4Networking - My first 5 Months

I've never really done any serious sort of networking. I worked in the City in London for nearly 17 years and there was networking of sorts, but most of that happened in bars, clubs and restaurants with customers. The last 10 years I've been involved with the Internet which isn't always the most sociable place as we're all too busy sat in front of computer screens!

But I discovered 4Networking(4N) just over 5 months ago, in December 2010.

The video below will give you a snapshot of how it works:

Learn about 4Networking in 1 minute

I went to a couple of meetings and loved the people and the relaxed format so I joined on 23rd December 2009. And in 5 short months I've had a blast; I've got lots of new customers; made some great new friends and last month I became the Group Leader of Bristol Cribbs. 

The beauty of the 4N is that with a Passport membership you can go to any breakfast meeting anywhere in in the UK. As of 29th May 2010 there were 215 4N business breakfast groups. 

See the complete list on the Meetings page of the 4N website.

I personally go to most of the ones around Bristol and Somserset but I also link up with some of the other members and we arrange "Road Trips". 8 of us recently travelled to Hatfield, Hertfordshire and stayed over night and it was excellent. 

The power of the Road Trip is in how it helps to increase your profile and get your name and company out there. Read the buzz on the forum that was generated by the 8 of us travelling up to Hatfield!!

Mr Kim Hambley, Nick "Monster" Elston, Simon Bunker, Me, Olly Culverhouse, Tara Gillam

The format of every meeting is the same so it's great when you go to other groups because you know the agenda and so there are no surprises. I also love the fact that people who are in the same industry as each other can go along to the same group. It's always baffled me why other business networks limit a group to just one web designer and just one accountant etc. People from the same industry often pass work on to each other and will have different skill sets.

Also, and for me this is the real key behind any kind of networking whether online via Social Media websites or offline at face to face business networks - people do business with people they know, like and trust. If I was in one of those other networks where there was only one web design person and I didn't like them then I'm never going to do business with them nor pass business on to them.

As Group Leader of Bristol Cribbs it has really helped to raise my profile. I love the venue at Berwick Lodge; a new boutique style hotel in Bristol which is aiming for 5 star status! I'm proud to say we're the only 4N group with a red carpet to welcome our guests!

So if you run a business or you're someone responsible for business development in your company then I highly recommend 4N. You can come along to up to 3 meetings before you have to join so you can try the format to see if it suits you. I'll hazard a guess that you too will enjoy it; you'll make some wonderful new friends but as important you'll win lots of new customers too.

See you on the 4N circuit soon!

Where's the Lid to Your Company's Jigsaw Puzzle?

I absolutely love Michael Gerber!

Perhaps I should add here, that I can get quite excited about life and I do love lots of things! And I'm happily married; so when I say "I absolutely love Michael Gerber" please take it the right way! ;-)

OK, now where was I? Oh yes, Michael Gerber. For those of you who don't know who he is (shame on you!) go to Michael Gerber's website to find out more.

I was fortunate enough to see Michael talk in Leeds in 2004 and I got to meet him afterwards while he signed his book. You can listen to the very evening I went to on a Red Audio CD. Just go to the Red Audio website to get your copy.

This is not an affiliate link and I make no financial gain from your purchase
He was a really nice guy and when you listen to his talk you'll realise not only is he very funny; he's incredibly smart about small businesses.

The part on the CD when he tells the stary of Ace and Bob is hilarious and it's a key turning point in Michaels' life. He realised that most small business owners don't have a clue about business. Most small business owners don't have any systems in place by which to run their businesses. They just react to the day; phonecalls; emails; customers. 

"It was like someboday had bought a jigsaw puzzle, thrown the pieces on the floor.... and thrown away the cover of the box.... Nobody had a picture of the finished puzzle of the business they owned!" Michael Gerber

Mechanics open garages, chefs open restaurants, chiropractors open clinics and Michael Gerber thinks this is a profound mistake. Just because a chef can cook doesn't mean he can run a business. Just because a chiropractor can fix people doesn't mean she can run a business.

He says that nearly all small business owners are busy, busy, busy everyday, working in their businesses instead of ON their businesses and at the end of the week they wonder where the time's gone. Every business needs to have systems to follow. "This is how we do it here; no not that way; this way." Most small businesses are reactive instead of proactive and Michael Gerber says it's a tragic shame.

So where's the lid of the jigsaw puzzle of your business? If you've lost it don't worry. You can start today and decide what the picture of the finished puzzle of your business looks like. Leave all those peices scattered on the floor of your office for now and take some time out to think about the vision of your business. 

• What do you want to achieve with your business? 
• What's the reason you started it originally? 
• What's your story?
• Do you want to build it into the world's biggest something? Like MacDonalds or Walmart? 
• Or do you just want a nice income each year? 
• Do you want to build a business which you can pass on to your children? 
• Or do you want to sell up in 7 years time for mutli-millons?

Whatever it is you want, you need to get the picture clear in your head and put some systems & processes in place so you can begin to stick your jigsaw pieces together. 

The beauty of this is you get to decide! I look forward to hearing about your jigsaw puzzle.

Why I love Volcanoes & Virgin Holidays!

On April 13th I flew with my family on holiday to Dubai. Our friends booked the holiday as a group booking for the 6 of us and boy oh boy are we happy they did it with Virgin Holidays!

We booked just a 6 day holiday as we were staying in The Atlantis Hotel on The Palm and it's not the cheapest hotel in Dubai.

On arrival at the airport we all said we wished we'd booked for a few days longer.

Confusicious said: "Be careful what you wish for!"

