For my friends in the states, I hope you had a terrific July 4th holiday. Despite some questionable weather here is Philly; I managed to go kayaking everyday for the last 5 days! If you’ve never been kayaking, you should try it. It very relaxing (while being good exercise) and I get incredible clarity on the water. I was sharing with my buddy, Mike Capuzzi – creator of CopyDoodles, just this morning that I came up with a great new idea for a tele-seminar while paddling on Saturday. I will be making an announcement about this soon!

Here we are in the heat of the summer and it always amazes me when I hear some business owners or managers say something like, ‘I am holding off starting anything new until the fall’ or ‘no business in done in the summer!’  

I do not prescribe to that way of thinking and I’m pleased that we’re very busy here in “No Hassle” land! We are currently launching three new newsletter programs, writing two new books (due out end of summer), and I am also launching a hot new information product for affiliate marketers with my friend and Web master Adam Hommey.

Plus! My wife, Stephanie, and I are also squeezing in a well-deserved vacation in Cape May, NJ later this month and we’re also going to swing through New England in August. I grew up in New England – graduating High School in Duxbury, Mass and then went to New Hampshire College in Manchester, NH. It’s always fun looking up some old friends and seeing the ‘old homestead!’ 

As I mentioned, I am currently working on two books that you’re going to love, What Makes a Great (and Profitable!) Newsletter and Customer Relationship Marketing (not the final title). Last week I sent an e-mail to everyone asking for some examples of your customer newsletters and some of the things that you do in your newsletter that help you grow. I would like to share one example that I received from Julie Thorp in Australia. Julie and her family own a beauty salon and she wrote to me about the importance of personality in your newsletter and also how vital it is to mail it EVERY month. Here is a snippet of Julie’s note (I highlighted three key benefits of newsletter marketing and also made some additional comments in blue.

Our clients have told us that the newsletter has reminded them to come in for their treatments (increased repeat business!) which is a good thing and we have found that from the regular mailing of our newsletter not only have I found that we are staying consistently busier in the quieter months of the year, (newsletters are an investment that pays dividends!) but have found that clients seem to be more loyal to our business – as they generally think they know us! (Adding personality to you newsletter enhances your customer relationships). Also positioning my mother as the beauty guru has helped her seem “more expert” (establish yourself as an expert in your industry and more people will do more business with you!) so people will want to come to her for advice about skin and beauty treatments.

If you’d like to receive a FREE copy of my two new books when published (as Julie will), please click here to get the details on how to sending me your stuff! Thanks Julie – keep up the great job!!

The only thing about turning 50 that I’ve been thinking about this week is that I still have so much that I want to accomplish, I better get moving!  Instead of gifts I asked for contributions to the American Cancer Society and tomorrow I will take $400 over to their local office – very cool!  

Of course, the best birthday present ever is having all of my kids back home again. It just doesn’t seem to happen enough – but that’s what growing up (and old!) all is about. Here’s a few pictures from the day.

Top left: My older brother, Bob, surprised me by flying in from Indianapolis
Top right: Me and my younger brother, Jeff
Middle left: My friends and fellow entrepreneurs Eric Paul, Jay McGrath, and Mike Capuzzi
Middle right: Me and Chad Groves, one of my oldest friends
Bottom row: Some of the 70 plus people that came to celebrate!

I think this is important because once they knew this number, most businesses wouldn’t be so frugal (cheap!) on customer acquisition and retention (hmm, perhaps a monthly customer newsletter?) 

One of my favorite authors, Jay Abraham, wrote an awesome book, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, and chapter 5, “Break Even Today, Break the Bank Tomorrow,” addresses this topic in a marvelous way. The following excerpt is from Jay’s book. 

“The current lifetime value of one of your clients is the total profit of an average client over the lifetime of his or her patronage – including all residual sales, less advertising, marketing, and incremental product or service-fulfillment expenses. 

Let’s say that your typical new client brings you an average profit of $75 on the first sale. He or she repurchases three more times a year, with an average reorder amount of $300, and on each $300 reorder you make $150 gross profit. 

