You and I are quite happy with our lives,  bobbing along quite nicely, looking forward to growing old, then retirement and shortly after death  – waiting for that one point when you’ll finally be happy.

When you are there.

Being content in your own skin,  you arriving there.

Wherever  – “there” is.

Good luck to you, I hope there is what you always hoped it’d be.

Arriving there, being happy, being content is a feeling, an emotion.

And, nothing from the outside or anything that happens to you can bring on the happiness and joy you crave. Being happy is a choice, something you decide.

You can do that now, no need to wait ’til you are there.

You’ll be dead or half dead before you get there.

Go do, change the way you feel, be the change you want to see – change your head-game, deal with some of the head-trash – stop waiting, expecting. Choose now to be on top, to be smiling and creative – shit’s gonna happen anyway – you might as well be pleased to see it.

Until next time.

Latest posts.  Pollution 

 

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve recorded a series of audios for my MoneyTrainers subscribers. As some of you will know, I think money management and leverage is an important part of any small business.

With that in mind, here is the August podcast. No charge, but has some little diamonds in the mix that you’ll just love.

Of course, they’ll help you make more money, sure they’ll help with your mindset issues and, importantly you’ll find out what really works.

Seriously, making your small business more efficient by making you manage your money in a better way – is uber powerful.

Enjoy.

When you are ready for more, contact me to talk over the options. 

Self Employed and Pensions

 

For those of you thinking about becoming self employed or starting your own business – there is a good chance you will end up with a high stress piss poor job not the freedom you thought you were creating.

 

We now have a “gig” economy. Freelance and self employed are all scratching around for short term ‘gig employment’ – the dream of flexible working – when you want. It’s a myth.

 

Most self employed are all free ranging, mainly wandering around “free” just looking for more work and hoping they can find some.

 

Like chickens mindlessly scratching around in the hope of finding something worthwhile.

Few take the time to really build a proper business. They are probably not ever going to have a business, but with a few changes it’s possible to secure long term income streams and a viable future just by adding a couple of tweaks to existing services and products.

Don’t get confused with Self Employment and Entrepreneurship. They are very different, entrepreneurship means spending a few years in your underwear working stupid hours from home doing something most are not prepared to do in return for a lifetime of financial independence.  

Entrepreneurs create systems and processes that can be done by someone else while you work on the business not in it.

This is a further problem for pensions, they are so inflexible and virtually useless for modern lifestyles.

Back to the masses. Let’s look at what most people do every day.

Get up, moan, drive to work, go through the day, spend money on lunch. Drive home, drop a few glasses of wine/beer/poison of choice, mindlessly watch the news/soaps/Facebook/Twitter. Go to bed, sleep. Repeat.

Most are downright miserable, complaining about how crap life is. Never thinking any further than a few beers at the weekend, ignoring their kids… You know what I mean.

Few, sit down carefully and consider what needs to change. They never look for anything good in their lives and wonder why N O T H I N G changes. I’ve done, you have done it.

The masses also invest in pensions, they hope that’ll pan out. Hope that at some point in the future, just before they’re ‘pre zimmer’ they can stop work. Reality is, there an entire industry promising that dream and now – more than ever they don’t care and won’t be punished for not delivering for you.

That’s how important these pension issues are, they are no new but for the first time in modern British history they are looking more like something the masses are going to be very disappointed with.

 

If you are self employed and considering investing in pensions. Do the maths. Take £100 and invest that in a pension or in stock. Most of the time you’ll get a far superior return on the stock, that also keeps you in control and you can roll it over. Once you’ve rolled it over three or four times your money has doubled (based on 30% profit margin) – can’t do that with a pension.

 

Sometimes there are few easy answers. But tying money up for thirty of forty years is not really a viable option.

In this months podcast I’m talking about what makes the difference.

How do the wealthy become wealthy. What is it they do that makes the difference?

Why we should all do our best to become rich and why we need to spend wisely and stop buying stuff.

Loads here for you. Enjoy.

Richard

 

My eldest son who is currently studying English in London asked me a pretty simple question and he said “how do you get started in business and what are the steps you need to take in order to the grow a business that supports your lifestyle and provide the level of income that is needed  for you as an individual or as a family.” Shouldn’t be too complicated should it.

 

So my response to him, was what he needed to focus on was something very different. It is not what he needed to do; the real focus for a  small business if you are to  succeed he is why.

 

See, if you have a big enough why it is pretty straightforward to be able to understand the what, it’s the process, the thing or the widget. It is the result they get that effectively rewards you, the more value you add with that solution the more you can charge for it.

 

The whole issue of having a why is something that most small business owners,  and certainly startups tend to forget.  There are plenty of businesses that are what I call me too businesses.  Few of these have a good enough reason for doing what they do.

With my own clients and startups I I focus on getting the change that’s required  and that starts with a why. It also means that I can focus on other things rather than money sure money is important but it’s my why  that gets me up in the morning. It should be your reason.

Don’t forget, you can join the Ninjas here or Borrow my Brain here.

You can also download the podcast from here.

In today’s podcast.

Small Business Marketing – how much power does Google have.

