One of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs is stepping back from the host of tasks involved in running their business day to day, and taking time to look at the big picture.When was the last time you stopped and reviewed your business plan?Do you have a business plan?What is the end goal of all this effort you put in every day?What is your strategy for getting there?
Here is a relatively quick and simple technique you can do today that will help you to step back and work on your business instead of only in it.This is no substitute for a full business plan and more in depth strategic thinking, but it is great way to get you thinking more strategically, and can have a huge impact on your effectiveness and efficiency.This is an exercise I have my Business Coaching clients go through on a regular basis, with great results.
It’s very simple:
Make a list of all of the individual activities which you perform on a daily to weekly basis in running your business.Don’t include those things which you only do every few weeks or a few times a year, but include each individual activity which you do every day or at least once a week.
Examples might be: Checking email, responding to email, writing ad copy, talking with suppliers, answering phones, following up on leads, making cold calls/warm calls, mailing things, accounting/bookkeeping, checking inventory, updating website, working on designs, etc.
Please make this list now, before you read further.Most of you will probably have somewhere between 10 and 20 items on your list.Go ahead, please do it now, you really do have time for this!
Okay, now look at your list and ask yourself, if you could only do one thing on the list, what would it be?What one thing would have the biggest impact, make the most difference, if you had to choose?(It’s usually pretty obvious!)
Now, pick the next two most important activities on your list.So now you have your top three most important tasks for running your business.
Now ask yourself, “What would be the impact on me and on my business if I spent 80% or more of my work time doing only those three things?”
Get specific – what kind of results would you be producing?What would it feel like?
Now ask yourself, why are you still doing all of those other things, none of which made it into the top three?And what would it take to have other people doing those things instead of you?Perhaps someone who is actually better at it than you are, and who would enjoy it!Leaving you free to focus on those three most important tasks that you and only you can do.
I urge you to take on this exercise as more than an exercise – use it!Take it on!You’ll be amazed at what happens.
If you have no interest in becoming a successful, best-selling author, no need to read further.But if you have a book inside you, or one already in process, this is an opportunity you will want to take advantage of.My thanks to Mike Litman, a coach and best-selling author whom I’ve found to be a great resource, for letting me know about this opportunity to pass on to you!
Rick Frishman, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Authors and Guerilla Publicity, has helped many aspiring authors to achieve huge success. He will be hosting an event on May 29th, Author 101 University, designed to help you!
To learn more and hear a message from Mark Victor Hansen (author of Chicken Soup for the Soul) about the event (at which he will be a presenter), follow this link:
I am very excited to tell you about a great opportunity!One of the most challenging aspects of owning and running your own business is finding and hiring the best people.Interviews are one of the most critical aspects of finding the right person for the right job, but it’s not easy!There seems to be tons of information out there about how handle a job interview if you are the job applicant, but what about you as the employer?
This Thursday, you will have an opportunity to learn from an expert, Bobbi Palmer, of Bobbi Palmer + Co., just how to prepare for, structure and run an interview that will help you find the very best people for your business.Bobbi’s years of experience will take years off your learning curve, so you can find the right people, right now.
It is estimated that a mis-hire can cost your business 20 times the annual salary you are paying, and also that only about 25% of hires are “good” hires!Clearly, most of us have a lot to learn about how to interview and hire the right people!
Just starting to think about hiring your first employee?This Webinar is for you!
Already have employees, and looking to grow your business further?This Webinar is for you!
Still a one-woman warrior, handling all the aspects of your business yourself?This Webinar is definitely for you, to help you plan for the future and start thinking about who you will need to take your business to the next level!
Join Bobbi Palmer of Bobbi Palmer + Co. this Thursday for a Webinar that will give you the tools you need!
Interviewing with Confidence (60 minute webinar) Only $29.00
May 22, 2008 12:00 PM PDT (3:00 PM EST; 2:00 PM CST)
Traditional methods of interviewing don’t work! Hiring based on what your candidate lists as previous jobs, or based on how much you like them does not lead you to the people who will do great work and fit well into your company.