Now, with the average patronage life lasting two years, every new client is worth $975. You could theoretically afford to spend up to $975 to bring in a new client and still break even.”  

Now, let me ask you, when you see $975 as the value of a lifetime customer, doesn’t it seem a little silly to be so frugal in both your customer acquisition and customer retention efforts? When you consider that you could mail a customized newsletter – personalized with your customer’s name – for only $0.99 a month (or $11.88 per year), quite frankly, that seems like an absolute bargain! Check out bargains like these at http://www.NoHassleNewsletters.com

If you’re a regular reader of my blog or ezine, you know that I attended (and exhibited at) the Glazer Kennedy Marketing and Money-Making SuperConference in Nashville last month. I thought the event was so amazing that I sent a thank you note to Bill and Dan and I also shared my biggest “Ah-ha” moment. To my surprise, Dan printed my note in his latest newsletter and also commented on my “Ah-ha.” Not to my surprise, Dan’s comments provide yet more useful and thought-provoking information so I am reprinting it here.

From Gold Luxury Member Jim Palmer of No Hassle Newsletters: “I want to thank you and Bill for putting on an amazing SuperConference… I want to share my biggest Ah-Ha! Moment, a lesson plus a lesson. It came from you. Dan, at 3:20 P.M. on Sunday. You stated that as business owners, we are typically not our target customers as we might not pay our prices. This observation is profound, and explains why so many of us struggle with raising our prices. I learned many things during the SuperConference, but this observation truly opened my eyes. As I mentioned, this came at the end of the last day, perhaps after many Members had already left. That second lesson is that people who leave your events early do so at their own peril!”

It’s been my personal experience again and again and again that one stray sentence heard during hours of speeches, seminars or recordings or overheard in a hallway … one page out of 300 in a book, one paragraph in a magazine … rises up out of the noise and clutter and quantity to prove immensely valuable to me. That’s why I process so much information daily, weekly, monthly and never grumble about getting too much. I’m not trying to memorize it all. I’m fishing. You don’t trigger The Phenomenon by assimilating all the ideas and information you must wade through, to ever so occasionally have a major “Ah-Ha!” - You trigger The Phenomenon by having the “Ah-ha!” and doing something about it.

People who come late, leave early, have ants in their pants in meetings, let last flight out dictate their schedule, won’t find time to move through a lot of input, etc, just do not grasp the danger and huge cost of missing a “3:20 P. M. to 3:22 P.M. on Sunday.” You do. Congratulations.

To your specific Ah-ha of 3:20 P.M.: unplugging ‘price’ from your own emotions about it IS extremely important. So many Phenomenon ‘in 12 months’ experiences have been triggered by breakthroughs in price, profit and power that I could have taught and shown different examples for four days rather than one! For everybody’s benefit, the only thing that should ever govern, define or limit price is a tested and proven marketplace reality. But most determine their prices and fees by every means but that.

When something works, I feel like sharing it so it might benefit others as well.  

I want to revisit a decision I made about 18 months ago. I decided it was time to get some help running my growing businesses. This was not an easy decision for me, nor is it for most entrepreneurs I talk to. After all, nobody can do anything as well as we can, right?!  

Aside from being perfectionists, many entrepreneurs struggle with a fear of not having control. I used to spend time reading and learning how to do something so I could do it myself, maintain control, keep my expenses low, and stay lean and mean. The biggest problem with this thinking is that it takes so much longer to get things done. Even if it’s not harmful to your business, it certainly stunts your growth. 

Well, 18 months ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I finally made the decision to let go of some my responsibilities and hire a virtual assistant. I have to tell you, it was a decision that I wish I’d made long ago.

With a large part of my growth coming from online activities, I hired the services of the best online marketing guru I could find, Adam Hommey. Adam is nationally known as The Website Surgeon (www.thewebsitesurgeon.com). Adam is skilled in many areas, including telling me when I am wrong or off base in my thinking. Do not underestimate how valuable that is.  

Adam and his team now have full rein over my entire online presence. Adam and his team now handle everything from simple updates to creating new Web pages to building my new sites and shopping carts when I launch a new product.

