The way I look at serving my clients is to feel as though I'm an...
Comments and Kudos from our clients. We not only work on a client, consultant basis. We work very hard at building long term relationships based on creating success for everyone involved.
Matt is brilliant! Matt's help with my websites is worth it's weight in gold! Matt is extremely knowledgeable and quick at sourcing the problems that always arise if your business has an online presence. He works quickly and efficiently which saves me time and money! Through his cutting edge experience of online marketing and social networking Matt has also proved himself an invaluable source of information which has increased traffic to my website as well as giving me new business opportunities. As far as i am concerned - Matt's the man!
Matt Stonewell and Stonewell Media Group not only provides an amazing set of services, but they do go that extra mile to ensure that the relationships that Matt speaks of in this video are taken care of.
Speaking as a professional colleague and personal friend of Matt Stonewell, I can attest that he gives a heck of a lot more than he receives and it's always a pleasure to work along side him on business projects.
Matt Stonewell of Stonewell Media Group is very professional and reliable to work with. He literally took the ideas from my mind and made them appear visually in a way that I never could have imagined would look so great on screen! The web layout he designed is easy to use and maintain. He continues to provide valuable insight as to how to make my site go the full distance to really grow my business and increase my bottom line profits. I feel like I have access to my own virtual business consultant at my disposal becasue I can tell he cares about my business like it's his own!
I always get raving compliments from my customers on how beautiful my site is and rave reviews on my creative work because of the professional presentation of the website. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Matt - I really appreciate all of your help and I'm very much looking forward to our conference call on Tuesday. You did an excellent job and the tutorials are fantastic and easy to follow. I'm very pleased to have you involved with the project and again thank you for your time.
Matt - Thank you for answering my questions I had last night! You know so very much about the business and where so complete in your answers, granted I'll be looking up terms you used for a month. However, your answers were great and I so appreciate your time, thoroughness and thoughtfulness.Thank you so much my friend. I LOVE THIS SITE!!! All should know there are answers out there, or should I say on your site "NETWORKING MUSICIAN".
"Just wanted to take a minute to thank Stonewell Media Group for creating NetworkingMusician.com. Within two weeks of joining NM.com, I was contacted by another member, and asked if my band would fill in for his band at a gig in my area. Wow! I made money simply for signing up!
Aside from that, Matt has taught me much about website design, hosting, increasing traffic to my site, blogging, merchandising, fan mailing lists, copyrights, publishing royalties and even electronic press kits! How can one person be so knowledgeable and effective in ALL of these areas and more? Amazing...
I now tell every professional working in the music industry or ANY small to medium business about the benefits of working with Stonewell Media Group. I'm SO psyched that they're also offering Podcast features, press releases and internet marketing packages now! Thank you Matt, Stonewell Media Group and NetworkingMusician.com!"
I just completed a very fun and professionally polished interview with Dave Vignola from Networking Musician Radio. I've done a LOT of interviews and what impressed me about Dave is his sincerity, enthusiasm and ability to draw forth from the artist the soul of what they're about. The podcast is driving lots of traffic to my website where they are becoming fans of the band. It was a real privilege to work with Dave and Networking Musician and I encourage you to find out more about what this great format is all about! Sincerely
Thank you so much Matt for taking the time to do all that promotion work. Being in the music business, I really appreciate all your effort! I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with David at length. I felt a kindred spirit in our passion and interest in helping other musicians in the predicament of making positive steps to further their music careers and aspirations.
I look forward to working with you and David and Sarah in the future. Let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas along those lines.
Below is the press release I sent out this morning to several thousand friends and colleagues in my network of industry contacts.
Have a great day!
Stu Shulman
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Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It is with great pride and pleasure to announce that I recently spent almost an hour speaking with Networking Musician Radio show host David Vignola the other day on my favorite subject. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!
I gave out some advice for independent musicians, talked about current trends in the music industry, where musicians can promote themselves and tips on making the most out of their recordings.
We also discussed my label Seedless Records, Rosewood Recording Studio, Jazz Musicians as renegade promoters, the four cornerstones of the music industry and finally Cowboy Surfer music ending with the playing of a new Cowboy Surfer acoustic song called "Marley Corn" which was recorded at Dave Haddad's The Womb recording studio in Van Nuys, CA.
Mentioned in the interview were my friends, up and coming band Still Time from San Luis Obispo, CA, Tom Molinelli aka T Bone Steak who plays harmonica for both Still Time and Cowboy Surfer, Music Dish Network founders Sounni & Eric de Fontenay, The Womb studio owner Dave Haddad and Sarah Jones from SoldOutTour.com.
Follow the link below to listen to the archived podcast on Networking Musician.com
(you can also download it and listen to it later.)
I'm not a person to hand you a pile of fluffy, happy testimonials and tell you that all relationships turn out smelling like a rose. If I did then, I'd be lying! And that's the ONE thing that pisses me off more than just about anything in this world.
So, if lying or even twisting the truth are major peeves of mine. Why should I only show you the glorious side of things without giving you the reality that not all business relationships turn out perfect?
As an honest person in my interactions, I think it's only fair to also share with you a bad experience (mind you, this is the only bad experience I have had in this particular business niche to date).
I became involved with a small company from the Pacific Northwest that published books and sold naturopathic remedies for a specific physical disorder known as "Irritable Bowel Syndrome" which breaks down in to many specific conditions like Ulcerative Colitis, Diverticulitis and Crohn's Disease to name a few.