In this information-packed webinar you will learn how to develop a highly effective system and use straight-forward techniques that prepare you to make fully informed hiring decisions.
You will learn how to:
* Prepare properly for interviews
* Frame the interview for best results
* Use four types of questions to get your candidate to open up and share the information you need
* Have the candidate demonstrate critical skills (and why it’s important to “test” during an interview!)
Here’s a great opportunity for you from my friend and marketing expert, Susan Payton of Egg Marketing.Egg Marketing is sponsoring a contest for a FREE marketing makeover for your business!
Here is the press release announcing the contest:
Need a Marketing Makeover? Enter Eating Cereal with a Fork Contest
May 1, 2008 – Orlando, FL – Marketing in a recession got you down? Egg Marketing & Public Relations is here to help. The company announces its “Eating Cereal with a Fork” Marketing Makeover contest, which launched this week.
“We wanted to get creative and help people find a way to market their products, despite the economy,” said Susan Payton, owner of Egg Marketing & Public Relations. “Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, and we have some great sponsors that will help the winners learn techniques they can do themselves,” she stated.
Payton recently wrote the ebook,Eating Cereal with a Fork: Maximize Marketing in a Recession, which helps business owners get the most out of their marketing without overspending. In fact, she said, “By implementing these seven marketing techniques, businesses will actually save money on marketing while increasing sales.”
Egg Marketing is the Orlando marketing firm that hatches good ideas. Susan Payton and her team assist businesses in promoting their products and services through internet marketing and public relations. Egg offers a range of services, from marketing strategy to press release writing and email marketing campaigns.
Busy busy busy — running, creating, building your business, your family, your home, your life?Feels like a hamster wheel sometimes, doesn’t it?
As human beings, especially in our culture, we are so focused on doing doing doing all the time that we sometimes lose track of Why we are doing all this!And without that sense of why – our sense of purpose – all the doing in the world just never seems to get us where we want to go, does it?
I’ve been on the hamster wheel of doing doing doing without much sense of purpose myself lately.Yes, me, the On Track and On Purpose woman, the women’s business coach, the one who says, “You could wake me up from a sound sleep at 3AM and ask me what my purpose is, and I could tell you without missing a beat.”Well, that’s true, I could, but the fact is I haven’t exactly been feeling it lately all day long.What’s the point of being able to speak my purpose at 3AM (like that’s ever going to happen!) if I’m not connecting to it at 3PM, or most of the rest of the day either?
My purpose is to inspire and empower people to discover and fulfill their purpose in life, and to do it with passion, ease and joy.
For the past couple of days, I have to admit I have not been much connected to that purpose.I’ve been running around doing this, that and the other thing – and instead of feeling purposeful and effective and happy, instead I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, disconnected and, well, unhappy.
Any of you relating to this?
You’d think I’d know better, wouldn’t you?
Well, I do know better, and enough of this!Everything I’ve been doing these past couple of days could have been done with a sense of purpose, so why wasn’t it?I was caring for my children, dealing with tenants (I’m a landlord, too), coaching current and prospective clients, taking care of my house, etc.These are all important and valuable things that are totally consistent with my purpose.And to give myself credit, all of the time I was coaching clients and at least some of the time I spent with my kids was filled with a sense of purpose and therefore was inspiring and fulfilling for me.
But that’s just not enough.
Today, I have plenty of things to do, believe me.Business coaching clients, marketing, yardwork and housework, a couple of tenant issues to deal with, calls to make – and so on.I’ve been relating to all of them as simply things to do, without stopping to think Why I am doing them.So today that stops, and I’m taking the time to connect to the Why.
I can do yardwork because it needs to get done – or I can do it because I enjoy creating beauty and order, and because connecting with green and growing things allows me to feel connected to everything around me.
I can work on marketing my business coaching practice because I have to – or because I love talking with people about what matters most to them, creating clarity and connections and knowing I’ve helped someone move forward in their lives.
I can talk to that troublesome tenant because it’s my responsibility – or because I care about what’s going on in her life, and because I take pride in providing people with a safe and pleasant place to live.
