Working with the East Midlands Cyber Resilience Centre and 400 companies

Posted by Chris on April 5th, 2020

M&A Rainmaker and Google and Linkedin Top Digital Sales Expert, Chris Windley, is excited to be working with the East Midlands Cyber Resilience Centre and Business Resilience International Management to build a unique and powerful fusion of around 400 east Midlands businesses and organisations in the next year or so.

This aligns perfectly with Chris’s work with LuJam Cyber Security.

Both organisations work really closely with #GCHQ #NCSC and #IASME and both are determined to improve the business and cyber resilience of all businesses but in particular SMB and Micro businesses.

The Main Board and the Advisory Panel are being built at the moment  – see

https://www.emcrc.co.uk/post/expression-of-interest-invited-for-board-advisory-group-members-for-east-midlands-cyber-resilience

and the Main Board will comprise of senior members of the local #Police #Academia #BigBusiness and #Government.

There has probably never been such a meeting of these organisations in a Board other than in the existing Scottish, Manchester and North East Business and Cyber Resilience Boards and centres,

See here the latest #CyberSecurity advice from the Head if NCSC and above

 

MilliOnAir Magazine London Launch 31st January 2017

Posted by Chris on February 24th, 2017

MilliOnAir Global Magazine held it’s first Launch Party in the World in London at Alfie Best’s fabulously refurbished Vinyl Bar on Tuesday 31st January.

Chris Windley and Millie Cooper .. Editor and Investor/Strategist/cofounder – there from Day 1.

 

 

 

 

The event brought together the MilliOnAir Team ( Investor and Strategist Chris Windley, Business Partner and Investor Mariett Ramm and Millie Cooper ) , guest speakers and inspirational people and brands from all around the world many of whom have appeared in the magazine and some have graced the front cover.

Photo Credit to Gibson Blanc for many of the photos included here. Contact Him.

Photo above: Millie with USA Business Partner and Charlie’s Last Angel – Lori Mixson – who writes the Mixsonitup pages in MilliOnAir.

This Launch party celebrated the release of the February issue 09, sporting a new logo, with cover star Tony Schiena – featured in Lori’s Mixsonitup pages.

Beginning with photograph’s in front of the sponsor board there was a champagne reception and canapes.

On to the speakers and Olympian and former MilliOnAir cover star Jamie Baulch praised Millie and the MilliOnAir Team for what they had achieved over the past 8 issues. Jamie and I have become firm friends since we met online a few months back.

Photo above: Jamie Baulch and Mark Llewelyn – who brought Channel 4 TV stars from SAS Who Dares Wins. Harry Reid from Eastenders was also amongst the guests.

The next speaker was International Speaker, Mentor, Success Coach and Business Partner of and Investor in MilliOnAir Global, Mariett Ramm who was followed by TV Personality Claire Smith who interviewed Millie. Claire did an amazing job of finding out where Millie saw MilliOnAir going in the future and controlling the excited audience !!

Photo above: Claire Smith and Mariett Ramm

On stage also was Jenny Lee Holt, Co-founder of sponsor Spectrum Telecoms.

Above pic: Jenny and Millie

Celia Sawyer is an inspiration and support to many .. certainly she is to Millie and Kira !!!

After the speeches came some fabulous singing by Liss Jones, star of The Voice, X Factor, Big Breakfast and Stars in their Eyes.

Above pic: Liss Jones

Liss was followed by another The Voice star Hannah Wildes who gave a brilliant performance. ( 2nd left below )

Photo above: Hannah Wildes

Of course the Vinyl Bar’s owner Alfie Best was there with World Champion cage fighter Tony Giles. Many thanks to Alfie for the use of the bar.

Photo above: Alfie Best and Tony Giles.

STOP PRESS !!!!! Over 6 Million views of #MOAGlobal as at 5th February ..

Another headline sponsor was Assil Skaiky, Fashion Designer, with Stephen Smith TV Celebrity stylist and author.( Below )

We want to give thanks to Canada based Melanie Layer – one of our International sponsors !!!!

Also at the launch was Amy Christophers, sports broadcaster and journalist ( below

left )

Adrian Silas award winning event planner to A listers, Metin Salih Artist ( below )

More amazing guests ..

Giles Cooper ( above )

Lucy Hall ( above )

The next planned #MOALaunch is the LA Launch in September.

All donations and funds raised went to Mending Kids which is a charity that Millie has supported for many years and intends to support in the future.