Importance of Maps and other listings.

Railfares up 3.4%

Savings at an all time low

Personal debt increasing

Financial independence

Actions to take in order to solve all of these.

Small Business Marketing – how much power does Google have.

The Google spat with with Amazon shows just how much power is now held by these large organisations. If they decide your e-commerce site is not worthy of linking to your business could be dead.

Railfares up 3.4%

Wages are down, railfares are up. Is a Train Driver really worth two Nurses or one and a half Police officers.

What to do about the increases. If you want to get to work you have no choice and the only way of solving the problem of the increases is to reduce the need to commute – running your own business or re-jigging your personal finances to make more sense.

Savings at an all time low.

I don’t know what is going to happen to the economy over the coming couple of years, it’s likely  that Trump will make sure  that whatever happens there is no slump, on his watch.

The lower value of the £ has caused our Share indexes to boom because of the nature of the firms that make up the index are reliant on income from outside of the UK.  Fundamentals havn’t really changed.

Personal debt increasing and this does not bode well for the coming few years.

What to do.

Prepare and stick to a budget. Know what is coming in and going out.

Budget

Clear debt – get in touch for my ‘simple way to clear debt’ plan.

Save money

https://moneytrainers.co.uk/2018/01/03/saving-money-made-easy/

Financial independence – why is this important.

Make money work for you – leverage.

As always please get in touch www.therichardsmith.com www.moneytrainers.co.uk www.thefinancezone.co.uk

Subscribe to the podcast on Itunes, Stitcher, leave a review.

 

Short coffee and podcast today. I’m talking about the issue of money and mental health.

Few of us know what it’s like not to have money, let alone live with a mental health issue. Go combine the two and a shit storm will soon build.

In this weeks podcast there are no immediate solutions.  Just an open invite to get in touch before your money and business problems become an issue.

 

You can contact me here .

Until next time.

 

Off my normal topic today – but to say I’m a little peeved is an understatement.

Yesterday I took up the option to attend a presentation put on by one of the UK Business Networks about GDPR.

As you some of you know my background and history is financial services, heavily regulated and profoundly driven by rules – it’s something I get and fully understand. It also allows me to spot utter rubbish when I see and hear it.

The bad guys are out there and it’s the reasons we have rules changing all of the time.

Believe it or not UK Government or the EU are not out to punish us small business owners, but they do want to protect consumers. GDPR is primarily designed to make sure large business owners comply with various rules but, small firms and sole traders are going to get caught up in the issues.

The problem I have is this. Some of those ‘consultants and and GDPR specialists’ are not acting in the interests of small and micro businesses.

GDPR

The changes that this brings for small business is going to be profound, well so it seems.

If I were to believe the hype delivered by the consultancy firm that delivered the presentation last night I’d be crying in my beer and woefully depressed – thing is that’s not the case.

The whole thing was presented in a very slanted way and it is my firm view that they (not going to name the firm) are being deceitful.

Basically telling massive ‘porky pies’ –  about how the Data Protection body is funded, the impact of fines and also spreading mistruths about the way other regulators operate.

Importantly the whole presentation was focused on the possible issue of fines and threats to your business instead of delivering the facts about your options as small business owner and outlining properly the action that you need to take.

Fact is the GDPR is designed to hold large businesses to account and not to punish small firms, there have been a number of large scale attempts to steal consumer data and use this for crime. That is not fair on consumers. There is clear evidence that this has happened and consumers have been affected financially.

It’s always been the case that if you lose your clients data and that data is used to extort money from a third party you, the business owner – data controller; is responsible for your customers losses and you are forced to notify those customers of any breach and give them some options.This is not new.

But, the GDPR is far reaching. It covers paper as well as digital records. Bottom line..

If you are holding and sharing your customer data you should make it clear, via a policy document why you are holding that data and what you do with it.

You also have a legal obligation to hold some client data – for example invoices and transaction information because of  Inland Revenue guidelines along with VAT  and information for things like warranty and servicing. Which means there is no wriggle room.

Compliance is the only way.

The presentation given last night seemed to indicate that there was a conflict between what the GDPR wanted, the rights of your customer to have their data protected (and forgotten) and the law.  There is no conflict, the law is the law.

As a business owner you do need to be open about what data you store, how you store it and why, and then document that.

Small Business  – Sole Trader?

Go here Checklist – Important Information that’s the ‘horses mouth’.

Once you looked through those docs, if it’s still confusing – go here. Contact me and I’ll help you. Just so know, I don’t share,

Online Reputation Management.

Brought To You By:

Richard Smith

Content:

-What Is Reputation Management?

-Why Managing It Is Important!

-Startling Stats

-Monitor And Influence

-2 Simple Tips

-False Assumptions

-Conclusion

What Is Reputation Management

First things first, let’s define what Reputation Management is….

It’s the practice of understanding or influencing an individual or business brand.

I’ll break it down a little more…

In a nutshell, online reputation management is the practice of making people and businesses “like yours” look their best on the internet. To accomplish that, people need to control their online search results because they frequently contain inaccurate, misleading or outdated material which can adversely influence how your customers will view you!

