In my hometown of Cardiff, we are getting very excited by the imminent arrival of a John Lewis store in the new shopping centre.

Now Cardiff is a great city, it has a perfectly good shopping centre but – John Lewis!!! They have a reputation for unparalleled customer service.

I can remember living in Reading where there was a branch of John Lewis. Even the spotty 17 year-old shop assistants had their hair combed and their trousers fastened tightly around their waists so that you couldn’t see acres of adolescent underwear!

As a customer, I knew that John Lewis would rarely give me a bargain price although they would price match other stores in the town centre so I wasn’t being overcharged. Their standard of customer service would make them the first port of call on my visits to town.

One of my business colleagues shared this with me:

What is a Customer?

A customer is the most important person in this firm,
in person, by mail or by telephone.

A customer is not dependent on us ‑ we are dependent on them
A customer is not an interruption of our work‑ they are the purpose of it.

We are not doing them a favour by serving them ‑ they are doing us a favour by
giving us the opportunity to do so.

A customer is not someone to argue with or match wits with,
nobody ever won an argument with a customer.

A customer is a person who brings us their wants; it is our job to handle
them profitably to them and to ourselves.

That is what a customer is ‑ in our business or in any business.

Attributed to Peterborough, Daily Telegraph

What can I say? If you have a business, print this out, put it somewhere that you and your staff will see. Make it a mainstay of your business, not just something to pay lip-service to… Do this and your customers will keep you in business!

I do know that Dave Caroll thinks they do.

On Radio4 this morning they interviewed this musician about an incident where, travelling with United Airlines, his guitar had been broken and he had not been happily compensated.

Now I don’t know the details of the strory but, according to Dave, 9 months of negotiations about compensation were fruitless so, being a musician, he wrote a song: United Breaks Guitars.

This song has had over 3 million viewings on YouTube, is 20 in the iTunes charts… you can bet your bottom dollar that United are offering compensation and posting their side of the story…

The point of my writing here is the power of social media.

Rightly or wrongly, a musician I’d never heard of, has brought a big corporation into the eyes of a very large public over an incident that would have cost them a very small sum to resolve properly very much earlier in the deal.

Customer Service counts.

Whether your business is small or global, it matters how your customers perceive you, especially if they are less than happy with your products or services. That’s one reason why 100% guarantees on information products sold on the internet are so powerful – they build customer trust.

So, if you want to see how one customer has “hit back”, click and watch United Breaks Guitars – it is very funny – if you’re not United!

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I was working with a client recently who is in the middle of a 90-day coaching programme.

Six weeks in, that’s half way through the challenge, this client, let’s call her Claire, had reached her goals, and some. These goals concerned making a defined monthly income from passive sources and working towards a defined annual income. The figures – I don’t want to disclose personal details here – but the figures were more than equivalent to the monthly and yearly salaries of a large number of the UK working population.

As we approached our call I imagined Claire being very pleased with herself – and yet, within minutes of our starting to chat it was evident that she was not a happy bunny.

The problem? Well if SHE could reach her goals so quickly they obviously weren’t very good goals, not high enough, not hard enough. After all, this had been so easy!

We discussed this idea… and apparently, in Claire’s world:
SUCCESS = HARD WORK and I fear, HARD WORK = SUCCESS….

We discussed a series of events where, by knowing the right information, being in the right place at the tight time, having the contacts and then the courage to follow up, Claire had pulled off a profitable property deal where all interested parties came out feeling happy and Claire made 20K towards her annual income targets. And in Claire’s world, this was just down to luck, not something she had planned for, not something she had worked at, it was just lucky so it didn’t really count.

We had a long conversation about the role of beliefs in our journey through life and these principles also apply to our wealth creation journey.

“If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.” is the well known quotation but the wider application looks like: if you believe life is hard, it will be. If you believe that you can’t be successful without working a 60-hour week, then you won’t be – and you’ll get your 60-hour week and all that comes with that!

I introduced Claire to some new ideas on the Law of Attraction, setting an intention and taking the necessary actions to support it whilst letting go of needing the goal. This is far more than just wishful thinking. I call it committing to the process while letting go of the outcome.

In her work over the last weeks, months and even years, Claire has been putting in the work, learning about proprty, committing to the process. When the opportunity arose she was in a perfect place to respond.

And this is the key.

She needed to take action. In fact, she needed to make a quick decision and was very fearful at the time BUT, her previous work educating herself about property investment had convinced her that this was a sound deal, the sums added up, the risk was entirely appropriate.

She commited to the action and won her prize.

I recommended that for the next stage of her journey Claire might want to learn how to feel comfortable with working towards success without the hard work, without a 60-hour week…. sound good?