Millie and I want to thank – very much – the sponsors of the MilliOnAir Launch event – you are all awesome !!!

Wyldecrest Parks ( Alfie Best )

Vinyl Bar ( Alfie Best )

Spectrum Telecommunications. ( Jenny and Simon Holt )

Richtopia ( Derin Cag )

Bid-in ( Jamie Baulch )

Sandy Bay London 

Assil Skaiky

Mary Kurek 

Mariett Ramm 

Neil Tucker 

Maiya Designs

Melanie Layer

Chris Hill 

Sally Chiwuzie

Charity we are fundraising for – Mending Kids

Find out HOW MilliOnAir grew so fast >>>> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-made-millionair-take-off-so-fast-chris-windley?

What made MilliOnAir Magazine take off so fast ??

Posted by Chris on February 24th, 2017

Article by Chris Windley .. cofounder/investor/strategist .. there from Day 1.

 

In the last few days I have been talking to various people about magazine launches and in particular online magazine launches and why most of them flop but MilliOnAir Magazine went global really fast.

The second issue was the Lori Mixson cover story – a key issue.

( Not appearing above ).

It is worth thinking back to before MilliOnAir was launched ( June ). Then ( from January 2016 ) we had been focused on building the Millie Cooper brand and The Branding Initiative network ( the Global Co-operative Network as I call it ).

From January when I met Millie until now we have been building Millie’s personal brand globally together.

The analysts that I spoke to said that this was a key factor because often ( typically ) magazines are launched by people with no personal brand and no network.

Both Millie and I had pretty strong personal brands ( Millie after I helped her with it ) and I already had a huge, global network.

The first issues in particular drew heavily from my network and were promoted by a combination of my huge network, Millie’s network and The Branding Initiative network.

There was no cover star on the first issue.

Above pic: Early version with May on it – see below for later version with June on it – both issue 01.

Or at least no ” known ” cover star.

In fact – as I am reminded now – I was the nearest thing that issue had to a cover star !! Along with The Rolls Royce Dawn.

We worked on that first issue closely together – Millie creating the design and content and me proof reading until we were both happy with it. Of course it had all of The Branding Initiative co-founders in it , Kelly Ann and Melanie MJ Jones and other friends.

Issue 02 was the one featuring Lori Mixson who was a long standing member of my global network. Based in Texas Lori wanted to be promoted globally and I told her that MilliOnAir was one way to do that.

I was a ” digital ghost ” for her Linkedin and twitter accounts while she was recovering from illness and looking after her children and family. It was a delight to see her pleasure at being on the front cover and she must have bought about 14 hard copies to distribute to her family and friends.

The analysts that I spoke to said that this was a pivotal point. Although at the time it didn’t drive huge amounts of views and shares.

Issue 03, Celia Sawyer came from my connection Derin Cag. Celia being our first big TV star,

Issue 04 Ange Loughran – again from my network.

Issue 05 – ahhh my friend Jamie Baulch from South Wales. Olympian and all round fabulous guy.

Issue 06 – Niyc Pidgeon – a connection from Ange.

Issue 07 – Mariett Ramm – an introduction from Mary Kurek and our second ” Business Partner ” after Lori and our first external investor. Mariett also part financed the launch party along with me and other people that we got to contribute.

Issue 08 came from an event that Millie went to.

Issue 09 came from Lori.

Around the 2nd issue I could see that a global franchise could be established and the way to do this was for the ” Business Partner ” or ” Country Manager ” to start to build feature pages in the main magazine to start ie ” The Mixonitup pages ” and then move on to e.g. MilliOnAir USA magazine.

I also could see multiple ways of generating revenue which I highlighted in business plans and investment proposals that I wrote.

Mariett in particular understood exactly where I was headed,

The media analysts and I have decided to produce detailed case studies on MilliOnAir as quite clearly the foundations have been laid for substantial future growth.

so .. more soon …

Find Out About the London Launch Party with more than 10 MILLION VIEWS of #MOALaunch … https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/millionair-london-launch-31st-january-2017-chris-windley

The Motives Cosmetics packaging tells a bigger story

Posted by Chris on November 17th, 2013

I really had not thought about it much until a beauty blogger friend of mine put pictures on facebook of how her cosmetics had arrived recently.

 

This box arrived with this product wrapped up in all this packaging….

