Corporate Bonuses “You will only receive 2/5ths of your bonus this year”!!!

I still remember being told this as if it happened only yesterday…. However time advances you and it’s a great healer… Life definitely has moved on!!!

At some point in the past, I was working for a very famous worldwide branded blue chip company that you would have all heard of (no names mentioned). Yes folks I was stuck in the corporate ladder just like you are now and working silly hours, getting stuck in traffic and losing all of my family and friends. Work and sleep, work and sleep, it was a really vicious cycle. I thought very naively that my hard work would be traded for fast promotions up the ranking hierarchy system and that I would be sat in some plush office in a couple of years….

The worrying thing was I saw the senior management totally lacking authority to give direction on a uniform basis and also they were totally aware of the detail – we were giving this to them by doing painful investigation work, and also working cross functionally with other departments and getting sucked up into work politics and they were getting all the high bonuses and perks. Is this picture already sounding too familiar? If your face fitted with the general realms of the office politics you were going places in this company, and you could get by without working. Others of us would be asking for more work and being denied. I was working to the personal business competencies of a chosen few that would unfortunately determine my remuneration and career.

Eventually I came to my yearly review and I was communicated my performance according to my Director boss at the time. He closed the pages on the review on what was a very sound and prosperous performance, given the changes continuously happening in the organization. Then the big bonging noise hit and he followed up with “You will only receive 2/5ths of your bonus this year”. My jaw almost dropped although I remained totally composed and neutral faced. I could tell he was struggling with why I was so composed when he knew I had done better and so did I. In what was a hilarious moment for me, I saw people who had done very little to add value being marked high for bonuses and myself being pulled down. It was to be expected in a company that was driving its mission statement and not letting the mission statement run the company. I had totally respected my boss up to this point but this was where I lost it. I thought of the millions of people that must also be going through this.

Lucky for me I had already started the work ages ago to get financial freedom and I briefly smiled to my boss, which must have caused him further discomfort. I eventually left the company and the rest as they say is history. You see folks; your subconscious mind tells you to be scared of management at work, because they typically shape your future. However, this way only a few people get to the top of the salary scales. Today, I am in a situation to shape my own future and anyone else’s around the world if they need it. I work the hours I want, I get into traffic if I want, and take the level of stress I see fit. I have a work life balance, a loving family and also friends and I have never looked back. You get one life and very few opportunities to reach all your goals, and financial freedom is clearly an important one. Today I can show you how to get a business up within 48 hours and work from anywhere in the world and be earning money in your sleep or in different time zones so that you earn money 24/7, I can show you how to write your own bonus figure!

If you have had enough of dominating unfair bosses, if you have been laid off, if you can’t take the work politics or if you need a new direction to make money fast at the pace you need it with very little outflow, check out www.thrivesuperconference.com or www.thethrivebootcamp.com or email me, Adnan Majid at admin@thrivesuperconference.com

The Adnan Business Model (ABM) Revisited

Preparations are well under way for the Thrive Super Conference happening in June 2010 already, please visit our website at www.thrivesuperconference.com – you will have noticed that I never ever start a blog by giving any mention to my conferences but a lot is happening and so I would give the site a visit, as we have some surprises for you.
That said, I thought it would also be wise to mention The Adnan Business Model again as a couple of things happened over the last few days. It was earlier this week that I had a major product inventor and also a manufacturer approach me with potential products that they had invented. These guys were o secretive of their products that I had to fill out an NDA form agreeing not to share the details of their product beyond the terms of the agreement to anyone. People have every reason to do this, there is a cut throat world out there based on intense and often illegal competition, to rip people off to make a fast buck!
On this particular occasion I was being summoned as a venture capitalist to invest some heavy money into the products. The products were indeed first rate, and I could see a future worldwide with the products in question, but was absolutely astonishing to me was these guys were just after money. They had no strategy in terms of how the products would be unleashed onto the market and by what methods. They talked about big advertising campaigns which made me go into ABM mode.
Think about this and humour me if you will. Most people get to work in a job and in the current economic downturn they are not sure if they will keep that job long term. Coupled with this they put up with all the unfortunate demands placed on them in an office culture where bosses want work like you own the company. A few more of us are able to travel maybe to a different office within the same country or in a different country. Then if some of us have a business we get bit more flexibility on how to conduct the rules of the business but largely we work very hard and also we work in our country of residence.
You can imagine therefore why my ABM hat went on with these products. I immediately thought global; I had the technology to market this stuff world wide in niche markets through absolutely every tool I had without having to spend even a penny if I really wanted to. Obviously it would be prudent to spend some money to assist with the free marketing. I was beginning to revisit the model that had brought me much success, working on my own, enjoying the quality of life, not answering to anyone, and doing business on my terms and from within my armchair with a view to doing the business in any country I wanted to. I fancied a holiday on the beach and therefore put Dubai as a potential location for doing business. If you would like to learn more about the ABM model, please visit the Thrive Super Conference website and get booked on the conference as we are putting a great package together for you.
Ladies and gentleman, I am the founder of Thrive Super Conference and also The Thrive Boot Camps, and it is my duty to ensure that you get the best possible teachings on internet and business marketing at either event. A lot of these are totally educational and with limited sales pitch at the conferences anyway. I offer true value for money by deliberately pushing our ticket prices down, thus making it more justifiable for you to attend. If you truly want to see your business thrive this year within an environment of economic gloom please find out more by visiting www.thrivesuperconference.com or www.thethrivebootcamp.com or email me at admin@thrivesuperconference.com We also cater for specific boot camps for specific meet up groups. So go ahead, what are you waiting for contacts us!!!