Now if Claire was a member of The Money Gym, she would certainly get a good education in this concept. We need to be both working towards our goal and letting it happen effortlessly. Many Money Gym clients can tell you how this has worked for them…

But for Claire, I also recommended some new reading – best authors I could think of were Michael Neill, Tim Ferris and Joe Vitale: what do you think?

And fun though that metaphor is, it is limited. As I thought about it afterwards I realised it was about taking wealth rather than the more fulfilling role of creating wealth.

In his New Year message on the importance of economic development in creating peace, even the Pope said “The creation of wealth is an inescapable moral duty”.

For me, wealth creation is about adding value, giving back more than we take.

It’s possible to do this in business and as an entrepreneur. In general, people who give more also often make more. In terms of wealth creation this is not limited to capitalistic or entrepreneurial businesses. Within the public or not-for-profit sector, it is still vitally important to give a better service, to increase effectiveness and efficiency… that way “the jam spreads further” and more people can be served.

It’s also about empowering ourselves and empowering others.

In so far as any of us controls anything, having some degree of control of your own income generation is incredibly liberating.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.”

Encouraging people to become skilled in the art and science of wealth creation at all levels of society can only give rise to more “fishermen”.

Yet another challenge for role models and educators!

It really is worthwhile spending some time brainstorming your ideas even before you get ready to search. Try to include keywords in your domain name that are related to the product you’re selling or promoting.

Think like your customer! What are they searching for? What words or phrases do they type into Google or Yahoo search engines?

A friend whose website is about wealth creation figured people would be looking for “get out of debt” or “financial freedom” even “how to build a business”. When she analysed her web stats she found she had a huge number of hits from people typing in “how to make a million”… think like a customer!

You can go to somewhere like http://www.citrusdomains.com and enter your ideas into their search box to see if your first choice (even second or third choice) name is available.

Depending on your product idea, you might find that all the “obvious” domain names are already taken. After a search at CitrusDomains.com, if you scroll down the page you’ll see some suggestions are usually offered that might inspire you further.

Have you thought about adding words to the front of your keyword phrase:
the, my, best, first, top….

Or try adding words to the back of your keyword phrase:
online, club, site, blog, today, USA, UK
these slight modifications can open doors to some really valuable keyword-rich domains.

I registered DigitalProductsToday for a future product range  – not bad but who types “digital products” into Google?? So I managed to grab some hot iPhone related links using exactly the strategies I described. Do you think people search for “iPhone deals” on Google? You bet they do!

You could consider adding hyphens between words – it’s not my favourite strategy but it makes sure your keywords get seen by your clients and by the search engines and that’s what matters!

In internet marketing, if the search engines see your website, your website gets traffic.
If your website gets traffic, you can get more sales.

So go ahead, visit http://www.citrusdomains.com today and start creating some traffic-pulling, keyword-rich domains today!

Wouldn’t we all love to know the answers to these questions?

At one level I’m as keen as anyone to know. At another level, I’m going to carry on doing what I was going to do anyway.

One of the things I’ve learned about the journey of “wealth creation” is that it’s largely about an attitude.

Don’t get me wrong. It needs to be accompanied by actions, targeted, researched, consistent actions, but if you don’t have the right attitude, you’ll not get very far at all.

Deep down, many people have the feeling that they shouldn’t want to be wealthy. That being wealthy, righ is wicked, selfish, bad.

And if one person’s being wealthy caused another person’s poverty, I would have some sympathy with that. But it doesn’t need to be directly linked.

There is more than enough wealth in the world for everybody to have some. In fact, the most wealthy people in the world are often most actively engaged in spreading their wealth around, setting up charitable foundations so that more people can benefit from their money, power and wisdom in many different ways. If you become wealthy, you can choose to share it an any way you please – or not – and most people I know who have financial freedom are incredibly generous givers!

Wealth is like the sea… I’ve heard many people say, that when it comes to our personal wealth, it doesn’t matter whether we come to the sea with a teaspoon or with a bucket. The sea will still be plenty full enough for us all.

So what are your plans? I know that being a part of the Money Gym community has transformed the way I think about money and created or presented me with many different opportunites to learn, to invest and to practically do the business of wealth creation.

There’s a difference between thinking “That’s a good idea” and then waiting for your fairy godmother to appear with a magic wand to grant your wish… and actually doing something about wealth creation.

If you really are at the start of your journey I can highly recommend the Money Gym Book.

A little further in and ready to get started – go for membership of the Money Gym Club – you’re so worth it! Invest in one of the coaching programmes and learn how to build a business or to set yourself up online.

And if you’re well on the way and want to create an internet empire making money online, I can recommend the great resources in MoreMoney365.com – well worth signing up for! There is a huge library of articles, videos, interviews to really learn from. There are PLR materials for members to download… A community to be part of if you choose.

