+44 (0)1461 500799

Let’s be honest, you are a not a marketeer, and if you are and you’re reading this, your just here to steal my stuff, so who gives a stuff anyway, right?

I bet you didn’t get into business to do marketing and advertising… You probably got into business because you know how to do something and you want people to buy the something that you know how to do… 99% of my clients don’t ever what to become marketeers – they just want to sell the stuff they they know how to do…

I think marketeers have forgotten this. We run snazzy seminars and workshops, produce ‘how to’ products and preach about the ‘secrets’ that will turn your business around, but what do you care? You just want to sell more stuff! If I invite a plumber into my house to fix my leaking pipes, I don’t care what tools he/she uses, and I certainly don’t want him/her to teach me how to become a plumber – I just want the damn leak fixed… So I don’t think you care what marketing tools we use – as long as we bring you more clients who buy more stuff from you (and we do it ethically)!

So let’s cut the crap – I’m not going to run any more ‘Marketing Secrets seminars’ or ‘Enlightened Entrepreneurs workshops’ to teach you more ‘how to succeed in business’ stuff – you can read my book (‘Marketing Works’) for that – out on Amazon in December 2011 (Shameless plug!).

Instead I’m going to do it for you…

Whatever it is you want to sell more of, I’m your man. I will price each job separately, from website design, building automated systems to plain old Google Pay Per Click advertising and lumpy mail strategies or flyer design.

I will price competitively and will put all that I earn into my children’s education fund.

My team and I won’t BS you, we will simply get the job done for the best price possible and to the high standards we only know how to provide.

From selling a house to promoting a church, no business venture is too large or small.

Call me on 01461 500799 or email me at: info@tobymccartney.com for a fair quote.

I’ve been going to the gym now since December and am still trying to work out which machines I should use that will give me my, as promised by the initiation instructor, 6 pack stomach muscles…

When I’m in the gym, I try all the machines and often notice a disappointed look on the faces of some of the obvious daily gym goers who seem to know exactly what they are doing and don’t seem to like it when an amateur like myself tries to ‘give it a go’….

Anyway, last week a girl who is one of the daily gym goers was waiting to use the machine I was battling against, and being the gentleman I am, I stopped what I was doing, politely wiped my sweaty bum marks off the seat and stood up to leave (In true gym style etiquette…).

“She’s all yours.” I nervously caughed out with my last remaining breath.

“Ta.” Came her response…

“She responded” I thought to myself, “We have some rapport at least.” …
“Umm, Is this the best machine to use to get a nice flat stomach like yours” I added, in some desperate attempt to become part of the ‘in crowd’ at the gym and genuinely seek actual advice on the machine I had just been wrestling with.

“Is that some sorta’ way to chat up girls!” she replied loudly as she looked around for support from her Muscle bearing pals.

“No… I, Umm… Enjoy your workout.” I spluttered, and I made for the safety of the male changing rooms before her friends could pounce on me and wrestle me to the ground for even looking at their friend, let alone actually speak to her.

Glutten for punishment, and with no disguise, I was back at the gym this morning working on my still flabby stomach muscles and just as my back was turned a voice came from behind me… “I’m sorry for being rude to you last week, I was in another world when you asked me about the machine.”

[Now at this moment most people would simply thank her for her apology and carry on with the task in hand... But no, not me... My unconscious had better plans...]

“No worries” I said “I realise how it must have seemed, but I really wasn’t chatting you up. Your young enough to be my daughter and anyway, I’m a married man.”

And with that she turned and left me alone to continue to work out how to lessen the weights of the ‘Ultimate Arm Muscle Builder‘ machine I was now sat on…

Later, after my gym session, I decided to go for a bit of a steam…

“Hello again” came a voice from within the mist.

“Oh hello” I replied, recognising the harshness of the girls female Cumbrian accent.

“Have you been married to your man long?” she asked…

Now, please remember that I had just finished a strenuous session in the gym, I was tired, weak and impressionable. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to some strange muscle laden girl in the steam room, and so rather than point out the mistake she had just made I replied with, “A few years… He’s a mechanic…”

The conversation was painful and the lies were extra-ordinary. I can only apologise to my wife (Kate, the female in my life), but I’m now known, by that particular girl anyway, as the gay guy in the gym…

A very embarrassed Married Man (Not Married to a man) Toby

I have a new stock of ‘Tobysshoes’ coming in soon and would like to sell of the old sock.
If you haven’t got a pair yet, you should have… No excuses!
Give something back this month and get yourself a pair or get a pair for a good friend!
Thanks in advance, Toby

http://www.tobysshoes.com

I just had to post this…
For those who look out for opportunities, there’s a business in everything. The Royal wedding this year has provided a great business for a lady just a few miles away from me…

FORMER CARLISLE WOMAN’S ROYAL WEDDING SICK BAGS SELL-OUT
They are more usually found on aircraft than as a souvenir for a royal wedding.