The major benefit of having a virtual assistant like Adam is that I now have time to focus on the larger-picture items that are moving my businesses forward. Could I learn how to do what Adam does? Perhaps – but he would probably always be more efficient than I could ever be.

Why am I revisiting this topic now? Well, I did it again! I hired another virtual assistant two weeks ago, and believe me when I tell you it was easier the second time. This time I hired Chris Ruppert. Chris is a very talented graphic designer who is helping me get many of the various newsletter templates for No Hassle Newsletters done on time. Chris has been a tremendous help and the proof is that my ‘to-do’ list now fits on one page of my trusty legal pad!

For me, using virtual assistants is the way to go. I have none of the headaches (and expense) of full-time employees and there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) that are available to hire as needed.

Ask yourself these questions. What is holding you back? What are you spending a great deal of time on? What has been on your to-do list for far too long? I urge you to consider letting go, finding some help, and getting back to running and growing your business. If you have a similar story to tell, please share it with me.

Before I dive into today’s topic (which you’re going to love!), I’m going to take a moment and be a proud father. Last week my twin girls each received awards at college. Amanda received an award for being the top sophomore in her major. Unfortunately her school is 3 hours away and we were not able to attend the ceremony. Jessica however is only 45 minutes away and we got to see her get an award for outstanding leadership. My wife, Stephanie, and I are very proud parents!

And now, as the stage manager says … on with the show!  

Customer-focused marketing is the last refuge of the small or start-up business owner. This form of marketing, which uses newsletters as its main marketing tool, is a backlash against mass marketing. As a small-business owner, you can give your customers what the big corporations can’t – a real person to connect to and identify with. This is because a newsletter can have a “voice” – the personality you and your company.   

Most corporations can’t offer a customer much more than a big logo, an aloof Web site and a reply card asking for feedback. This type of marketing has gotten incredibly impersonal. 

Customer-focused marketing is an effective strategy for the small-business owner because it resists the big corporations’ tendency to make all customer relationship marketing about embracing the corporate identity. I discuss this and other topics in my book, Newsletter Secrets Revealed – How to Use Newsletters to Make Your Profits Soar. To the readers of this posting – if you would like a copy of my book at a discount, order it within the next 5 days and I’ll take 20% off your purchase. To get your discount, all you have to do is enter the word “bonus” in the coupon window. 

When you write a customer-focused newsletter, it is not about you – it is always about the customer. It is not about, say, a “happy face” logo (in the case of Wal-Mart) but about the needs, desires and wish lists of the customers. Even the way that copy is written for customer newsletters is an important component of this type of marketing.  In my next posting I’ll share some strategies to help you really connect with your customers. Don’t miss it!

I know - it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted to my blog. This has been a very busy two weeks and I have a lot to share with you. Last week No Hassle Newsletters exhibited at the Glazer-Kennedy Marketing and Money Making SuperConference in Nashville. I am honored that No Hassle Newsletters has been named as the preferred vendor for B2B done-for-you newsletters for Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle.  The rest of the conference was also an amazing experience, being together with about 1200 other smart marketers and hearing many great speakers including, Nido Qubein, Gene Simmons of Kiss, and of course my marketing mentors Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer.

On Thursday Doug Huggins, the President and Publisher of an exciting new magazine called BEST (Business Owners & Entrepreneurs Success Tactics) came by my booth to recognize me as one of the magazine’s contributing authors.

I am also honored to have been chosen as one of twenty presenters at the upcoming 2008 SuperConference for Coaches. Twenty superstars from the coaching and marketing world have come together to provide experienced coaches, as well as people considering becoming a coach, with the very latest insights into building a platform for coaching success, and building multiple streams of coaching income. This is an incredible event and best of all, as a speaker, I was able to get a significant discount for all my members who enroll early.  With space being strictly limited, you will want to consider participating in this life changing event. If you have an interest in coaching, take a look at the 2008 SuperConference for Coaches.   

I also wanted to share with you a realization I have every year when I attend an event like the GKIC SuperConference. Meeting and mingling with some very sharp (and a few famous) people is very invigorating. I am reminded of a quote from Jim Rohn, a successful and self-made millionaire:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” 

Here are a few more pictures from the Super Conference.