Getting people to open your emails in an email campaign

Long gone the days when people used to rely on letters, to some extent telegrams and to a lesser extent fax to get their messages communicated to loved ones and also for any form of business activity. The onslaught of the internet has terrorised people with the pace of technology and what it can achieve. Similarly, the use of email now overshadows pretty much any form of communication to some degree even telephone and text messages to some extent.

Some research conducted revealed that somewhere in excess of 180 million Americans use email everyday, around 93% adults have personal email accounts and well over 60% of people have email accounts at work… these are shocking statistics, just imagine tapping into only 1% of the Americans using email everyday with one of your business ideas.

So it’s hardly difficult to understand why many people employ an email campaign with viable leads specific to their niche when they decide to market their business. Time after time I bump into people and they tell me that they are not getting the desired result on email campaigns so I decided to make it the focus of one of my blogs to get some pointers out there. Getting your emails open is only half the battles, you then also want them to be read so that you can have a call to action. However that is something I will tackle in a future blog, let’s just concentrate on getting the emails opened here though.

There are literally 4 factors that customers use to make up their mind on whether to make a call to action and buy your product or service, but there is one single factor that will make them open up your email and that is the Subject line.

Think about this for a second, you will have no doubt received dozens upon dozens of direct mailings that have these hot enticing offers that make you want to continue reading. In exactly the same way email subject lines are like gold dust, and they must capture your audience’s attention to increase the likelihood of them opening the email. My first advice would be to research what is out there and what you receive as well as looking at the potential competition to see what they are up to. I normally have a file filled with emails I receive as well as another file that has all my direct mailings received. Get into the habit of compiling such a file. Look at the media, magazines, periodicals, newspapers and websites – they will all get your thoughts going. Finally thing of the following to ensure you get killer subject lines:

• The best subject lines are brief and to the point, as long titles get cut of anyway
• Try and use your recipients first name in the subject line, it adds a personal touch and is easy to do with mail merge automated programs
• Don’t give to much away, try and entice but reserve something to keep the momentum of interest going
• Ask questions that people will want to know the answers to or that they are likely to be interested in
• Remember nobody cares if you have an Oxford University or 2,000 qualifications, what they want to hear about is the benefit of your product to them, ensure that you include the top one
• Try and be honest, do not exaggerate or it may be considered spam quite easily

Ladies and gentleman, I am the founder of Thrive Super Conference and also The Thrive Boot Camps, and it is my duty to ensure that you get the best possible teachings on internet and business marketing at either event. A lot of these are totally educational and with limited sales pitch at the conferences anyway. I offer true value for money by deliberately pushing our ticket prices down, thus making it more justifiable for you to attend. If you truly want to see your business thrive this year within an environment of economic gloom please find out more by visiting www.thrivesuperconference.com or www.thethrivebootcamp.com or email me at admin@thrivesuperconference.com We also cater for specific boot camps for specific meet up groups. So go ahead, what are you waiting for contacts us!!!

Twitter – a great way to build your Brand

The last decade has seen a somewhat massive explosion in the use of social media and we are living in a conurbation of metamorphosis where these applications are concerned. Just as you turn your head for a minute something new is sprouting out. No-one could have ever expected the sudden change in which marketing would be conducted. Traditional marketing relied upon big multinationals pumping thousands of dollars and advertising what they wanted and the customers were fed this way like it or hate it.

The explosion of Social Media on the scene however has changed the very scope of marketing. Today it’s all so very different. It literally costs next to nothing to create content and to make it available for just about anyone on the planet. As the cost is little you can focus exactly on the markets you want to, i.e. what is more commonly referred to as the “long tail” niche market. With this level of definition, marketers put their messages in front of the defined audience that they seek to win and encourage them to build strong relationships and firm loyalty.