But an artist from Carlisle has created a specially designed one for those already sick of hearing about Prince William’s upcoming nuptials to Kate Middleton.

Lydia Leith, 24, has designed a sick bag to coincide with the occasion – and has already sold out of her first batch, available for £3 each.

Lydia, who now lives in Edinburgh and is a graduate from the city’s College of Art, admits she does not think it will be used as a sick bag.

She originally made 260 limited edition bags, which have sold out, but is now busy making more.

They are available from her website, www.lydialeith.com.
(Source: Cumberland News)

It’s David Cameron’s “mission” in politics to make a ‘Big Society’ in Britain succeed.
David Cameron spoke out to social entrepreneurs explaining that Britain needed people to take more responsibility and wants to give more power over to social entrepreneurs to build social schemes that benefit communities in Britain…

[From Wikipedia: A social entrepreneur recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture).]

And, I agree…

I believe that it’s our moral responsibility to help improve the communities we live in, surely that’s why we call ourselves a ‘Great’ Britain after all… We aren’t great simply because our governments make us that way (far from it in fact), we are great for many other reasons, despite our government… We have the freedom to create, build, inspire and give back to our neighbours. We have been innovators, explores and great leaders for centuries without any aid from our governments. We live in a country where many different cultures form communities who learn from each other and grow with each other and I believe that alone makes us great. In times of extreme crisis, we stick together and we find solutions to the problems. I was in London, two streets down from Tavistock Square on 7th July 2005, when the fourth terrorist bomb exploded on the double decker bus – the community certainly came together then with people of all cultures hugging and chatting in the streets for weeks afterwards (hard to believe when you sit on a tube in London during the week now)… But I think what Cameron is saying is that it’s not just in times of crisis that we need to pull together, it’s times like today and tomorrow – the normal day’s of our lives, and I think we all have the right to help build our Big Society and call ourselves this title of ‘social entrepreneur’.

Sure, we can sit back and hope that our government gets us out of the current financial and social crisis, but I think it will be a long and frustrating wait… I wouldn’t put any money on the hope of our government solving anything soon, and anyway, who say’s it’s just down to them? We can’t moan and bitch about things that we don’t like about our country if we aren’t doing anything to change it ourselves. let’s not forget that there are no rules to say YOU can’t help create a big society of your very own.

I was reading through the BBC news on this and saw a comment by Sir Stephen Bubb, who heads up the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, who said charities and social enterprises were already having to make redundancies and scale back their work and he told SKY News “You can hardly build a bigger society in the very people at the heart of that vision that are cutting back on the work they do.”

Well Sir Stephen, that’s very ‘entrepreneurial’ of you… Hardly a Leaders speech to rally the troops…

So what do I propose? (I can’t talk about Sir Stephen in this way unless I have a better idea…)

When we started working with The SOS Children’s charity in India and created our own social scheme (www.tobysshoes.com), we modelled many of the community structures some of the local Keralan villagers are running. For example, groups of women from different villages meet once a week to talk about their businesses, to brainstorm and mentor each other. Those women who’s businesses are growing quicker than the others share their techniques and help the others to grow their business, and like geese flying south for the winter, the leaders of the group drop back to help out those who are struggling. Communities work together to find solutions to the challenges they have in each village. Rather than working individually, they work together to help each other progress.

So what would happen if we adapted this strategy? We can form groups of people who can share ideas to solve social issues, and then source individuals to help take action on those ideas. Perhaps take on 1 challenge a month and source local businesses and volunteers to help solve it. This alone would make huge positive changes to people where you live. A local library for example that needs staffing, or the cooking that needs doing for the elderly group on a Sunday, or the bus that needs driving to the hospital or any of our local projects that are suffering because of lack of government support and help.

Perhaps you can form a group of people who can brainstorm and mentor people, perhaps you can spend an hour phoning local businesses to ask for help, perhaps you can begin to raise funds from your local community to buy food for the elderly… The list goes on… And even if you don’t have the time for all of this, perhaps your ideas can help transform your local community and add to a ‘Bigger Society’…

I look forward to hearing your ideas and comments here…

How do you turn a high street phone shop from a failing business to a success in less than a month?

