat

Black features an ultra-exclusive mastermind retreat in an exotic location. This is the ultimate inner-circle access to the who’s who in digital marketing and the digital economy. The opportunity to joint venture with the DEA is also a potential possibility upon certain qualifications.

Unleash the Digital Entrepreneur in YOU by going >>>>> HERE <<<<< and simply putting in your email address.

OK – so you prefer to watch videos than read stuff – below are couple that might be of interest …

Danny Brown – someone who I have great respect for wrote this blog a while ago..

http://dannybrown.me/2012/07/18/advance-the-conversation/

following up a Tweet from Geoff Livingstone and apparently aiming to shut down the debate about CEO’s Tweeting and being involved in other forms  of social media and Internet marketing.

Danny’s view is clearly ” The CEO has much more important things to do than mess about with Social Media ” . Except ….. that the first role mentioned for a CEO is as ” Communicator ” and Social Media is a communications channel …………. Hmmmm !!

Other communications channels that the CEO might choose are: Face to face meetings; the phone; emails; Press Releases; articles; ……….. etc etc

There are perhaps two ways to take this discussion

One is to say No !! – it’s someone else’s job..

and it probably is ( in the main ) someone else’s job. ( Of course this depends very much on how big a company we are talking about and how many people are supporting him/her ).  A CEO would not ( necessarily ) actually organise the face to face meetings ( his secretary or P.A.  would  at his/her initiation. ) He/she would not necessarily phone someone ( but he might organise it and then take the call ).  He/she might email someone. He/she might say ” Fax this to someone “. He/she might speak to the ” PR/ad. company  to get something going ( but if there is a Marketing Director leave it to them ). He/she probably initiated or agreed to a website being set up. ( Initiated by someone in house or outsourced ) and so on and so on… which leads us to …..

The other is to say – Social Media is a communications channel like any other and that it should be used as ” one of ” the ways of communicating for a CEO ….

( but this assumes that you already have the Social Media channels set up ?? )

What does Danny do ?

What, I was thinking, does Danny do now ???  Turns out he has a new role – Chief Technologist at http://thearccompany.com/ where Hessie Jones is C.E.O. http://hessiej.wordpress.com/. Now, I am pretty sure that this is one C.E.O. that Tweets !! However, maybe it’s ” not fair ” to pick on a ” Digital Business ” C.E.O.

What do ( some ) CEO’s do – like Richard Branson ?

Let’s see what the great man has to say shall we …… HERE  !!! ok – I rest my case 😉

What do ” Social Media ” CEO’s do ?

See above 😉

A documentary about the Digital Experts Academy franchise opportunity is due to be released in January 2013

This documentary about the Digital Experts Academy franchise opportunity will explain more about Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek’s vision for the D.E.A. and the way in which 1000 new Digital Marketers will be traind by 2015

As readers of my blog’s will know the Digital Experts Academy franchise opportunity is being taken up by forward thinking entrepreneurs around the world.

Let’s say up front that it’s low cost, low risk, high potential model is very attractive to a lot of people.

Also highly attractive is the fact that, as I have explained previously in some detail , it is really at least 3 opportunities in one package:

1. The opportunity to resell Digital Experts Academy Products ( Aswell as Six Figure Mentors and PRO U products ).

2. The opportunity to use ” the system ” in multiple businesses of your own.

3. The opportunity to become an ” integrator ” of the system into other businesses sales and marketing system’s.

No doubt the soon to be released documentary on the Digital Experts Academy opportunity will highlight Stuart and Jay’s view on what the opportunity is.

For certain the investment in the tools, support, mentorship and community is in marked contrast with other ” Internet Marketing ” Affiliate scheme’s which seem very ” short term ” by comparison.

We can expect a minimum ” life ” of around 5-10 years from the D.E.A. products and services but the opportunity outlined in 2. and 3, goes even beyond this.

We are building Centripetal Networks to support the main D.E.A. / S.F.M. / PRO U opportunity and Centripetal Consulting in particular to be a Global Digital Marketing Integrator that will use ” the system ” to support other businesses’s ( sales and marketing ) systems.

This opportunity has been described on this blog as being similar to being a Global Cisco Systems Integrator .  Similar but not exactly the same.