So, are you still waiting???

Twitter Traffic Machine is the new hottest product on Clickbank.

Bill Crosby, it’s creator claims to have recruited over 16,000 followers in 90 days, pretty much on autopilot!

Wouldn’t it be neat to automate your contacts with 16,000 followers in any business niche?

I confess I still struggle with Twitter – I have multiple business personalities and haven’t quite figured out how to manage them effectively – but goodness knows, this is a big enough incentive for me to “pull out my finger” and get building a list of followers!

Bill reckons he has distilled 2,000 hours of “playing” with Twitter into 60 minutes of video where he shows us how to automate all the content and relationship management – exactly how do you have a relationship with 16,000 people? Guess I’ll have to buy Twitter Traffic Machine myself and find out.

Can you imagine… if you shorten a URL to make it Twitter-friendly, people have to click on it to see what it is… and if you have even a 1% response rate, that’s 1,600 clicks from 16,000 followers…. impressive. If the sales page has a 3% conversion rate that’s 48 sales – from a single Tweet!

OK Guys, let’s get serious here – follow me please!!!!! http://twitter.com/MargaretCollins

Yes, it is about making money but even more it’s about the personal transformation that needs to occur to make wealth and abundance part of our lives. We’ve all heard stories of lottery winners who get rich very quickly – and who lose everything within a matter of years – the inside and the outside don’t match and can’t be sustained.

To attract money we need to become wealthy and abundant first.

In honesty we know that we’re not chasing the money, the dollars, the physical cash (although gold and diamonds do look very good!!); what we’re really chasing is the happiness and the freedom that we believe money will bring to us.

In her book Sandy talks abut the importance of being in the right state, the mindset to attract abundance and prosperity. She makes it clear that wealth is an inside game before it becomes externalised.

And she doesn’t stop there. To really create the wealth that will support the lifestyle she insists that action is an essential part of attrACTION.

She provides a helpful 39 point checklist at the back of her book and refers to a list of affirmations to use to help create that inner attitude that we need to learn. For my friends I’m happy to share some free resources that Sandy prepared -

Sandy Forster: wildly-wealthy-affirmations. Right click the link and “Save target as…” or “Save link as…”

If you want the 39 step checklist, you really need to buy the book. It’s worth the investment!wildly-wealthy-affirmations

Hot topics generally at the moment and there’s no doubt that something needed to be done to stop widespread abuses of these reward and compensation systems.

There is public uproar as people in the street see those who lead their biggest and most powerful organisations caught with their noses in the trough.

I don’t want to get drawn into specific cases or defend the system but I am intrigued by the splashback, our response and plans for amending them.

I wonder if we are reacting too severely. Calls to strictly regulate or even limit executive reward, prevent  bonuses for any top managers of banks that the government has bailed out with taxpayers money – will this be the best way of getting our banks back to profitability and our economy back on its feet?

I don’t have the answer. However, if we make these jobs so unappealing with limited prospects for reward or remuneration, we will not have a queue of talented people lining up to to take on these undoubtedly great challenges. It seems more likely that we could end up with the young, or inexperienced or even the less competent people who wouldn’t be appointed by more robust organisations.

I wonder whether we are now seeing the public expression of tall poppy syndrome…

We look around and see standing in our midst one who has reached higher and blooms for all to see… it might be that they are not spectacularly more beautiful, brighter or more coloured, but they have reached further… and instead of asking “How” or “Can we grow taller too” our first response is to reach for the scissors and cut them down to size.

Not a pretty sight.

And I’m not certain that this is true, but I know I need to look at myself and my reactions to events and ask, am I cutting down tall poppies or striving to grow taller?

And that’s it, Internet Marketing in a nutshell! This can be your business.

When they first learn about internet marketing, many people get started by jumping straight in at step 2 by promoting one of the thousands of information products available at http://www.clickbank.com

Now this can work and certainly it is possible to make a lot of money promoting Clickbank products. I’ve been know to make some money myself but for many beginners, this isn’t a fast way to make money.

The reasons for this are very simply explained in this short report: Clickbank For Newbies
This is so simple, it’s scary!!

Making money on the internet is simple – but if you want it to be a significant part of your future income, you need to make it into a business, not just a passing fad.

When you take this Internet Business process two steps further,
5)    Create ways to capture client email addresses
6)    Automate systems to sell to clients again and again

then you have it, an Automated Business System that generates recurring passive income on the internet.

The thing is, there are so many “How to do it” guides out there like Clickbank For Newbies but we just don’t do as we’re told. We have a master plan, refined by experts, we read it – and then do it our own way instead!! But that’s not the best way to build a new business…

So what about you, are you ready to create a business??