Fiona Clayton

August 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Fiona Clayton
From the desk of Toby McCartney – Monday 20th August 2012.

If you look up the word ‘Talent’ on Wikipedia you will find it means the mass of water required to fill a Roman container… ‘The talent’ as a unit of value is mentioned in the New Testament in Jesus’s ‘parable of the talents’. This parable is the origin of the sense of the word “talent” meaning “gift or skill” as used in English and other languages…

Well whatever… Fiona Clayton’s talent doesn’t fit into any container and it certainly is a gift from God. Despite the noise of the crowds who gathered to listen to Fiona last night, the only sound worth listening to was Fiona’s soft melodicism as she plucked and weaved her way through the lyrically perfect folk-rock tracks from her new album ‘ As I Dive In’.

Fiona quite literally has ‘Dived In’ and she invites you to dive in with her. There’s a pool party in town with your name on it and if you like music, you will love Fiona Clayton.

I invite you to take just over 4 minutes of time from your day today – click the link below, turn up the volume, sit back, close your eyes and listen to this – This is Fiona Clayton!

http://youtu.be/fR-RFD0ZqCs

Filed Under: Fiona Clayton

Brochures and Flyers don’t work…

July 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Business Success Secrets – Published in the Annandale Newspaper, Dumfriesshire.
The weekly column by Toby McCartney on business success secrets with a local
perspective.

Why Brochures Don’t Work…
For a start, full colour brochures are very expensive to print and you usually have to print at least 500 of them on each print run. Also, once they are printed, you can’t change them… Another disadvantage of brochures is that you can’t cheaply test them (You should always test all of your marketing material to find out if it works or not). If you go out and spend money on a large print job of new brochures and they don’t work (i.e. they don’t bring in extra sales), then you have wasted a lot of money. So what is the alternative?

Well, a cheaper option is to produce a ‘mini book’ (see:http://www.tobymccartney.com/business-advice/video-tutorials/ for some FREE advice). Or create a ‘free report’ to hand out, or a consumer guide… Think “How can I educate my clients” rather then “How can I promote my products” and watch your sales go up for a lot less money spent on marketing materials…

email: info@tobymccartney.com
Website: www.tobymccartney.com
Phone: 01461 500799

Filed Under: Annandale

Fiona Clayton

July 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

How very exciting! I feel so blessed to work with Fiona Clayton.
My task is simple – take her raw musical talent and make sure she is one of the best known artists in the UK. Her music is amazing and I am sure you will love it. Just listen to this:

So where do I begin. Well we are recording the first album which will be available from the launch party on 29th September. Contact me if you would like to be added to the guest list.
Her website, press packs, EP, Gig guide and more will be available soon on www.Fionaclayton.com so please keep a close eye on the site.
In the mean time, you can follow her on Facebook by ‘liking’ http://www.facebook.com/fionaclaytonmusic

As they say… Watch this space.

P.S If you would like to buy a signed copy of her album you can contact me now and I will make sure you get your copy early, before 29th September.

p.p.s Add Fiona’s new logo to your blog site or Facebook pages and point it to http://www.facebook.com/fionaclaytonmusic and in return I will send you her EP.

Filed Under: Fiona Clayton

“Keep on running”

March 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s been a tough winter and, to be honest, I’m feeling nervous about my fitness for this years London Marathon. I said to myself when I signed up, “I will train every day – honest”. Well, I haven’t… I haven’t trained nearly as much as my Adidas training schedule tells me I should have…
I also told myself that I wasn’t bothered about a time, I just want “to complete it…” – and then I found some old pictures up in the loft – one of them was me when I was 22 – the first and the last time I stupidly ran The London marathon… I did it in 4 hours 41 minutes…

I’m now 35 and I want to beat my younger years time… I must be mad…

So, with not many weeks to go, I’m out nearly every day – running around in the cold like a crazed fool. In a weird, sadistic kinda way, I love it… The question is though, can I actually do it in a quicker time – can I actually do it at all?

Maybe you can help?
I’m running for Shelter – The homeless charity… I really believe everyone deserves a ‘shelter’ and find it hard to believe that some people don’t even have that…
Just before Christmas I decided to see what it is really like to spend time on the streets – here’s my experience:

So, as I said, maybe you can help?

To cut the crap, I need your money…Simples… I give you full permission to laugh at me on every mile I run (26.2), and in return, I simply ask that you sponsor me… I’ve set up this website with the Virgin marathon folk who can take your money and give it directly to Shelter. I need to raise £4000 and I am well off the mark at the moment, so whatever you can afford is MUCH MUCH MUCH APPRECIATED!

If you can help, and you fancy a laugh (at me), then please follow this link and sponsor me – I will love you forever if you do.
Thank you xxx

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/tobymccartney

Filed Under: Personal

Fancy a coffee?