 

Photo: I think the packer who put my items into a loose bag and made my nail varnish explode on everything was feeling slightly sarcastic when I ring up explaining the situation and asking for a replacement. So they've give me this box rammed full of bubble wrap and brown paper for that one item... Really?! I'm awfully sorry you've got shit packer skills, lol.

 

To replace this bottle that had been delivered earlier.

 

Photo: This is what happens when someone doesn't bubble wrap your god damn orders. It smashes everywhere!

 

and I just thought … after carefully selecting the cosmetics product that you wanted from a catalogue or online you would actually be waiting in anticipation of that product arriving at your doorstep. We all know that logistics/delivery companies can be a nightmare and – aside from selecting the ones that you use carefully and monitoring the service that they provide – as a manufacturer or retailer/etailer you don’t have that much control of them.

There are things that you can control though e.g. the time you take to deliver products ( Motives ships in 24 hours typically and arrives within 2-3 days ) AND the quality of the packaging and what you put in the box’s to protect the product.

That’s when it hit me that I had been taking the deliveries, that regularly arrive home from Motives and Shop.com, a little too much for granted.

They all come in nice box’s like this ( I have already had this one open and the product out ) ….

 

Photo

 

which are padded with brown paper like this…..

 

Photo

 

and the products themselves are wrapped in bubble wrap …

 

Photo

 

and when you open them the actual product casings are very high quality and you get an itemised list of the products that you ordered together with a couple of brochures on other products from Shop.com that you might be interested in.

 

Photo

 

To achieve this actually takes a lot of planning and care and I think it really is a reflection of the planning and care that goes into everything that Motives and Shop.com do.

Of course there is a lot of experience behind this with Motives’ parent company Market America having shipped product like this in America and globally for 20 years.

For more information about Motives and Shop.com connect on twitter @cwindley , skype me on chris.windley or call me on +447881 500002

 

 

 

We are taught that Time is Connected to Money – another fallacy !!!

Posted by Chris on November 6th, 2013

 

Building business value is one way, building recurring income streams another. Using digital sales and marketing to automate income is also key

 

School 

When are we first taught that to get money we have to put time in ?? Maybe in school where they give you maths questions like ” If Joe got paid £4 per hour for 10 Hours work and Jane got paid £3 per hour for 12 Hours work how much did they get in total”.

 

Early Work

Maybe it was when I worked at the Spar supermarket for whatever it was per hour and I knew that the more hours I worked the more I got paid.

 

Later Work

That equation got a bit altered when I joined the Navy – we never really thought much about how much we got paid and we also didn’t think much about how many hours we put in. We just did what had to be done and we got paid what we got paid. In the end one of the reasons why I left the Navy was because  I realised that although I was always going to be ok – actually, well off – as a middle to high ranking officer I was never going to be a millionaire !!

After the Navy I went into High Tech. sales. Salespeople don’t get paid by the hour – aside of a basic salary they get paid on results. Obviously you have to put time in to meet your targets and get your commissions but there are the beginnings of a disconnect between time and money.

Of course we all also become aware that you can get paid more money for time depending on what you do – doctors earn more than supermarket workers and military people. People that work in the City get paid telephone number salaries that are largely related to the profits that their firms make. Of course doctors and City types work long hours and it is very demanding work.

 

Your Own Business

We started LanSwitch ( a computer networking company )   in the early 90′s with £2000 ( £6000 total )  on each of our credit cards and we sold it for £65 Million !!! We only paid ourselves a modest salary for the 7 years that we had LanSwitch ( became Voyager Networks and Internet ) but if you divide £65 Million by 7 I guess that is a pretty good annual/monthly/weekly/daily salary !!

It was probably after the sale of Voyager ( to Ronald S. Lauder Communications ) that the concept of the P.I.G. ( Passive Income Generator ) became clearer to me and it became so from the voice side of the telecommunications business.

Part of Voyager’s value was it’s pretty secure, recurring income stream. ( From e.g. Maintenance, Line and call revenue ). However when we started attending the Board Meetings of RSL Communications we learnt about the income that their voice resellers were earning from fixed line and mobile rental and calls. The way this works is that once you sign up a customer as a reseller of a telecommunications companies services ( eg BT or some other Telco ) then you get a small but recurring revenue as commission from those customers for as long as you keep them as customers. As a reseller you don’t have to go and build a telecommunications infrastructure – the Telco already did that. So you don’t have a massive capital outlay but you get an income which, aside from your time and effort involved in getting the sale, is all profit.

