Welcome to this episode. I'm Tom Koster. Today I'm wondering what the weather will be in San Francisco. The reason is that I'm going to San Francisco next week. My son, Leon, my oldest son, is coming with me and it's his first time to the USA. For me, it's the 20th, 30th time, whatever. I've been going to the US since January 2000, so for more than 18 years now. He's going to join me now. He's 20 years old.

When I first went, he was just two years old and I can remember very well how that was. For me, also, as a dad, going all the way to the United States was not easy, leaving a small kid behind, but I knew I had to do it in order to grow my business and to provide for my family.

I remember quite well that the seminar that I went to in January 2000 took place in Los Angeles and it was an internet seminar by Jay Abraham and there I saw the light, I saw the big possibilities that internet marketing would bring. It was obvious for me that the people who were on stage sharing their...

 Welcome to this episode. Today we are going to talk about the American Dream and, more specific, the teachings of Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is basically the United States. With teachings, I mean the things that I've learned from my mentors and my teachers from the United States. As you may know by now, I'm not U.S. I'm from the Netherlands. I live in the east part of the Netherlands.

I started my business in 1994. I was still working for a boss by then. Within a year later, they fired me. I was on my own and I had to make ends meet and basically had to sell my services. That's what I've been doing, selling my services. The services that I'm selling and the way that I'm selling was taught to me by people from the U.S. and it's part of my mission to also help people from the Netherlands, from Belgium, other European people, and also our other North American people to also make sales.

It's also my mission to help people like you, people who are listening to this podcast or reading...

Good morning. This is Tom Koster, and I want to welcome all of you to this information session to these podcasts. This is the first podcast that I'm recording in my car. The title of this podcast is The Black Sheep of the Family.

The beep you just heard was the brake on my Mercedes E-Class. It's not to brag, but this is my third Mercedes E-Class. I feel I'm the black sheep of the family. No one else in my family has a Mercedes. Also, no one in my family went bankrupt with their business or privately. I didn't bankrupt privately, but my business went bankrupt in 2009. That's also part of being the black sheep. Also, being part of the black sheep of the family is the fact that no one else in my family spent that much time, effort and money in personal development.

Since 1992, I've spent a lot of money in personal development and traveling and building my knowledge, and going to the US mainly since the year 2000. Go to Tony Robbins events. The first one in 1993, and the last one in...

Welcome to this episode. I'm Tom Koster, and this is the first podcast of the year 2018. I want to start with wishing you a Happy New Year. A new year gives new opportunities, new chances to grow your business, to take your business to the next level, but I want to take a moment to look back at last year, at 2017, and I want to share with you a little bit about how my business went in 2017, and maybe you can benefit from that information, and you can pick it up and see what you can do with your business in 2018.

One thing I did start in 2017 was to start a podcast, and this is, episode number 43 of the podcast. I started the podcast in February, late February 2017, and since then, I've pretty much had a podcast every week. The reason why I did that was to share my information, is to share content which I think is valuable in helping you grow your business, in helping you taking your business to the next level, and in helping you increasing your income.

In building the business,...

Welcome to this episode. I’m Tom Koster and today we’re going to talk about results and basically results take as long as they take. What do I mean with that? In my coaching practice, I meat a lot of young ambitious people and these young ambitious people have very big goals. But the reality is that often times that time gets in the way. Meaning, it takes longer to achieve the goals that they set for themselves and for their business than they thought it would take. And the challenge with that is the fact that the cost of living, the cost of doing business is not slowing down.

It means that, if I look at my business, if I don’t make enough money this week, this month, this year, it’s very hard to make profit because my costs are fixed. Basically, I know what my costs are from the last year, and also for the new year. But if I do not make enough money, it’s very challenging to pay the cost that I have. So I’m very eager to help clients with...

I hope 2017 was a successful year for you personally, as well as for your business.

Dedicated to increasing your income.

Bye for now.

Welcome to this episode. I’m Tom Koster and let’s be honest for a moment in this podcast. We are going to talk about social media and let’s be honest about social media, and let’s take a look at your business, and let’s ask yourself, “Is social media really making money for your business? Or, is it just a waste of time? And are you losing time in communicating with the wrong people?”

There’s a lot of going on at this moment in communicating through social media. Through LinkedIn, through Instagram, through SnapChat, through Facebook, of course, and more and more social media platforms may come up in the future, as well. But if you take a honest look at your business, and you take a look at how many hours you spend in a day or in a week on social media, and you ask yourself, “If it will bring you the money that you expected to be?” What would be your answer? And if you dare to take a look, to take an honest look at your...

Welcome to this episode. I'm Tom Koster and today we're going to talk about the letters Y, C, D, B, S, O, Y, A. What do these letters mean? I'll explain to you a little bit later, but it's all about doing business, and I have this triangle of doing business which says work in your business, work on your business and talk to people. The challenge for us entrepreneurs in digital marketing in IT and in web is we spend a lot of time behind a screen. Basically, it's a screen from your mobile device or your tablet, your PC or your laptop, and once we are back behind the screen and doing our work, the temptation is to look to social media, to respond to emails and before you know it, the day is gone or half the day is gone. We make money from our billable hours. And when we critically look at how we spend our time, then we may find out that we do not spend enough time doing things which are billable. The letters that I just mentioned when we started this information session, they mean you...

Welcome to this episode. Today's episode is all about asking. If you don't ask you don't get. Meaning, if you don't ask for business you will probably get no business, or very little business. If you start asking for business, then the probably that you'll get business is getting much more higher.

In reality it means ask people who they know who you can help with your service. In our case, our service is digital marketing, our service is IT and our service is web. In growing your business you need the same clients who come back to you over and over again, and/or you need new clients. If you don't ask for these clients they will not come to you all by themselves.

Who do you ask to be a client? Who do you ask for business? Well, you can start by asking your current clients to give you more business. They will not give you just business by you asking for it, but you have to asking in such a way that your clients will see added value in you helping them with growing their...

Welcome to this episode. I'm Tom Koster, and today we're going to talk about an important topic, which is email and the new law. The GDPR law, which is about to take effect in May 2018, and which will affect all companies with mailing lists who are doing business Europe. As you maybe can hear, I'm a little bit talking through my nose. I've got a cold and I'm recovering from a little bit of illness. I'm fine, so no problem, but that's the reason why I sound maybe a little bit different than I usually do.

The GDPR law is a law, European law, which prohibits it that marketers send commercial email, marketing email, sales emails to people who have not requested it, and not only that. You can not send email to people who have not requested it based on the compliance of the GDPR law and the compliance needs to be send in via a specific web form. So people have to, so called double opt in, and they have to mark a specific point on the opt in form that they request marketing email, and it...