Well, you start by building the brand and letting people know that you are open for business, and then… well, you work damn hard to keep the momentum going…

Gary Souden, the 27 year old ‘Fonehouse’ shop owner from Coatbridge in Scotland, approached me to help him turn his shop around. With bills mounting and a huge loan to pay off, Gary wasn’t sleeping too well, worried that his dream of making it big with his new business would be shattered unless he got more customers through the door.

When I first went to visit Gary, his good looking, well kitted out shop was missing just one thing… Customers.

A very empty shop at peak time…

I decided to put a team of entrepreneurs together to help me sort the place out. Kirsty Henshaw, The Dragons Den star and owner of Worthenshaws Freedom deserts was first on board to offer her business expertise, Matt Bowen was next with his PR contacts, Steve Hastings my new Graphic designer was called next, and of course Kate was quickly mobilised to offer Gary some much needed performance coaching and public speaking advice.

My plan of action was to run a competition for the people of Coatbridge, capturing as much data as I could on a single flyer. I needed names, addresses and whether my competition entrees had a Pay As You Go or Contract phone. If they had a contract, I wanted to know what date their contract ends. All of the data I collected was then put into a system that automates all of my e-marketing. (My system sends promotional texts and emails and reminds people about Gary’s shop a month before their contract ends…)

The secondary gain from the competition was to get a ‘buzz’ going around the town and draw people into the shop to highlight the offers available to them.

I recruited some of Gary’s good friends and Kate and I to wonder about the town informing people of the competition, asking them to go to the shop to complete the entry form, and then to come back at 4pm to see if they had won…

At 3:55pm, the place was still dead… I was sweating… But then, on the strike of 4pm, the whole of Coatbridge rushed into the shop to find out if they had won. The press turned up, Sky TV were there – the day was fantastic and the winner of the PS3 screamed with delight.

We took 220 forms, all complete and over 100 of those have a contract phone soon to renew… That’s 100 new potential contract clients, worth a fortune to Gary, not to mention those who want to upgrade their PAYGO phones…

Gary was averaging 1 contract sale per day (His break even is 2 per day…), and he is now seeing this figure up to 6 per day.

We now run the same competition every month and are quickly building a database of 000′s of potential customers to promote and market Gary’s offers too. The chatter amongst the shoppers is all about winning a ‘PS3′ from Gary and his brand is quickly being established in the town.

All of this alone has proven to be hugely successful to Gary, but what if we went from 6 contracts per day to 10, or 15?

Some people may not want a PS3 or enter a competition like ours, and so we have set up evening courses for the over 60′s to teach text messaging and various phone skills, short courses on video and photo tools on mobile phones and a whole list of other ‘free’ services that no other mobile phone shop offers – and the more we do, the better it gets…

So watch this space, our work with Gary has only just begun and we have been filming for Sky TV’s Entrepreneur channel and SWAT TV so keep an eye out for the episode and I will keep you up to date on our progress here on my blog.

‘Nil Sine Labour’ as they say…
Toby

It’s always been a dream of mine to form a group of entrepreneurs who can really make a difference for small businesses starting up in UK, and now I have that team… I’m excited and I look forward to helping many businesses in 2011 and beyond.

So who do I have on my team? Well…

Those who have been coached by Kate (my wife) will know that she is one of the best personal development coaches in the UK, and she has joined the team to help small business owners get out of their own way. She will be coaching people in public speaking, confidence skills and a variety of personal development breakthroughs.
I’m also lucky to have Matt Bowman join the team who will be helping small businesses with their Public Relations needs – getting everyone into both local and national press.
Steve Hastings, my new graphic designer and owner of Carlisle’s Printing.com is on hand to build your brand and making sure you all look ‘puka’ for your waiting customers.
Hillary Summerton, my web designer, will be consulting in to design and build your websites and mini sites and she is a whizz with Google SEO too.
And last but not least, Kirsty Henshaw is joining us. Just a year ago Kirsty was making desserts for her young son Jacob in the tiny kitchen of her terrace house in Preston, and she decided to start a business selling her deserts into local health food shops. After applying for the hit TV show ‘Dragons Den’ she secured £65,000 from Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne. Her range of allergen free frozen desserts are now on sale in superstores across the country. Check them out – ‘Worthenshaw’s Freedom’ deserts – they are lovely – especially the chocolate…

So there we have it, the team is formed (along with consulting businesses like ‘PictureU’ and others who will be helping). It’s an exciting time for Team McCartney let me tell you.

Toby x