Let me just go back to the £6000 becoming £65 Million. This is, in some ways,  fairly common. Early investors in e.g. Google, Apple, Cisco, Facebook and Twitter all ” leveraged ” their investment so that e.g. a $10,000 investment became worth a $Million or even more. To achieve it you must have ” risked ” some money by investing in a company whose value might grow from nothing to something considerable. Everyone who starts their own business probably hopes that one day it might be worth a lot of money. Of course not everyone succeeds in this.

Certainly there was a lot of time that went into this – along with skill, knowledge and innovation. However the value created is not directly related to time. Although over the years I have found that typically it takes around 7 years from starting something to it becoming valuable and I have tested this with other investors and looked at a variety of companies to check its validity.

The telecommunications resellers also put a lot of time ( effort, skill etc etc ) into getting their customers as well. However once they got them they could go lie on a beach, sleep, race cars or whatever and the money kept rolling in.

Many of these resellers have ” sold their book ” to other, usually larger, resellers and Telco’s but you can bet that they never forgot about the PIG’s that they built and which they finally sold for some number times the revenue or profit that they made.

Of course these PIG’s were pre-Internet to some extent. ( Actually the same basic model still exists today and I have friends and business colleagues that still operate it ). I suppose I mean that the money comes in in a traditional way – you send out a bill and it get’s paid. It is not money from an ” Internet ” business although it may be money from the ( telecommunications ) infrastructure of many businesses.

Let us think about other PIG’s …… People write songs and the royalties from those songs come in forever no matter what. Authors write books and the royalties from those also come in forever. ( Think Harry Potter !! ). People invent things and the licence fees last forever. How did the richest people in the world make their money ?? There’s an overview HERE . Typically they built High Tech. businesses; they invested in property; they provided products or services to millions of people.

 

Even small amounts of money from millions of people are millions of dollars, pounds or whatever.

 

Some Internet Marketing companies and specialists ( sometimes called Online Marketing or Digital Marketing ) know how to get many people to purchase products and/or information online.  Companies like the Six Figure Mentors ( also called the Digital Experts Academy and PRO U in the USA ) automate the process of acquisition of products from being found or discovered on the Internet to placing an order with eg a credit card. They know that the best formula is to get small amounts of money from lots of people ( say $20 for an entry fee ), slightly larger amounts from fewer people ( eg a monthly $100 membership fee ) and then larger amounts from a few ( eg $2-20,000 for Internet Marketing Training ).

 

Other companies like Market America / Market United Kingdom combine income from online portals – with huge arrays of products at different prices ( e.g. Motives and Shop.com online shops ) – with multiple membership and training fees. This combines automated  online purchasing with physical recurring income from many people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professional Beauty Manchester Central – follow up from New York Show

Posted by Chris on October 10th, 2013

The ever popular Professional Beauty Manchester Show will be at the Central Convention Complex on the 13th and 14th of October

Motives Cosmetics and Beauty does not have a stand this year but Vice President Loren Ridinger is planning to be in Manchester for an event on the 28th October

 

 

Motives is planning to be at next years event ( 2014 ) but could not quite make this year. However, Loren is determined to get Motives and Shop.com known in the Manchester area and so she is planning to hold an event on the 28th October at 7.30 in Central Manchester ( details will be announced here soon ) where the Motives range can be seen. ( Please take a look at the Motives portal HERE for an overview of the products ).

Motives recently showcased at the New York International Beauty Show and here’s a great video showing how well that went:

 

 

 

Did you see how busy the stand was ???? 

LEAVE THE VIDEO RUNNING FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MOTIVES.

 

We look forward to having a similar stand at next years Professional Beauty.

 

In the meantime we would like to meet people interested in Beauty, Fashion and Health generally and also Bloggers and shop and website owners who might be interested in integrating the Motives and Shop.com portals into their own websites. If you don’t have a blog or website – No problem !!

Other relevant people would be make up artists, salon and spa owners.

 

Please leave a comment here, Contact me on Facebook or Twitter ( @cwindley ) or skype me on chris.windley for further details. I will update soon.

 

THIS LADY HAS SPENT 22 YEARS at the Top of Market America – Which Lady will do the same for Market United Kingdom ??

 

 

Traffic Streams and Sources

Posted by Chris on September 21st, 2013

I wanted to do a blog on Traffic Sources and Streams for a client who is just launching a revamped website and we want to decide which traffic sources to use and which ones to use first.

