Friday Ramblings: February 15th 2019

It’s Friday.

We are just back from coffee and croissants. The sun is really shining. The birds are going crazy and it is just the most beautiful of almost spring like mornings here.
It’s been crazy busy here and things are happening as usual that I never knew was going to happen.

BEING ONLINE

The past few years I have seen massive and I mean huge changes online. We are updating everything to reflect that. The bug change most are missing is people want the web in their POCKET. This trend has created a downturn in website traffic but a huge increase in APP traffic. Apps will be the new websites and notifications supported with WhatsApp groups will be the new marketing lists. This is the direction we are taking our web tech. if you are online you need to make huge changes in this area regardless of what business you are in.

BEING OFFLINE

The month of February we recorded our best book sales ever. We are selling books day in, day out alongside our business manuals and new teachable courses. These increase month on month but this month was the biggest I have seen. Why? Going offline. Last night I saw adverts on TV for huge online brands.

The biggest being Amazon of course. It is no accident they are hammering out TV and direct mail. They are going where the buyers are. This month I took one of my businesses offline and presented a talk to 70 business owners. The result here was phenomenal and a strong reminder that if we lose too much connection we are no longer connected to our audience.

A NEW BOOK

I finished another book. It is around 300 pages long. The name of the book is ‘ff3300 the true story of an accidental copywriter.

When I first met bio-hacker and steampunk Mark Joyner in Manchester, U.K. we talked and talked about anything but business and then a small bit about the business of teaching business marketing.

He’d been doing it for decades and I had also been doing it for decades. He asked me about why I hadn’t written a marketing book or copywriting book. I told him I had no interest in writing that as my first love for writing books is philosophy and I felt the marketplace was swamped with new wanna-be experts that I really want no part of.

Then he told me this.

“Alan, with so much bad advice around why aren’t you sharing your three decades and more of more experience. Never has there been more than today for genuine, honest and real front-line experiences.”

That isn’t worked for word, that is me paraphrasing what Mark said as we sat outside in the hot English sunshine eating Ox cheek and sharing Mark’s bulletproof coffee.

He didn’t realise then because I still held back but I went away and started to think about how I can share my experiences without telling you what to do. I am not a fan of the massive tsunami of “how-to” books from experts with no expertise. There is no way I would want to be even associated with that brigade.

I also didn’t want to create any kind of step-by-step anything at all because frankly there are better books out there than I can produce when it comes to steps by step. I will share those books at the end of this book for you.

The only book I ever read on copywriting in my early days was Ogilvy on Advertising – that was it. I had been writing copy for years and years before even knowing or hearing what copywriting was.

Yet my reality is writing has created a good life for me. A life admired by others and a life that has given me more than any man could ever want.

So, this isn’t a how-to anything. It isn’t a book about getting rich and it isn’t a book about how I want you to know I am the most significant copywriter on planet earth (or the universe as they now like to proclaim).

This is a book about how a punk rocker went through stages that eventually led him into the world of copywriting. It’s how I did it and hopefully if it is what you want how you can do something like this too.

It starts right at the beginning.

It should be ready for release in April 2019 and will be published by www.MasterandManBooks.com

FINALLY BACK TO THE PAST

This week I bumped into a client that I first met in 1984. I was a hairdresser and she was a client. I knew all of her family and I remember her kids getting married and her shock and getting pregnant again when she was in her forties. She and her husband had lost everything - house - the lot!

That son is now 31 years of age. She was shocked to see me and I was shocked to hear her story. They had what always looked like a perfect everything and she knew it. In fact, I would say she always felt she was better and a different class to others.I asked how her family are doing and her story shocked me. Her daughter now divorced after 18 years. Her daughter's husband had run away with another man he had been seeing for 7-years. Her angelic son had been married and divorced countless times. Finally, he lost everything and now works underground digging for coal in some remote space in a foreign country. All this to escape bitter wives.

The big shock was her super-confident husband. I remember him and his superiority complex well. He had suffered a major breakdown due to pressures of work and never recovered. This was 15 years before.

She looks defeated in her face but still had the same smile. Her only hope was her unexpected son that had settled nice and had a child on its way.

I have to admit that meeting with her affected me in a strong way. I kept thinking about how relentless life can be. All the money in the world doesn’t and can never equate to happiness. I also kept thinking how to set and strong their life looked from my perspective of a young man but today as an older man I can realise that a life built on stuff can only usually lead to one outcome.

It’s a lesson, right?

FINALLY

We are preparing like mad for our new son's arrival (say they get it wrong and it’s a girl). I don’t think I have ever felt so excited about this one moment about to take place in my life. People do ask why am I doing this all again at 56-years of age. I don’t think I am doing anything again. I think this is a new life for the child but a continuation of the quest for creating, happiness and sharing what I am with a new son.

My darling wife Tamuna looks glorious. We have just 8-weeks to go.

I AM READING (TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE READING)

War and Peace by Tolstoy

I AM DOING

Research into taking a PHD in Philosophy

Peace.

Alan Forrest Smith