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I believe in a simple concept; “the more you give, the more you get back”, and I have been thinking up marketing strategies designed to get my brand out to my local community. In the past I found it a challenge to break into a small town market to promote my products and services without spending a fortune on advertising. I decided to try something a little different.
The ‘cafe lounge’ in town is often busy with local business people meeting for coffee as they discuss their day ahead and I was keen to get my brand into the hands of those local customers without spending a fortune on flyers or newspaper adverts.Very simply, every time I pop in to town, I visit the cafe and give the owner (George) £50 to buy coffees and teas for the next customers who come in until the money runs out. When people order, the cafe owner simply says, “This has been paid for by Toby McCartney”, and the customer is given my business card.
There’s nothing nicer than being bought a cup of tea in these tough economic times, and it soon got people talking about me and my brand…
Simple, inexpensive and a great way to pay it forward…

Filed Under: Business Tips Tagged With:

Earn some money in 2012

January 5, 2012 By 1 Comment

And a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you.
Everyone is looking for ways to earn some extra cash this year and we think we have an easy way for you to do so…

Step 1: We are going to send you £5 for simply facebooking, tweeting and texting your friends the following message over January and February. You need to tweet and FB message at least five times, and text a minimum of 5 of your friends. Here’s the message to send:

- Do you fancy spending the weekend in London learning something amazing and new? http://bit.ly/fiujuu

After sending the 5th FB message, email us and we will send you a crisp £5 note. No catch, no nonsense, just the cash.

Step 2: If anyone from your texts, your facebook or Twitter lists decide to join us and fill in your name into the referral box on our website when they book for our free NLP weekend, I will send you another £5 for each person who attends…

Step 3: If they then decide to buy anything from us at the weekends, I will send you £100 as a big thank you from Kate and I.

So even if you don’t have many friends, you can earn yourself a fiver just for participating…

Filed Under: Competitions

Prince Harry goes barefoot

October 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Prince Harry has purchased a pair of Vibram Fivefingers and is very much backing the barefoot movement http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2050897/Royal-approval-Prince-Harry-fan-barefoot-running.html.

This is fantastic news for tobysshoes and the brand in particular, we have no doubt that we will be seeing more and more of these articles with celebrities moving into the Vibram Fivefingers.

All good news for the Vibram and Tobysshoes.com

Filed Under: News Updates Tagged With:

Annandale Newspaper September Column

October 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

‘Business Success Secrets’
The weekly column by Toby McCartney on business success secrets with a local perspective.

Increasing sales is an obvious way to thrive despite the current financial climate, but reducing costs is the quickest and easiest way to improve those all important profit margins. Here’s three quick ways to reduce your monthly business spend and save yourself some hard earned cash…

1. Use a free-phone service…
Swap your expensive business phone lines for a free VoIP phone service like ‘Skype’ (www.skype.com) which can be used from the computer/s in your office. Skype to Skype calls are free, and calls to landlines and mobiles worldwide are just over a penny…

2. Use free internet marketing…
If you are not advertising online, you are missing the potential of fast-paced, high-result, low-cost marketing. Start with a free business blog, social media marketing, or other online advertising and see a relatively quick response with very minimal business costs.

3. Meet online…
Why drive for miles to see a client when you can hold a meeting in cyberspace? Using online, inexpensive video conferencing software, such as ‘GoToMeeting’
(www.gotomeeting.com) you need only a Webcam, a PC, and an Internet connection-saving money on travel and giving you back some of your valuable time.

Toby’s Local Business Spotlight…
I’ve been working with Solway Communication Ltd (www.solwaycommunications.com) who provide ‘super speed, wireless broadband services’ across Cumbria and Dumfriesshire. They beam a high speed wireless signal onto large areas and provide a cable-less system into homes and offices where high speed broadband is not currently available. These guys are worth a look…

email:
info@tobymccartney.com

website:
www.tobymccartney.com

phone:
01461 500799

Filed Under: Annandale

No More Business Seminars…

October 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: News Updates

Annandale Newspaper Weekly Column

October 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Business Success Secrets
The weekly column by Toby McCartney on business success secrets with a local
perspective.

Don’t Just Give It Away…
The word “FREE” is the most powerful word in marketing… It makes sense for us to use it
in our sales process…

In many ways, selling to clients is like dating… Seldom do you ask “Will you marry me?’
the first time you go on a date with someone. Rarely do your customers meet you and
want every product and service you have to offer as soon as possible. Most prefer to be
courted first…

To allow for the courting process, you must have a system to introduce clients to you and
your product or service in steps – or a series of dates…

I recommend, on the first date – the first time a customer visits your website, you respond
to an email, or they walk into your place of work to enquire about your services, that you
give them something for FREE… This may sound crazy, but there are a number of
reasons that this will work for you:
• It builds massive trust with your prospects…
• It creates a ‘buzz’ in your market sector…
• It can help you take market share from your competitors…
• You will help make your prospects feel important and valued…

So what can you offer? Well, here are just a few examples some of my clients have used:
• Free seminars
• Free product samples
• Free quotation / valuation
• Free home visit / inspection
• Free finance audit

Toby’s Local Business Spotlight…
Excellent customer service is one of the best ways to win and hold on to new
customers. Gilbert, Laura and the team at Annan Properties (40 High Street,
Annan) have fantastic customer service and go out of their way to help their
customers out. With their new website (www.annanproperties.co.uk), fantastic
customer service and a brand new high street shop, Annan properties are all
geared up to provide you with a perfect property to rent in Dumfriesshire and
surrounding areas.

email: info@tobymccartney.com
Website: www.tobymccartney.com
Phone: 01461500799

[Annandale Papers 5th October 2011]

Filed Under: Annandale
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