The more I start looking at it from Why instead of What, the easier – and the more fun! – it all sounds.Amazing what a little sense of purpose will do to a busy day!
I invite you to do the same – take a look at that list of things to do and ask yourself Why you are doing them.What purpose could be behind everything you do today?You get to say.
Have a purposeful and inspiring and fun day today.
I love to pass on opportunities for you all, and this is a great one!
David Riklan, founder of SelfGrowth.com, is offering a FREE teleseminar on how he has made hundreds of thousands of dollars creating E-Books.David is a master of this – in fact, he made $108,142.00 in 24 hours from just one of his E-Books!Sounds unbelievable, but it’s true and he will tell you all about exactly how he did it during this free teleseminar.
Just a few years ago, E-Books were barely heard of and pretty much irrelevant to business success online.Today they have emerged as one of the most powerful tools to build and market your business.If you have any interest at all in generating income, generating leads for your business, creating a huge email list, driving traffic to your website, getting your ideas and message out to the world, you owe it to yourself to join David for this FREE teleseminar.
You’ll have at least two different times to choose from, or can opt to receive a recorded version if you can’t make any of the scheduled calls.Don’t delay, register now for this great free seminar!
I’m excited to share with you an amazing resource, full of inspiration, information, ideas, networking and more for entrepreneurial women – Kim Kiyosaki’s Rich Woman website.
Most of you have probably heard of the best selling book – now a series – Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki.I can’t recommend this book enough to anyone who wants to transform their relationship to money, success and freedom.And over the last couple of years Robert’s wife, Kim Kiyosaki, has stepped out to tell her own story with her own book and her website, RichWoman.com.
Kim’s tagline on her homepage?“I believe the world would be a better place if there were more Rich Women.”Amen, sister!
Please take the time to check out Richwoman.com, including Kim’s blog, member discussion forums, recommended reading, investment study groups and more.Richwoman.com is designed to be a community and a resource for women committed to creating success in their lives, so that they have the freedom to make the difference they want in the world.It has a wealth of information to educate you about how money works and how to make it work for you, not the other way around.And Kim is a truly inspiring teacher and leader, dedicated to having a huge impact on people’s lives.Head on over and see what she has to say to impact you!
Talk about your buzz words – networking is it. It is in.In today’s business world, one thing all the experts seem to agree about is that to successfully build and grow a business, you need to become a powerful and effective networker.
So what does that mean?Well, first of all, we know that just because networking is the buzz word of today doesn’t mean it’s anything new.Successful people have always networked, making connections and building relationships with people to create and grow businesses and organizations – not to mention communities, nations and empires!
The most important aspect of successful networking is that it is about building relationships.And relationships are built and are strong only when there is mutual respect and interest and a genuine intention on both sides to benefit the other person.
We all know what it’s like to have someone talking to us and be left with the feeling that the other person was only interested in benefiting themselves, wasn’t truly interested in us at all.And if we are honest with ourselves, we probably can all think of one or two (or more!) times when we were that obnoxious person – a time when we were under pressure, focused on our own problems or needs or insecurities.And because of that, the person we were talking to was left feeling ignored, disrespected, pressured or maybe manipulated.It’s uncomfortable to feel that way yourself, and perhaps even more uncomfortable to realize that you actually left someone feeling like that.
In coaching women to build their businesses, networking is one of the topics we talk about and I’ve found that a lot of us lack confidence in our networking skills.It’s an area where many feel insecure, worried that we will make the wrong impression, won’t be able to express ourselves well, and so forth.
What matters most in networking is not what we say about ourselves, but what questions we ask about others and how well we listen.The person who is genuinely interested in what you do and think and feel and is looking and listening for ways to help you is someone you want to get to know, and someone you in turn will be interested in working with and benefiting.
The catch is that it does need to be genuine, and let’s face it, we aren’t equally interested in and drawn to everyone we meet.Yet with all the emphasis on the importance of networking, some people have gotten it in their heads that they need to network with and be interested in just about everyone, and that’s just not possible.