Little did we know the Icelandic volcano was to affect us and so many other air travellers around the world.

It was soon apparent from watching Sky and BBC news in our room that the affects of the volcanic ash were far reaching. But even when the UK airspace was closed we didn't envisage the closure would be more than a day or so.

Our Virgin Holidays Rep, Fares Malaeb, was at our hotel everyday at 11am to book excursions etc but as the situation worsened he was the bearer of the bad news that we were unable to fly home. Initially, there was drama as we imagined the implications but the next day our Rep explained that Virgin Holidays would be paying for our hotel room and breakfast for every day we were stranded! 

Fares was incredible. He was excellent and did a very good job keeping us all in touch every single day. Many of the others contacted him day and night by mobile and also text and Fares was unwavering in his service. 
On one particular morning, when the situation had once again changed, there were a few, very angry customers who were quite rude to Fares. But Fares was always polite and he was excellent at calming people down. He of course had me there to help too! On a few occasions I argued with some of the Virgin Holidays customers explaining that these were unprecedented circumstances and that Virgin and Fares were doing everything they could etc..


Virgin Holiday, you have an excellent rep. I hope Fares Malaeb receives the recognition he deserves for his tireless hard work and sleepless nights.

As you can see from the photo on the right, the pool was lovely and it became my working office each day. I had my iPhone and free wi-fi from the hotel so I was able to handle emails and phone calls. So I could have happily stayed for a while!

We watched all the doom and gloom on the news and whilst I have a huge amount of sympathy and some empathy with my fellow, stranded tourists; I appreciate our situation was no where near as bad as many of those stuck at airports or those who had to take on a plane, train and automobile type of trip to get back home.

So a huge THANK YOU to Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Holidays and to Fares Malaeb, for looking after us so well and taking the panic and strain and stress out of our situation.

I will defintely be booking ALL future holidays with Virgin Holidays. Any chance you can make sure Fares is our rep each time we travel with you??!! ;-)

Right I'm off to finish opening my 2 weeks worth of post and emails and get back to all my customers' requests.

I love volcanoes and Virgin Holidays!! 

P.S. My mate has a video of me whizzing down the "Leap of Faith" slide screaming "I love Virgin Holidays!" I'll upload it here as soon as he sends it to me. :-) 

Monitoring Social Media for Business - Is it a White Elephant?

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Trey Pennington at the Monitoring Social Media Boot Camp 2010 in London on March 31st.
I was interested to find out more on the monitoring side of things and what different options there were for people to start using monitoring systems. I was also intrigued to know more about the different providers.


This video is by Trey Pennington and you can read some notes from Trey at his website - www.treypennington.com

But I think I came away from the day with more questions than I started with and my initial feeling is that this whole Social Media Monitoring trend could be the latest White Elephant!

Let me explain.

DRoA - Domain Name Scumbags - who's up for stopping them?!

OK, we've put up with the Domain Renewal Group for long enough. It's time for some action.

I wrote a post back in April 2009 - Domain Name Scam!

DRoA are still sending these letters out to thousands of Registrants (owners of domain names) and duping them into paying inflated renewal prices and attempting to get unsuspecting consumers to transfer their domain names to DRoA.

I sent a Tweet to Rod Beckstrom the CEO of ICAAN last week and he replied saying "Form a group to take them on if you wish!".

There MUST be something we can all do together to stop these letters being sent out by the Domain Renewal Group.

I am going to be contacting some of my peers within the ISP industry with a view to forming an action group. I will also be contacting the leaders within the domain name Registries.

Please post your comments here if you have suggestions and would like to get involved. This malpractice has gone on for far too long and MUST to be stopped!

In the meantime, please let everyone you know, know about this Scam so they don't become the next victim.

Your Domain Name & Website - 3 Questions You Must Ask Yourself

As we move further into 2010 and beyond we are becoming more and more reliant on the web especially if we have an online business.

If you are running your own online business and relying on your website to bring you in new business then you NEED to think about these 3 questions:



If this video raises any issues for you please get in touch and I will be really happy to help you get your domain name or website issue resolved.

Drop me an email to dickie at dickiearmour.me.uk or add a comment below.

Domain Name Scam or Clever Sales Tactic?

We hear about online Internet scams everyday but a little bit like the Domain Registry of America scam I wrote about in April 2009; this latest one is more of an underhand sales tactic than an out and out scam.

A client of mine who runs and owns bristolvaleting.co.uk & bristolvaleting.com contacted me recently panicking about a trademark issue. He had been contacted by a company in Hong Kong who told him someone was trying to register bristolvaleting.com.hk and bristolvaleting.cc and he asked me what he should do.

He was genuinely worried that someone was trying to steal his brand and thought that they might be able to "grab" his .com domain name too. But because the email he received was from a company in the Far East he was also concerned about the legal aspects of it.

See a copy of the email below. I've fudged some of the information to protect identities.

Click the image to see a larger version

I told him not to worry about it all and to just ignore the email.

This email is very common and used by many domain name registration business in Hong Kong and China as a sales tactic to get UK, European and US businesses to buy domain names.

As I said to my client, why on earth would anyone in the Far East want to register bristolvaleting as a domain name? It pretty much says what my client's business is - he's a car valeter in the Bristol area. I don't think owning bristolvaleting.com.hk would help him win any more local business!

But many companies do fall for these sales tactics. Make sure you check the source of the enquiry before panicking and don't get puffed into buying anything you don't want.

If you ever need any help or advice with anything Internet related then please get in touch. I'll be happy to help and I won't even charge you! My advice is free.