However, controlling search results isn’t the only goal of online reputation management. Since where someone lives, their income and their marital status all affect the perception of a person, it’s important to prevent private information from being made public as well.

Online reputation management became necessary with the advent of social networks, online forums, blogs and other forms of online communication and information sharing. But since current laws are insufficient to prevent total strangers from damaging your online reputation… online reputation management is now critical.

This is a great way to get positive reviews.

If you’re asking, why can’t I just go online and make up reviews. For one, that’s not ethical and for 2, review sites can track your IP address and the reviews you post won’t stick. Sure they might for a day or 2 but they will eventually be taken down, so it’s not worth your time. Plus if you’re running an ethical business in general, you should have no problem getting happy customers to post a review about your business.

Monitoring your reputation also allows you to catch any negative reviews a disgruntled customer may post. Now you can’t really do anything about this unless you contact the customer directly, but you can offset it with ramping up the number of positive reviews you get. Meaning, ramping up the number of customers you ask to leave a review for you.

Or… and this is the worst case scenario, if they post on a site like ripoffreport.com and the report is showing up when your business name is googled… you can make sure that you start countering it asap. The longer a negative review actually sits in the search results for a specific keyword, the harder it will be to move down in the rankings. That’s another reason that monitoring your reputation is so important… you can catch anything that’s fishy or damning to your business early on.

The last benefit I’m going to go over is, you’ll be ahead of the majority of your competition.

Why, you ask?

Because they simply don’t know how to go about doing this and they don’t see its importance like you do now.

Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes. If you were looking for “their industry” and you saw one business with 45 positive reviews and another one with 1 or 2 reviews, who would you choose?

Exactly!

You want to be the business with 45 positive reviews! This is only going to enhance the public perception about your business and I guarantee it will have a positive effect as well on your bottom line!

There really isn’t one negative I can think of when it comes to implementing Reputation Management, other than the fact that it can be a pain if you already have negative reviews.

Monitor and influence it before that’s ever an issue!

2 Simple Tips

2 simple tips that you can implement today to make sure you’re getting positive reviews.

The first, I have mentioned a couple times already.

Give out a coupon or some incentive to make sure your happy customers are ...

 

I’ve been in Derby for the weekend returned back on Monday.  Nice weekend away.

If you have never been to that part of the world, you should I think you’ll enjoy it.

The main Cathedral in town is very lovely. But I think you’ll be overwhelmed by the fact that they are  more estate agents than coffee shops. That means if you’re looking for a Costa or Starbucks, you’ll be lucky. You can of course buy plenty of houses.

The original reason for the visit was for me to attend a short seminar and to share some love for Lorraine’s birthday. What was really interesting was the fact that on Saturday night in the centre of town at a very nice Italian restaurant. Nearly all of the couples were using their phones rather than focusing on each others company.

This I found to be very interesting.

But it’s not only the adults that do this I gave up counting the number of times I saw a crying child being given a mobile phone or  an iPad to play with as soon as it become distracted. Of course us parents need a little me time, But really,  giving a young baby a mobile to play with, teach them young eh?

Now I don’t want to pontificate or to preach to parents about how to bring their children up, that’s something I just wouldn’t do.  But really giving them a smartphone to play with, is that something we should be doing just to shut them up. I don’t think so.

Which brings me quite nicely to the beginning of this podcast.

“Strategy is all very well, but it pays to give thought from time to time to the results.” – Winston Churchill

No matter which way you want to look at this the whole smartphone thing, it has taken off really since 2009/10 it’s something that was  futuristic in 2005-6 and of course in 2000 we had no idea what was coming.

Since then we have seen many online and smartphone platforms come and go, with many more to come in the future.

And you and I have absolutely no idea what platforms, what social Media forum or software we are going to be using in the future, quite simply we have no idea what is going to be available in the next 12 months let over the next 12 years.

I’ve always said that social media platforms are The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Yet everybody reaches for them couples can sit in restaurants and not talk anymore,  yes of course there is a snippet of conversation but for big chunks of their time together they are checking their social feeds  or checking their emails.

It’s very easy for us that are 40 or 50 or even 60 somethings to watch these people and say what the hell are they doing why are they not enjoying each other’s company what’s so important?

Many of us of a certain age don’t understand the fact that millennials and above are always working,  long gone are the days of 9-5 and finish, go to practice your hobby.

Now it’s  all 24/7 in your face, fully loaded non stop. This is the new working world. Anyone that disagrees with that really has their head in the sand.

Perhaps this is why we have seen the political upsets in recent years consumers are soaking up the next piece of propaganda to appear on Twitter or on Facebook or indeed any other platform that they are using and then accepting at face value.

Accepting the propaganda as the truth. It does seem there is a lack of ability to think and understand exactly what is going on now, and  I don’t want to moralize on this issue or to tell you it’s wrong or it’s right as a business owner.

I just want to tell you that’s how it is and  ignore it at your peril.

If you want to get your message out to your customer base then you have to use the systems, the voice and  and processes that they want to use.  Just because you don’t like social media,  just because you think it’s stupid or boring does...