I personally have suffered from Crohn's disease for several years and this particular company had truly helped me get a grip on maintaining my condition through diet and nutritional supplementation. In all due respect the producer of the books and treatments is truly brilliant.
So, to make a working relationship that lasted approximately 11 months as short as possible. I'll do my best to summarize as best as I can while remaining factual and to the point.
I approached the company in late October of 2008 expressing an interest in becoming an affiliate of their products because their protocols and products really worked for me and thousands of others who suffer from this disease. We ended up seeing very eye to eye on our goals at first. So, they decided to bring me on for a 90 day trial period as an internet marketing consultant.
Anyway, we agreed to go on a 90 day trial period with a salary of "X" amount of dollars with the agreement that 75% percent of these funds would go towards a three month tuition for an internet marketing certification course that I'm expecting my certification notice any day now as of this writing. So, that meant I was only bringing in 25% actual revenue.
At the 11th hour of our finalization of this agreement, I was notified of what was really expected of me in the course of our 90 day agreement. Now, if any of you reading this has ANY corporate business background at all, you'll probably laugh your ass off when you hear this. They told me after they agreed to take me on as a flat rate, monthly consultant for 90 days on the terms that I am expected to produce a 45% increase compounded, month over month in the course of 90 days.
If anyone reading this does not understand the rule of compounding, I'll spell it out for you. Get a calculator and enter $35,000 x .45. It will equal $50,750.00. Then take $50,750.00 x .45 and it will equal $73,587.50. Now for the third month take $73,587.50 x .45 and you will come out with $106,701.88. And that's what they expected me to produce in 90 days? Mind you, this was to be produced smack in the middle of a recession like our country has never seen in years where discretionary spending has all but ceased and the unemployment rate has sky rocketed over the same 12 month period?!
I mean, these folks were well meaning and all but damn... A compounded increase of 45% in 90 days with this economy?? I thought to myself, "are you high"??? But, being a well meaning professional, I replied that “it's a lofty goal especially in this economy but I will do my best but cannot guarantee I can increase the numbers like that”.
Mind you, I went in to the agreement with the statement that I could refine their demographics and increase their organic traffic - NOT revenue. There's a totally different world between increasing traffic and increasing revenue. None the less, I did make this point very clear to them and I did accomplish what I said I could based on the circumstances we were faced with in our current state of economic affairs.
I did in fact increase their relevant, organic traffic and referred traffic drastically! They did admit to never writing more orders than ever per month over month, but the dollar value per ticket was lower per invoice so, it basically broke even in comparison vs. last year instead of compounding like they wanted. "What do you expect in a freaking recession"??? Let's face it folks, in a recession people strap down on discretionary spending and turn to any form of relief at the smallest cost out of pocket in this kind of economy and I can show you in factual trends should you want to contact me for the challenge.
Now that I've given you a little background on the agreement we had. Let me show you the result I produced over the course of just three months on only ONE of their 11 + sites they wanted me to work on.
The following is a google analytics screen shot of what I accomplished by tweaking their primary "money site" within three months. Take note of the organic and referring site increase versus the direct traffic numbers. These numbers are based on 30 day increments, end over end (consecutive monthly increments back to back).
As for the overall traffic increase for all their sites on a 30 day rolling period. I managed to maintain an 8 - 15% on average. Now that I have stopped, they average anywhere from 0% - 5% increase on a 30 day rolling period.
So, why did we end our relationship? Well... They wanted to re-negotiate our working/financial relationship and build out on different markets as well. However, the deal breaker for me was the last 25% salary that was owed to me by early July was held up waaay too long. This re-negotiation began in mid-June 2009 and I was more than willing to stay flexible as all was still good with our relationship despite the missed goal of a compounded 45% increase. Well, these guys felt as though they would keep drawing on my services throughout the month of July.
Being the nice guy I was (and I do mean was...) I worked through July. All the while, I was asking to be compensated for my last payment due for June. Granted, I did get side tracked with serious illness issues that my wife had in June to which I was very clear that I needed to tend to. So, I did lose some time on the project and felt the justified need to make up for it. In the meantime as my wife was out of work being ill, we lost a TON of money! Regardless, my point is, I did my work in July as I also did for free from October 2008 - March 2009. All I was asking for was my 25% monetary compensation. And they seemingly kept finding a reason to hold it up. All the while, they may not realize that I’ve known all along, these people are living in a 1.3m dollar home with five bathrooms, a nanny and all the best foods available. In the meantime, I’ll be candid… I was asking for $500.00!!! That’s all?
As I finally put my foot down squarely that the existing tasks had to come to closure and we need to seal the prior deal and finalize our new negotiation. I was told that my funds had already been mailed (yep - the old, "It's in the mail story"). Nope... I didn't settle for that story and told them that I will base any future working relationships based on the postmark of the envelope the check was mailed in. Mind you, I was told that this company deliberately traveled out of their way from British Columbia to Washington State so it would get to me faster. In the end, their stories were bullshit! The check was mailed five days after the day they said it was. And they gave me a line of crap that they went out of their way to do so.
I'm not a person to hand you a pile of fluffy, happy testimonials and tell you that all relationships turn out smelling like a rose. If I did then, I'd be lying! And that's the ONE thing that pisses me off more than just about anything in this world.