Twitter – the idea is simple 140 characters to say what you want, to market to express what you are feeling and to let anyone and everyone know what you are doing. Twitter allows you to search the specific niche areas you want and follow these people to see what they are talking about (known as tweets). Most people know how Twitter works and therefore I will leave that outside of the scope of this blog.

What I wanted to do however was to give a few tips on how you can use twitter to build up a Brand.

Create a story – Remember you are trying to get someone hooked like they are on a drug figuratively speaking to build an indefinite following, so the more interesting the story you build for your brand and the way you tell it, the more people will be interested in it.

Profile – Since you are trying to build a brand, why not put this in your profile. You can use  Twit backgrounds to do this, why not visit my twitter background to see how I have done this – www.twitter.com/adnanmajid I have kept mine simple but you can get all sorts of backgrounds which relate specifically to the brand you are trying to advertise. Look up red and green M&M’s made by Mars for example, they have 2 separate accounts on Twitter appealing to certain demographics.

Style of Tweeting – Remember Twitter is a personal thing, there are humans interacting, so people don’t like seeing a false image, they like to see the human side of the tweets. Twitter allows you to share personal random thoughts with the audience you want, it’s therefore up to you to communicate in a way to get inside of your prospect’s head. Think about what you would want to hear about what you are pitching and how you would want to hear it. You are about to implant a message about your brand into this audience forever.

As with everything else Repetition – Remember a customer never goes blindly to buy something he sees for the first time unless you are me and you love Porsches – even then I would not. Most marketing and advertising is about consistency and repetition enough times to register the thought into the prospect. Building a brand is all about putting it and its mission statement in front of your audience advertising all of the benefits you want the customer to know and doing it again and again.

Try using some of these hints next time you try and introduce a brand on Twitter, and you will find they will work wonders.

Ladies and gentleman, I am the founder of Thrive Super Conference and also The Thrive Boot Camps, and it is my duty to ensure that you get the best possible teachings on internet and business marketing at either event. A lot of these are totally educational and with limited sales pitch at the conferences anyway. I offer true value for money by deliberately pushing our ticket prices down, thus making it more justifiable for you to attend. If you truly want to see your business thrive this year within an environment of economic gloom please find out more by visiting www.thrivesuperconference.com or www.thethrivebootcamp.com or email me at admin@thrivesuperconference.com We also cater for specific boot camps for specific meet up groups. So go ahead, what are you waiting for contacts us!!!

Help……My product is no good!!!

During what was a very pleasant holiday to Egypt a while back to see the Pyramids and also The Sphinx, I spent a lot of time walking around Cairo, the capital city to marvel at all of the other delights the city had to offer. Being Adnan and always thinking about work to some degree, I was out one afternoon in a very famous market that had narrow pavements and I was wandering up and down just listening to the local pundits trying to sell their many dazzling items. I get offered many products on my travels and so I am always interested in whats out there.

Now for sure there were some very exotic gifts available and you could bargain hard to lower prices but there were also some very simple hand made basic gifts that were also being sold. What really amazed me was how the sellers were selling, they had energy, they were dedicated, they believed in their product.

Back home today as I write this blog, I recall a conversation earlier today I was having with one of my copywriters. The central issue for any product to begin with is an inner belief from the owner trying to sell it that it’s a wonderful and viable product. I often ask myself critically when I do a product appraisal to decide whether to market it or not, what do I really see in this product and would I as a customer actually buy it? You can be brutally honest with yourself. I normally follow a PMI approach where I list the positive, minus and interesting things about the product and also ask a sample of people to do the same in my testing phase. The PMI approach will more than likely give you a direction of whether your product will be successful or not. The testing element is crucial to your success and I am totally baffled at the lack of people not employing something like this before trying to sell.

All this said and done, what is then important is to have professional sales copy that advertises your product the best way and an aesthetically pleasing layout on your website that is easy to follow. Now we all think we can do this, but trust me the experts know their job better – leave it to them. Sales copy will either kill you and your product or sell your product again and again and again. Too many times I see people trying to take shortcuts on the copywriting side, and I always single this part out of the whole business process as the most important function in the whole process.

Ladies and gentleman, I am the founder of Thrive Super Conference and also The Thrive Boot Camps, and it is my duty to ensure that you get the best possible teachings on internet and business marketing at either event. A lot of these are totally educational and with limited sales pitch at the conferences anyway. I offer true value for money by deliberately pushing our ticket prices down, thus making it more justifiable for you to attend. If you truly want to see your business thrive this year within an environment of economic gloom please find out more by visiting www.thrivesuperconference.com or www.thethrivebootcamp.com or email me at admin@thrivesuperconference.com We also cater for specific boot camps for specific meet up groups. So go ahead, what are you waiting for contacts us!!! Don’t just survive…Thrive! Look out especially this year for our segments on Copywriting.