As one of the top 100 Hi Tech. investors in the world I recommend that you get yourself on the list of people who will see the Digital Experts Academy Documentary first ( sign up >>>>>> HERE <<<<<<<< ) and evaluate the opportunity for yourself.

I will tell you this…

There are many Internet Marketers and Social Media Marketers who are kidding themselves that there is a living in what they are doing. There are only a very small percentage of ( independent ) consultants that are making any money ( and they probably have at least one retained client ).

There is little to no money in this business BUT there is money in it IF it is allied to the Digital Experts Academy opportunity.

For those that understand what I mean there is also a realistic EXIT STRATEGY for D.E.A. Franchisees. If you don’t know or understand what I mean by this – ASK ME !!!!

Exit Strategy is one of my specialisations and at Centripetal Network we have worked out how YOU can build yourself an exitable business.

This means that while you are making money you can also be building yourself an asset to be sold in the future.

I have been involved in some way with Cisco resellers – as a founder or investor – since around 1995. It was about then that I recommended that LanSwitch/Voyager adopt Cisco as it’s main product for resale rather than 3Com.

There are a variety of options in terms of the type of reseller that you are. Broadly speaking these range from resellers that are focussed on
” shifting ” ( Cisco ) box’s to those that are focussed on delivering ” advanced ” services e.g. consultancy.

When LanSwitch first started out it was very much focussed on selling ” box’s ” – to be precise 3Com LAN switches. Even then we had added some
” services ” around the basic offering e.g. baselining and maintenance.

By the time we adopted Cisco we had a fairly well established set of services.

With Cisco there is a seemingly never ending number of accreditations to get which normally include having so many qualified people. The permutations of these qualified people get ever more complex, and the variations of types of qualified people increase all the time. There is a definate cost to getting and maintaining these people and accreditations.

Over the years I have seen Cisco do many sorts of ” analysis ” of their resellers as someone comes up with another way of looking at them.

From Cisco’s perspective it is substantially about ” shifting box’s ” and achieving sales,revenue and profit targets.

They don’t really, deep down,  care how you do it as long as you do it !

Cisco’s perspective on a reseller is one view. However another view, that as is as important – arguably more important, is the view of the ” market ” i.e. M&A people and if floated, the stock market.

If they look at your company they will take Cisco accreditations as ” very good but so what ?? “. i.e. there are loads of Gold, Silver and Bronze resellers, what makes your company different from them ??

As one analyst said to me when we were looking to value Voyager ” Are you a box shifter or a value added service provider or reseller ?? “. When I answered that we were a ” Value Added Reseller ” he said ” Really ? – what’s your revenue from box sales relative to your revenue from services ? ” If it was 80/20 Box to Services that was bad. If it was 40 Box to 60 services that was good.

I actually spent a lot of time thinking about differentiators and value drivers at Voyager. The more differentiators and value drivers you have the higher your valuation multiples become. Also you get into ” I actually don’t know how to value that but it sounds good ” territory !!

When I was thinking about this blog I realised that it could easily end up as a book because there was a lot to say in terms of Cisco’s perception of  a ” valuable reseller ” and a lot to say about the ” markets ” perception of a valuable business. There  would also be something to write on the intersection of Cisco and the markets valuation points.

As I want to talk about another matter I don’t want to delve more deeply into these aspects just yet.

Cisco has a great range of products. You can just about survive selling these products if you wrap a certain amount of services around them ( the achievable margins on Cisco products have fallen dramatically over the years ). To differentiate yourself within the Cisco community and to the ” market ” you need more ” value added ” elements.

Let us now turn to the Six Figure Mentors ( SFM ) / PRO U / Digital Experts Academy ( DEA )  opportunity:

SFM/PROU/DEA offers a range of ” Digital Marketing ” products with Tools, Training, Support and a Community. It is the ” Cisco ” of the Digital Marketing world. Better than that the margins on these products are very high. So, you certainly can build a business focussing on being a reseller of these products. The products are priced from $20 to $20K.

Selling lots of these products is certainly going to get you noticed within SFM/PROU/DEA and if you are really good it is going to get you onto the
( Sales ) Leaders Board.

