My favorite quote, probably, is one that’s frequently misattributed to Dr. Seuss.

It’s this one:

“Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

The guy who actually said it was Bernard Baruch (great name, huh?)

He was a presidential advisor to Franklin D Roosevelt. He said it in response to a question about how he handled dinner party seating.

It’s a sophisticated way of saying “fuck the haters.”

It’s my favorite quote because it puts all of the bitching, snickering, back-talking, gossip, slithering and snarking that we have to encounter in our lives – despite our best efforts – into a real perspective.

There will be some folk who are addicted to drama. They don’t matter.

There will be some folk who you piss off by breathing wrong. They don’t matter.

There will be some folk who never buy your stuff but make frequent and unwelcome demands on your energy. They don’t matter.

Then, on the flip side, there will be the folk who you are desperately afraid that you might have offended – because they truly matter – and those are the ones who really really don’t mind.

You need more of those people in your life.

You need more of those folk in your business.

So, this Friday, fuck the drama.

Forget about the little stuff.

Focus on the big picture.

If work’s getting you down, slack off.

If your husband’s not pulling his weight, book a night out with the girls.

If the dishes aren’t going to do themselves, put them in the trash.

Spend some money on yourself. A martini, a dress, a bottle of scotch, membership to a mastermind that keeps you sane and profitable.

After all, you deserve the best.

So fuck the haters.

Here endeth this week’s proselytizing.

MK

A positive message wrapped up in a little profanity is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

I spent the morning with a group of highly intelligent and very good looking insurance brokers.

We talked about a lot of stuff, but focused largely on sales call reluctance.

Getting motivated to make a sales call appears to be one of the toughest things in the world.

Tougher than wrestling bears or burying yourself up to the neck in raw sewage. Tougher than french-kissing your grandmother, by all accounts.

Which seems crazy, as there are no sales without sales calls, right?

Anyway, I’ve yet to meet a salesperson who ENJOYS making sales calls.

So because you’re meant to “give people what they want” here’s a list of things you can do instead of making sales calls:

• Talk about making sales calls
• Read a book on how to make effective sales calls
• Pick your nose
• Design an automated sales system that lays golden eggs so you never have to talk to a prospect again.
• Arse about on Pinstagram

Which will make you temporarily happy, and permanently poor.

You see, making sales calls sucks … until it doesn’t.

I showed these insurance folk an infallible way to motivate themselves to make sales calls. I’ll share it with my More Clients Mastermind later on today.

It works like gangbusters, in fact, you’ll find that making those calls becomes a pleasure rather than a chore.

MK

PS here’s what Jennifer said yesterday (she’s been a member all of about 48 hours):

“I’m already seeing positive results from this group. Just being around such productive, high-achieving people as all of you (honestly, I am going to have to pedal fast to keep up!) is having a huge impact.”

Learn more here.

What to do when you’d rather French-kiss your grandmother than make a sales call is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

You’ve been waiting your entire life for this.

It’s the secret – known only by a tiny handful of mystical sales magi – that salespeople, sales managers and company owners have been desperate to have access to for years and years.

This secret will render unto those who have knowledge of it superlative powers of persuasion and control.

This secret is so dangerous – so powerful – that it’s been held under lock and key in a Siberian volcano for the last 2,000 years.

But now it’s available for convenient monthly instalments.

It’s the secret of how to sell absolutely anything to absolutely anybody every single time you try.

Forget ice to the Eskimos – this secret – in four parts – will teach you how to sell high-priced (even OVERpriced) services to absolutely anybody you come across.

You’ll be raking in the squillions overnight. You’ll be unstoppable.

Open your mouth, make money. No target market necessary. No market research either. Hell, you won’t even need a product or a service.

But of course this secret isn’t available to everybody.

With great power comes great responsibility. If you want to learn the secrets of the close, you’re going to have to apply.

The application process will be arduous. It will require you suspend your disbelief just long enough for me to brainwash you into believing that IF – for ANY reason – this secret doesn’t work for you, then it’s because you’re not applying what I teach you properly.

Possession of this secret – delivered via an online portal at your own pace (and iPad-ready) – will require that you subscribe to the school of thought that says “it HAS to work, I’ve paid THOUSANDS for it.”

You’ll also need to be fully adhered to a cult of personality that I’m building up around myself. What I say GOES. If you don’t like it, then you’re a hater. And haters gonna hate.

