by Richard Pakey – guest author and member of Chris Cardell VIP Inner Circle marketing club
Hi, my name’s Richard Pakey and I’m a member of Chris Cardell’s VIP Inner Circle marketing club.
I’m also one of Lee Duncan’s 1-1 coaching clients.
I offered to write a blog post for Lee explaining why I decided to work with him, even though I was already a member of the Chris Cardell club.
First of all, though, I’ll introduce myself. I’m a fully qualified dispensing optician and I own two opticians, both just outside the M25 – one in Waltham Abbey and another in Brookmans Park.
My friends tell me I’m ambitious and I think of myself as an entrepreneur as well as an optician.
I also look for great advisors to help me in my business, and Lee really fits that description.
If you want to find out more, Lee has written a valuable book called 101 Tactics To Get More Customers, Sales & Profit. You can get it completely free by clicking here. It’s crammed full of powerful ideas you can apply right away. It’s really helpful in these difficult times.
But more about what Lee’s done for me later, I want to talk about Chris Cardell first.
I’m a member of the Chris Cardell VIP club and membership site.
Once a month Cardell Media holds a teleseminar for members and these are recorded and uploaded to the membership area. He has a pretty big focus on internet marketing and holds a live event most years that he calls the entrepreneur summit. He’s paid guests like Duncan Bannatyne and Bob Geldof to give talks about business at these events.
I also get a fax from Chris Cardell every week with some clever marketing ideas and stories of things that have worked for other members.
I also love listening to his cds as I drive to work.
From the various communications, I get inspiration and lots of ideas, although sometimes it’s not clear how to implement them in my business, or even if there’s a way to make them work in my business.
How Chris Cardell Compares to Lee Duncan
That’s where Lee’s help has been invaluable.
I don’t want to give too much away, because my competition could be reading this. But Lee has helped me take the ideas from Chris, along with some great methods he uses himself, and turn them into practical marketing methods.
You’ll see the results towards the end of this article.
That’s the key difference I suppose.
Chris Cardell is fine if you want to work with a consultant at arms’ length for general business knowledge and inspiration.
But if you want specific help with your business, there’s no real way to reach him to help you apply it to your own business.
Chris Cardell Built Cardell Media To Make Himself Impossible to Reach!
That’s because he’s built Cardell Media around making himself unreachable – and I can’t really blame him for that!
But I want practical help and a person at the end of the phone that I can call for help.
That’s where Lee’s business coaching program has been invaluable because he works with you one on one.
I wanted to build a relationship with someone who gives me coaching and even hands-on consultancy to make things happen quickly.
We’re all so busy in our day to day businesses that actioning stuff is often difficult.
Lee makes things happen.
He gets a great buzz from seeing my things work and getting results.
As Lee gets to know and understand your business better by building a longer term relationship, he is able to further develop what might even be your own ideas into recession busting and forward thinking profit making opportunities.
Bring Lee into your life and it won’t be the recession you worry about, it will be how you cope with the extra business!
To show you what kind of impact Lee has made, the average sale nationally for opticians is £180 per customer. At my new outlet, opened only in April this year, we have taken that to a staggering £650 on the campaigns we have done so far.
And we haven’t started on the really high-end products yet. When we launch the new campaigns in the next three months, we’ll almost certainly increase that again.
And thanks to some changes we made in September to operations at the well-established Waltham Abbey branch, this has been the best October we’ve ever had in business, and the full financial year is going to be at least as good as any previous year, possibly better.
Recession? What recession?
If you want to find out more, get Lee’s book – it’s free and with over 200 pages has ideas for every single business. Get your copy of 101 Tactics To Get More Customers, Sales and Profit.
You’ll find he’s got a different take to Chris Cardell and that can be refreshing in itself.