Archive for February, 2006

0 to £22,000 in six months…

Monday, February 27th, 2006

Clint and Su Minter joined our business just over 6 months ago in July of last year.  Su was a full time mum, and Clint was working as a van driver.  They had dipped their toes into Network marketing before but after several months with another company they had yet to make a profit.  After reading an initial information pack they decided to come along to one of our monthly BOM meetings and they decided to join at that meeting.

Six months on and their cheque last period was a whopping £1,742 which works out (with 13 periods in a year) to around £22,000 per annum… not a bad wage for Cornwall, especially considering they are only 6 months in and still learning the business!

Now Su is confident about their future, “Clint was a full time delivery driver, he has always been on the road. I had a child at school and needed something to fit around him. So we did this part time for six months and then in December we decided we would do it full time so Clint handed in his notice and we started full time in January. This has given us the time and freedom we need to spend with the family and also to earn the extra cash we needed. We are now looking forward to so much. We know we can turn our dreams into reality.”

It’s been an exciting six months… With their team growing along with their turnover, and their income, I wonder what the next six months has in store!

Bill & Cressy - The story so far…

Sunday, February 26th, 2006

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to run my own business. Through school, college and University I always ‘knew’ that by my late twenties I’d be running a very successful software company or e-startup… or so I thought!

After graduating from Uni I had a stark choice - get a well paid programming or design job with a flash London software company, or move back to Cornwall where I had grown up and face an employment climate that was unlikely to fulfill my dreams. I needed experience (or so I thought) before starting my own business, but after 3 years of studying in Manchester I was longing to get back to my roots…

As I suspected finding meaningful employment in the IT sector in Cornwall was near impossible. I ended up working for the family business - a mail order clothing outlet, hardly what I was looking for. I did drag the company kicking and screaming into the 21st century by first getting them on email (wow - technology!) and building them a small website. I took this to the next logical stage and developed an online store and within a year or so a large percentage of their business would be online.

From the back of this experience I started delving more into web design and in 2003 I finally set up my own company - Kernow Web Designs

I was proud of my new venture and worked hard to get the business off the ground. I took on work at a knockdown price to ‘get my foot in the door’ and build a client base. I advertised online and offline, and slowly picked up bigger projects. I taught myself Flash and built a number of games in the process which I used as promotional tools (and posted them to a free website for others to play and use : Kwikgames And I even moved into a nice big office in the local town… but the problem was there was simply not enough hours in the day!

The harder and longer I worked the more money the business made, but there was only so much I could physically do. It was getting obvious that I would need to employ others if I was to build the successful business that I hankered after. This was a real sticking point - on the one hand I wanted to expand the business, but on the other I knew only too well the pitfalls of taking on employees (my fathers business had taught me all about health and safety, pensions, redundancy, sick pay… all the things that caused management stress and problems!) so I was very reluctant to do so.

Then salvation…

One day after leaving the office I found a business card on my car window, “Major Second Income - Earn £500 to £3000 extra per month without affecting your existing job or business”. It sounded too good be true and so I concluded that it probably was - but there was a website address on the card so I browsed the site with the idea of selling them my web design services. I filled out an application for a free info pack and waited.

Two days later an info pack dropped through my letterbox that would change my life. I had discovered Kleeneze, a company that I had never heard of, and Network Marketing “The most powerful income structure ever devised”. I decided it was worth trying and got started immediately.

I made back the investment within 10 days and was well into profit by the end of the first month… Although only working very much part-time for a few hours each week I was bringing in a few hundred pounds extra each month on top of my Kernow Web income. Over the next few months I started to get involved in the sponsoring and very slowly built my Kleeneze business on just a few hours a week. It would be over a year before Cressy joined my in the business and we hit Gold status within 8 weeks after that. With the foundation of a very strong team we can now see that the sky is the limit. We can have as many people working for us as we like - without the headaches of being an employer, and finally I have the high end successful business I’ve always wanted… you can to!

The Ten Commandments of Leadership

Saturday, February 4th, 2006

Our business is a people business - we get paid the most for being an effective coach and leading our teams to success. But what does it mean to be a leader? Is it the same as a manager? No - in our business leadership means coaching… leading by example, showing our team how to duplicate our results, and inspiring them to success. Here are Ed Ludbrook’s 10 commandments of leadership:

  1. Treat everyone with respect
  2. Set an example for your team to follow
  3. Be an active coach
  4. Maintain a high standard of honesty and integrity
  5. Insist on excellence and hold your team members accountable for their actions
  6. Create a sense of team pride
  7. Show confidence in our people
  8. Create a strong sense of urgency
  9. Be available and visible to our team
  10. Develop ourselves to the highest possible level