For only six monthly instalments of $6,999, even YOU can close EVERYBODY EVERY SINGLE TIME.

You just need to believe the hype. You need to swallow the bullshit with a big dose of gullibility.

But then you’ll have the power to get ANYBODY TO BUY ANYTHING.

etc etc etc fade to oblivion

However, if you know that sales results come from hard work, intelligent application and repeated failure that doesn’t get you down, then you’re in the right place already.

For $97 a month you can join the sales-realists in my More Clients Mastermind.

But you have to be serious.

And you have to check your ego at the door.

Because there IS no single solution to getting people to buy your stuff. There’s only best practice.

And we’ve got a ton of that being collected as you read this.

Click here if you’re serious, or go chase some unicorns.

MK

How to sell absolutely anything to absolutely anybody every single time is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

Here’s the money I’ve spent so far today:

Getting a key cut: $1.50
Coffee: $3.60
A downpayment on a fridge-freezer: $150
Parking: $2.20
Accountant’s bill: $680

NONE of which have got me any closer to growing my business. (Although if it wasn’t for the accountant, I’d be much further behind than I already am with the paperwork.)

Here’s what I WANTED to buy:

Money at a discount.

I wanted to invest in something that would give me more bucks in return (when used properly, of course, with wisdom and finesse.)

The good news is, that’s exactly what I’ve got for you today.

The More Clients Mastermind is now fully LIVE.

That means you can jump on board for only $97 a month by clicking here right now.

Our founder members are artists, web developers, software builders, business coaches, financial services providers, online marketers, corporate trainers, photographers and assorted geeks, creatives, cool kids, reprobates and teachers’ pets.

Now it’s your turn.

If you know that it’s high time you started to focus on selling more, to stop pissing about when you should be closing deals, to pay serious attention to your numbers and make this whole shebang much easier (like it should be) then the future belongs to you, and it’s on the other side of this page.

But it might not be for you.

After all, it’s not for everybody.

I do my best work with folk who take responsibility for themselves.

Hell, I wrote the book on that.

Because there’s no magic bullet. There never was.

I’ll sweat blood for you, but you’ve got to do the work.

When you sign up there’s a video that you’ll watch that should change your relationship with selling immediately.

That’s worth your next five clients alone.

So if you know that it’s right, and you want to get me on the phone sharpish, it’s never been so reasonable:

The More Clients Mastermind Monthly Option Is Now Live

I’ll see you on the other side.

MK

PS colleagues have told me – and continue to tell me – that this is too cheap. There are equivalent masterminds that run from $499 to $2499 a month.

But for now I’ve got the blinkers on. If you want in, you’ve got it. All for less than the price of a bad steak dinner.

Why (and how) I’m selling cash at a discount is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

A few years ago, before Mrs K was Mrs K, I took her to Paris for her birthday.

We did the regular things: Eiffel Tower, pavement cafes, the Tuileries.

We ate at that place that was in Sex & The City – the one where a bowl of soup cost more than a bowl of soup should ever cost in a just and fair world.

Then we went to see Madonna at the Stade de France – a great big stadium.

I was pretty chuffed (that’s an Englishism – it means “pleased”) to get tickets right in front of the stage.

Thing is, they were right in front of the stage, but an entire stadium’s distance away.

That meant we couldn’t even make out any discerning features on the enormous screens they have at concerts, let alone the live action.

Still, it was a blast. Mrs K and most of the gay population of Paris bopped contentedly until the night ended, when we joined the 70,000-strong throng on the Metro at the end of the night.

The gig was great. The souvenir brochures cost about 150 euros (if I remember correctly), so we passed on those.

Madonna was as Madonna is – subversive, energetic, single-minded.

And she mostly got it right.

Except just once.

Which is, of course, the bit I’m going to talk about.

But I’ll begin with a caveat: the idea that I should spend even a moment talking about what Madonna gets wrong when it comes to marketing, branding or business-building is entirely perverse. She knocks all of us out of the ball-park when it comes to each of those things.

So this I say with humility and respect.

She got it totally wrong at one point.

She was doing the “I say something you repeat it back to me” thing.

I say “holla!” You say “holla!”

I say “whoop! whoop!” You say etc etc.

And it was going well. Until one point when she started up the chant:

“Paris is the shit!”

Which works in English, in some quarters, as an expression of delight.

But didn’t work at all in Paris.

You could have heard a pin drop. And then “did she really just say Paris is shit?” echo around the stadium.

