Last year, we did this for the first time and it was a great move. In late December 2010 I thought about all of the products we were going to be launching, the content we wanted to get out there, the events we wanted to put on and I wrote a list of every email I wanted to send and put them in a list like this: January: 3rd: Happy New Year 12th: Blog post summary email 25th: Free PDF on Business Automation Then, the same thing for February through to December. What I did next is go through andRead the rest of this story…

My favourite TV show when I was a kid, Boy Meets World – the final episode, everything changes, relationships change, jobs change, people change. The dumb older brother Eric says in the final words of the final episode, “It’s not the change that matters, but how you deal with it that counts”. It was beautifully said and the events today made me think about that scene. A lot of lives were changed today. Startups now have a bigger personal allowance (helpful if your at that point), Millionnaires buying houses over £2,000,000 now have to pay a ridiculous 7% Stamp Duty,Read the rest of this story…

How long does it take to stop reading this post, answer the phone, read your email then send a text and get back into the flow of the post again? Apart from the added stress of jumping between so many different tasks, it’s not just the time it takes to do a task. What’s often not considered is the amount of time it takes from being in the flow doing one task, stop doing that, start doing something else, then get in the flow doing the new task. I call this ‘set up time’. The way to avoid this greyRead the rest of this story…

Bookkeeping is one of the easiest things to outsource. If you use an online system like KashFlow then you shouldn’t really need to outsource the invoicing; but sending a virtual assistant (VA) an email saying “Invoice Matt Jones £300 for consultancy, due in 7 days from today” and firing it off is a lot easier than messing about in Microsoft Word making your invoices. Your job as business owner is to set these things up, not necessarily use them day in and day out. What about expenses? Just an idea, but how about keeping all your receipts in a box,Read the rest of this story…

Whenever I offer any business advice in this area, it follows a very simple pattern: Discover all the problems you have (some you’ll know about, some you won’t), propose solutions and then put them into action. The problems are an essential starting point and cannot be ignored. Our first ever Business Automation system came about almost by accident when I went into Sussex Academy of Music who were existing website clients at the time and started having a conversation about their online shop. I can’t really tell you how it happened but we spent the next 24 hours, all 3Read the rest of this story…

Here’s a post about some of the tools I use to run Advantix. These are almost all web-based tools but some are a little random. Anyway, Lets deeeww eeeett! Customer Database: We use our own software – shock horror! We use AddBook to store info about our customers and it works just as well now as we thought it would. It’s allowed us to be much better at marketing and sell more stuff which is almost always the goal. Use AddBook, we made it free to try with no time limit. www.AddBook.co.uk Sales Process: SignBase, since we built it hasRead the rest of this story…

It’s been a pretty wicked year for us at Advantix and I have a few “end of year” themed posts prepared to keep you readers happy over Christmas. I set out this year to launch both SignBase and AddBook, and win 2 more BusinessBrain customers. By the end of the year, I’d done all those things and more. We’ve shifted the businesses entirely to almost completely eradicate web design and stick to doing what we do best – Save people time. I’ve decided that our marketing mix is going to consist of 3 things: 1. Word of mouth, and aRead the rest of this story…

I’m just about to vanish off the face of the planet for 2 weeks, ignore all calls and emails and wind up my entire customer base. Or am I? Over the last 3 years I’ve spent 4 and a half months abroad (18 weeks) and taken a 4 week break around September/October time and I’ve only ever had one issue… I was in Tenerife and got a call from the police that my flat got broken into and all my stuff stolen. I called my brother and instructed him to go over and secure the door (not that there wasRead the rest of this story…

I wrote this a while back. It’s a little PDF with 30 of the most useful tips I could share with you in a book you could read in under 5 minutes. I’m pretty sure at least one of those ideas could make you some more money by the end of the week. Enjoy Download Now

Anyone know Parkinson’s law? Here it is in geek speak: “A task will expand directly in proportion with the time allotted to it” In English: If you’re told you have a week to clean the house, you’ll make the task so massive in your head that you never start it. It’ll also then take you a horribly long time. However, if you get a “You’ve got 60-minutes to clean the house” you will work out what things you need to do in order for the place to considered “clean”. The same thing applies to work, and outsourcing. At Advantix weRead the rest of this story…