I always like to check my thinking with what others are saying and I came across information from Derek Gehl ( 2012 )  Andy Crestodina ( 2013 ) and Randy Bess ( 2013/14 ). Randy’s video’s are very comprehensive and wide ranging.

In my summary I am going to start with

1. Search ( SEO )

The 2 forms of search traffic are Organic and Paid ( eg Pay per Click ).

We like to see a website being closely aligned with your main keywords and phrases. We advise people to do this thinking and analysis early on in the design of a website. Those keywords and phrases will then be used in Titles, Metatags( Tags ) , page and blog content. Not in a completely over the top way but just with these in mind. Remember you are creating a web and blog site that will hopefully become an authority on your chosen subject. If you put relevant, valuable, interesting information in your site people will return to it and they will link to it RSS  to it etc etc  This will give you organic rankings which are the best and most effective ( Derek says that Organic traffic is  worth 7 times that of Paid traffic . This means that if you get a Google listing on Page 1, first say 5 or 6 results then you will get a lot of traffic ). This is going to give you long lasting relatively ” Free ” traffic. ( There’s no such thing as free traffic as it all takes time and effort ).

You can also do additional SEO work to boost your rankings particularly when you are trying to get a top ranking for very competitive keywords and phrases.

Certainly, if required you can advertise using Pay per Click e.g. Google Adwords or Bing. Obviously this is going to cost money and how much depends on how sought after the keywords are.

 

2. Email List

Often people will not have an emailing list. In fact they will have built and use their website to collect email addresses. However, some people will have an email list and this can be used to drive traffic to the website initially and on an ongoing basis. As more email addresses are collected, by whatever means, then they can be used to continually drive traffic to e.g. blogs on the website and the website itself.

 

3. Social Media

Again there are free and paid options with social media.

It takes time to build a social media following – on whichever social network we are talking about.

It took me years to build up my Facebook following to just over 3000. On the other hand I have very quickly – in a matter of a couple of months – built a 2500 following on my 9 Figure Mentor page using some paid advertising. Not huge amounts of money but still paid. Growing any Facebook page quickly requires some technical knowledge and some promotional or advertising payments. It is similar for other other social networks. Growing a network ” organically ” is going to take some time and will require time for interaction and relationship building.

Blog posts from your website can be posted to social network pages as soon as they are established although if you have low numbers of followers only a few of them are going to see these posts ( on Facebook for example only about 12% of your followers or friends will see your posts ) unless you pay to ” promote ” your posts to a wider audience.

 

 

These Top 3 sources of Traffic are our favourites – and they are endorsed by many other social media and Digital Marketing experts.

 

 

We built the Digital Marketing Ecosystem to incorporate these key Traffic generators and to rapidly increase site visitors, leads and sales.

 

 

CNC Solutions – The Digital Marketing Ecosystem

The CNC approach blends a variety of digital media platforms, sites and aggregator sites to create a powerful and integrated system producing increased traffic and  sales leads.  CNC  reuses content where possible and appropriate and where new accounts must be created.

The following outlines each phase of digital business, driving traffic, creating leads and generating sales and/or sign ups.

To accommodate the goals, CNC  creates LeadGeneration engines (LGe’s).

The LGe comprises of processes to drive interested potential customers/candidates via a series of information media through a short process to purchase/discussion.  This is not a replacement for direct sales but is a high volume-potential augmentation and in reality forms part of a fully formed DME.

 

 

The DME is created in a number of sequential steps:

  1. Create and establish new web presence together with ‘look and feel’
  2. Social media sites: set up / optimised (Facebook / LinkedIn / Twitter / Google+)
  3. Landing page: set up
  4. Facebook ad campaign: create
  5. Blog set up
  6. Create autoresponder account for email list building and campaigns
  7. Process execution
  8. Reporting

 

The LGe will be created in five steps:

  1.      Landing pages (a number for each stream) will be created
  2.      Free resource give away ( numerous ) will be created or identify
  3.      Autoresponder set up
  4.      Response emails will be written (for each stream), videos created where appropriate
  5.      Sales page created or linked to existing sales links

More detail can be obtained by talking to Centripetal.

 

 

 

http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/website-traffic-sources

Six Figure Mentors and Digital Experts Academy – Your choices.

Posted by Chris on July 1st, 2013

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 …

 

 

Should the CEO be Tweeting ???

Posted by Chris on February 16th, 2013

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 😉

50 shades of grey – the spectrum of Internet Marketing reseller options

Posted by Chris on December 27th, 2012

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.

 

 

 

 


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