Anyway, this email is, of course, about speaking the same language as your customers.

We do a lot of that in the More Clients Mastermind.

Until the next time. Au revoir.

MK

Madonna is the shit is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

The Game by Neil Strauss is one of the best sales books ever written.

Of course, it’s not a book about sales. It’s a book about picking up women.

And not in a natural, “I’m attracted to her, so I’ll get to know her better” way. Or even a useful “how to talk to girls if you’re crippled with shyness” way, either

No, these guys – “professional” pick-up artists – go about collecting phone numbers, scoring dates and getting to (and beyond) first base in a way that’s decidedly obsessive.

The whole concept is, frankly, a little rapey.

I have a friend – possibly somebody you know – who moved in the circles of these pick-up-artists in LA for a few years.

He told me that at one stage a few years ago, girls going out on the Sunset Strip were almost guaranteed to have their night ruined by packs of predatory men.

Yuck.

So, this isn’t an endorsement of the book’s premise, but rather of the lessons contained therein.

(I’ve talked about bouncing before, which came from the same book.)

Today we’re talking about peacocking.

Peacocking means dressing for attention. Because in a competitive marketplace, you need to be sufficiently different to get noticed.

Once you get noticed, it’s up to you to do something with the attention.

These guys would wear black nail polish, or pink top hats, or ringmaster’s outfits to stand out from the crowd.

It was enough to pique curiosity, which was enough to get the first conversation happening.

Which would be useful for us as well.

How’s your professional peacocking?

You don’t need to wear a red nose to client meetings. You don’t need to be crazy or zany or wacky or wild.

You just need to be sufficiently different to be memorable.

There are some incredibly straightforward ways to do that, ways that are compatible with your personality. Ways that have your prospects salivating to do business with you.

I’ll be sharing them this month in the More Clients Mastermind.

If you’re not in yet, and you’re having trouble with Paypal, you can pay by Visa or Mastercard or Amex.

If that doesn’t work, send me an email and I’ll send you an invoice.

All details here.

MK

Peacocking for Fun and Profit is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

You know a whole lot.

You get to know more each day: more about people, more about your ever-expanding gut, more about obscure stuff, more about life in general.

And, of course, they say that accumulation of knowledge is valuable.

Not only will it win you the praise and adoration of fellow pub quiz participants, but it can also be used to woo girls and stop the dangerously ignorant in their venomous and hateful tracks.

Knowledge, they say, is power. Knowledge is the food of the soul. Knowledge is freedom, love, light and vision.

The more we know, the better our decisions. The more we know, the weightier the value of our judgement … that’s what they say.

I say bullcrap.

Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. Too much thinking gets in the way of doing.

Take the rookie salesman. He’s recruited fresh out of school and arrives, shiny-nosed and wet behind the ears to his new job.

He leaps about with endless enthusiasm. He doesn’t have any product knowledge, he doesn’t know who the “difficult” clients are. He doesn’t have any NLP training up his sleeve .

Despite all of this, he wakes up early, works hard and strikes gold.

But in a few years he’s an also-ran. He coulda been a contender. Now, his clients piss him off. They don’t respond to the closes he learned at sales school. They live in the wrong neighborhood. They’re dud leads.

By now, he knows better. He leaves the dud leads to the beginners. They have beginners’ luck on their side.

He’s wrong, of course. He’s jaded.

He’s seen so many people say “no” that he hears it before it’s said. He’s a chief diagnostician of why people won’t buy. They’ll say it’s too expensive. They’ll say they’ll think about it. They can’t afford it anyway. Look at their shoes.

Is that you? Are you pre-judging your clients?

Are you too smart for your own good?

If yes, I get it. It’s normal. It happens to all of us who have a couple of brain cells.

But it’s remediable.

Luckily, for you, I don’t have two brain cells to rub together. That’s why my More Clients Mastermind makes selling the most fun you can have with your pants on.

It’s still in early-bird mode, which means you get the entire year at almost 60% off.

Click here to join me and the other smart no-brainers.

MK

Why it’s better to be stoopid is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

Liberace, for about two decades, was the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

If you don’t know of him, think of Elton John, camp it up even more, and rewind a few years.

Until recently I didn’t know much about him.

Then a couple of months ago, I caught the tail-end of a TV show.

And it made me think.

(Which doesn’t happen very often. Not just a TV show making me think, but me thinking in general.)