That is a great opportunity in itself. Essentially you only have to get prospects into the sales funnel at the top through ” sign-ups ” and ” applications ” and the rest is handled by SFM/PROU/DEA internal support and sales staff.

As was pointed out here  this is only the first of three opportunities.

I think added value can be implemented here e.g. ” conversion ” from ” sign-up ” to ” application ” relies on the auto-responders doing their job – which to a large extent they do but some people are not convinced by these and additional ” personal sales intervention ” may be required.

We know that once you understand ” the system ” it can be applied to other products and services that you might wish to sell e.g. within our team Sandra and Adelaide want to use the system to market and sell new Callanetics products.

You don’t just need to know the system but also how to make a range of products and services suitable for marketing and sales by the system.

There is added value here.

Finally, the main target of the SFM/PROU/DEA products and services is individuals ( probably of a certain demographic type ). In our view the products and services can be used by individuals and businesses – probably SMB’s as a particular target.

Tailoring ” the system ” to a businesses needs is certainly an added value capability. Here you are acting as an ” integrator ” – using the SFM/PROU/DEA products and services and integrating them into a new or existing businesses Marketing and Sales operation.

You are acting as a high-end Internet/Digital/Social Media Marketing/Web Development Consultant and Integrator.

This is what The Centripetal Network is .

Becoming part of the Centripetal Network is like becoming part of a Global Systems Integrator ( in Cisco terms ). You are a member of SFM/PROU/DEA – which in itself is a fabulous thing. You probably run a Digital Experts Academy in e.g. Washington D.C. or The Gold Coast.  You use ” the system ” to sell other products and services e.g. Callanetics but also you are part of a Global Digital Marketing Integrator that uses the system to boost other businesses Internet Presence Return on Investment. You help them to get more traffic, leads and orders – and therefore money – for their businesses.

One of the main advantages of this is that Centripetal Consulting is a ” business ” in it’s own right to anyone looking at it from a ” market ” perspective. It is a business owned by you and us. It is a ” Value Added Integrator ” . It can be sold or floated in the future and the shareholders will be you and us.

Now it is not ” easy ” to build a Global Digital Marketing Integrator and exit from it ( trade sale ) or float it but it is possible. Chris. Michael and I bring with us the experience to do this.

How fast can you roll out a Digital Experts Academy Network Worldwide ????

Our Digital Experts Academy Network is expanding globally at lightening speed

I wrote an article on the expansion of our chain of Digital Experts Academy franchises HERE just under a month ago. How are we doing ??

How fast can you roll out a global Digital Experts Academy franchise ??

Well, in  just under a month we have franchises established in Virginia, U.S. , the Gold Coast, Australia
( 2 ), Warsaw, Poland and London, U.K. as well as the Head Office here in Lichfield. Other D.E.A. teams are also expanding their franchises as we aim to create 1000 Digital Marketing Experts by 2015.

We also have advanced discussions with another half dozen or so people.

The crazy thing is that we have opportunities going back and fore across the world as each of our team get’s online and starts talking to their networks.

In our team we have a lot of business experience including:

Michael Nelson – former Strategy Coach to the White House, based Virginia.

Sandra Hanna and Adelaide Kingsnorth – Global Callanetics Entrepreneurs, based Gold Coast.

Chris Butler – CEO and co-founder of WeCanDoBiz – a 21,000 member global network, based London.

Malgorzata Krukowska, Warsaw.

With this level of experience and expertise we are able to help new Digital Experts Academy franchisees get up and running very quickly.

We all help one another as much as we can and we all have slightly different skills and experience to offer. We are thinking ahead all the time.

We use email, social media and especially skype to talk to one another.

Of course we have the Six Figure Mentors and PRO U communities to help us aswell – particularly Martyn    Hickey in the U.K. and Mark Hayes in the U.S. Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek are always there if we need them.

I have built franchises before but never at this speed and with this level of co-operation. Also, almost definately without this level of FUN !!!!

I think the reason that it is all progressing so rapidly is that it is a FANTASTIC business model. It is also great timing for this business model. It is a set of products in an industry that has an almost limitless potential and will last until the forseeable future.

When I evaluate startup businesses I look at a few main things: People, Proposition, Profit, Potential, and Plan. I am not going to go through all of these but it is obvious that they all exist in spades. This is what we can all see as soon as we look into the Digital Experts Academy opportunity in more detail.

Chris Windley – Managing Partner, Silicon Crossroads Technopolis.

Charlatans, swindlers and mountebanks !!! Purveyors of Snake Oil !!!!

This is from the Wikipedia entry on ” Charlatans “:

In usage, a subtle difference is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence people. The charlatan is usually a salesperson. He does not try to create a personal relationship with his marks, or set up an elaborate hoax using role playing. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of resorting to quackery, pseudoscience, or some knowingly employed bogus means of impressing people in order to swindle his victims by selling them worthless nostrums and similar goods or services that will not deliver on the promises made for them. The word calls forth the image of an old-time medicine show operator, who has long since left town by the time the people who bought his “snake oil” or similarly named tonic realize that it does not perform as advertised.

Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757

This article that appeared in Forbes online magazine recently stated:

“If your self-worth and your confidence is based on you being an expert, you’re in deep trouble, because there aren’t any experts”

and

” To succeed in marketing moving forward …… “What you need more than expertise is curiosity, someone who’s interested in what’s happening, loves change, and wants to develop ideas and drive change. If you’re not one of those people, you’re going to hate what’s going on in marketing and you won’t be effective. I have friends who have told me they’re just trying to hang on before people realize they don’t know what they’re doing. But I don’t think you can fake it another five years. You’re just not relevant if you’re fighting the reality of what’s happening.”

I think there are two main sorts of ” Social Media Charlatan ” at the moment: There are those who don’t know what they are doing and are not trying to find out what the real solutions are – they are just selling what they have as long as they can – and there are those who are trying to figure out what the solution is as hard as they can but have just not found the answer yet.

I can live with and understand the latter – I have no time for the former. ( By the way all of them are in a very precarious position at the moment ).

In the Forbes article referred to above, Dorie Clark , the writer say that there ” aren’t any experts ” . Actually the article says that Dorie and Clark Kokich ( Chairman of Digital Marketing Agency Razorfish ) were speaking at the recent HubSpot Inbound Marketing Conference in London.

When Dorie Clark says this he means ” except HubSpot ” – who will certainly tell you that THEY are Digital Marketing Experts and part of the solution and not the problem. No doubt Kokich would also want you to believe that Razorfish are Digital Marketing Experts aswell.

I would also say that Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek of the Six Figure Mentors are Digital Marketing Experts ( New Era ) and that the Digital Experts Academy, founded by Stuart and Jay, is one place where you can find the answers that you need if you are currently masquerading as a Social Media or Digital Marketing Expert !!!

The problem is not so much that the answers are not there it is that they are hard to find.You also have to be ” ready to receive ” the answers. This rules out a lot of people because their eyes are shut and their head is buried in the sand.

They look at HubSpot, Six Figure Mentors and maybe even Razorfish and shout ” Snake Oil !! ”  even as they sell bucket loads of it themselves.

Personally I have been here before. I don’t know why but I have always been involved in leading edge ideas and businesses. This is what this is – it is leading edge marketing and guess what ?? – only the early adopters are going to get involved.

Only those people who have been searching will find the answers. Only those people with an open mind will see the possibility of a solution.

The rest will keep doing what they have always done and getting what they always got. Actually the real problem is that what they used to do, used to work. That’s what many of them hang on to … ” Well, it used to work “.

Another problem is that most social media and Internet marketers are just that – marketers. They are NOT salespeople. Typically they have never been in a selling role ( apart from selling themselves – which, admittedly is an achievement ). They have not had to meet targets, make forecasts and nurture people from prospect through to customer. They typically avoid commitments to ” Numbers “. ( Visits to the website, Conversions into leads, conversions into customers, revenue generated, analysis of how it was done ). Not that it is easy to make these commitments and put the systems together to track visitors, leads and orders and how you did it.

However, both HubSpot and the Six Figure Mentors can provide this information.

Anyway, I will coach my ( sales and marketing ) team like this – Present the information, answer any questions, show how it helps, why it’s a solution BUT don’t expect many people to understand it. Only a few will – those with the humility to understand that ” there is another way “.

Don’t waste time with people who don’t get it. Move on to ” the few ” who will.