Here’s what I learned:

Liberace trained as a classical pianist. He was gifted. Prodigious, even.

He could play classical music better than the guys who wrote the stuff.

But he wasn’t happy.

He wasn’t happy because people didn’t want classical. His audiences were polite instead of excited.

So instead of fight them, he gave them what they wanted: showmanship and razzmatazz.

Fast forward a few years and he was insanely wealthy and universally admired.

Liberace knew his customer. Then he gave them what they wanted.

(He “sold out” – but in a good way. He listened to himself instead of his dad.)

We too often start the other way round.

We say “I’ve got a thing, so let’s go and convince people that they need it.”

Instead we should ask “what thing are my people looking for?”

And then give it to them.

So today’s suggestion? Go give it to ‘em. (If) you know they want it.

MK

MASTERMIND UPDATE:

First call is THIS WEDNESDAY. If you’re not in yet, and want to lock in your first year for a 50% discount, then you need to click here RIGHT now.

It’s the most fun you can have with your pants on.

Liberace and me is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

They say we hate to be sold but we love to buy.

I disagree.

I LOVE to be sold.

Picture this:

I go into a restaurant and I don’t know what I want. I’m thinking about the special prix fixe menu.

(That’s French. It’s pronounced “pree fix” rather than “pricks ficks”. My European affectations necessitate that I use overly complicated terminology when more prosaic and quotidian verbiage will suffice.)

The maiturgh-dee sits me down and tells me that the specials are REALLY special.

And so I splurge.

I get the wine list from the sommelier.

I instinctively look for the second cheapest so that I don’t look like a total miser in the eyes of my date, Halle Berry.

(Hey, a guy’s got to dream, right?)

Incidentally, the wine waiter knows that a lot of us do this, so he marks up the second cheapest bottle by a whole load.

He gently suggests, however, that we try a bottle of something really good that he’s just got in.

I don’t even ask the price. I like to be looked after. Besides, my dad always told me that “if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.”

And that doesn’t suit my self-identity.

Come the end of the evening, when I’ve been told instructed that I “must” try the Earl Grey crème brûlée, we’re offered a digestif.

Except it’s not really an offer, it’s an alternative close:

“So, will you be wanting the limoncello or an amaro?”

I go for the amaro. Halle has a limoncello.

I had every intention of spending $50 on a light bite. I left $200 poorer, and a whole lot happier.

I, for one, LOVE to buy.

And your customers probably do as well.

Make sure you give them the opportunity.

MK

PS thanks for those of you who replied to yesterday’s email. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.

If you’re interested in getting into a whole year of masterminding with me at more than a 50% discount, get in touch, if you haven’t already. I’ll hook you up.

On loving to buy, and Halle Berry is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.

So I spent today with a crowd of fundraisers.

They collect money for various charities: hospices, an organization that cares for carers, a home for people with mental illness.

We talked about marketing and sales.

In this case, of course, they’re selling the opportunity to make a donation.

After all, asking people for money requires the same approach no matter what you’re collecting for.

But these folk haven’t been schooled in the hard-knock sales academies I’ve been through.

And they were almost too nice. Almost too polite.

Which broke my heart.

If anybody has the right to aggressively pursue you for your hard-won dollars, it’s them. They change lives. Not ephemerally, but actually.

As business owners we a lot about having a duty to let people buy your stuff when we think it will benefit them.

But these people take that concept to a whole new level. It’s negligent of them to not allow us the opportunity to donate.

I’m not breaking any confidences when I say that they were terrified of causing offence when it came to following up or asking for the donation.

“Surely following up with somebody after you meet them can be seen as pestering people?” they asked.

And the answer is yes – it *could* be seen that way.

But it’s hardly likely.

Apply this quick test next time you’re about to involve somebody else in your business and you’re feeling uncertain about it:

Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Ask yourself “if this were to happen to me, how would I feel?”

• If I got this email, would I be interested in reading it?
• If I was offered this up-sell, would I be offended or would it make sense?
• If I was asked if I wanted to become a member, would I run away screaming?

Nine times out of ten we feel just FINE when we’re marketed at and sold to.

We’re generally too protective of the feelings of others. We create problems that only exist in our own heads. And we get it wrong: we don’t know what others are thinking.

But we can always put ourselves in their shoes.

And they’re usually pretty comfortable.

MK

How To Get Over The Fear Of Asking For The Sale is a post from Matthew Kimberley: Get More Clients.