So we are caught in this weird dynamic, where we have a commitment to building our business, and we know that networking is an important part of doing that, so we know that we have an intention to benefit ourselves, but we also know that to be an effective networker, we need to be genuinely interested in and able to benefit others.
While there is nothing wrong or strange with having intentions to benefit both ourselves and others, somehow in the moment it gets uncomfortable. We start to feel as though we are being fake, or are worried that the other person will think we are only pretending to be interested in them, and we hold back, we stop listening to the person in front of us because instead we are listening to the voice in our heads that’s worried about how we are coming across.And since people know when we are not really listening to them, we end up creating exactly that impression we are most concerned with avoiding!
Does any of this sound familiar?
I don’t know if some people are just so comfortable with themselves and their own intentions that they never have to deal with this stuff, but I know I sure do.I went to a networking event a couple of weeks ago and I watched myself go in and out of being comfortable, sometimes just connecting with some great women, getting to know them and letting them get to know me, and other times getting inside my head, worried about what to say and how I was coming across.In and out, in and out, comfortable and connecting, then uncomfortable and in my head, back and forth.
I don’t know what other people do to get themselves out of that crazy dance, but I can tell you the one thing that works for me is this – listening.
Not to the voice in my head!
Listening to the person in front of me.
It’s so simple, but it works every time.If I am actually listening to the person in front of me, all that focus on and worry about myself goes away.And the best way to get myself listening is to ask questions – interesting questions.
If I only ask someone what they do, let’s face it, they’ve been asked that a lot, they may be tired of describing their job or business, they may be worried about how they are coming across – they may have a similar voice in their own head telling them they haven’t worked hard enough on their “elevator speech.”Also, what they do may not be something that I’m actually interested in, so then I’m left listening to something that isn’t all that interesting to me and thinking I’m supposed to pretend it is — and that same crazy dance starts again!
I like the results I get when I ask a different kind of question.For example, I like to ask people, “What do you like the most about what you do?”Or “What do you love about your business?”Or “What goals do you have for your business/job, and what excites you the most about them?”
People are not used to being asked those questions!They have to think a bit, and I find that the answers to those kinds of questions are always interesting to me, even if the actual job or business the person has is not.So I don’t feel like I have to pretend anything, because I really am interested in what they have to say. I always find people’s passions and goals and dreams intriguing, and people are just a lot more fun when they are talking about what they love and are excited about.
How about you?Do you have any especially great questions you like to ask or networking tips you’d like to share?What gets you out of your head and into the conversation?What’s the most effective networking you have done and how was that different from other times when it didn’t go so well?
I’d love to hear about it!
Have a great week, and go ahead, ask someone a question you wouldn’t normally ask, like “What do you like the most about what you do?” and see what kind of conversation comes out of that.Who knows what kind of networking opportunity you may create — to benefit both of you!
Here’s an incredible wealth of information for entrepreneurs, made available by the amazing Rich Schefren!
Rich is one of the most successful people on the internet, a true internet marketing guru.I highly recommend his blog, StrategicProfits.com, but that’s not the resource I’m talking about right now.
Last week Rich pulled together an astounding conference on internet marketing, with presenters including Mike Filsaime, Jay Abraham, Mary Ellen Trilby and more.
And Rich is making available, absolutely free, video clips of many of the gems shared by the presenters.They will also be creating a full home study course based on the conference which will be available later for sale, but you can watch and learn from these short clips absolutely free just by going here:
I highly recommend that you take the time to go through all the video clips available – I don’t know how long they will be up and running, and there is a lot of great information!One of the most important qualities for a successful entrepreneur is to be always learning, and especially to be learning from people who have had greater success than you have (yet) had yourself!
A great business – and personal — resource to check out is Selfgrowth.com, the number 1 self improvement site on the internet.
SelfGrowth has a wealth of information on a wide range of topics, from relationships to success skills, from diet and nutrition to spirituality, and from money and finance to health and fitness.
I recommend SelfGrowth for your own personal use, but don’t underestimate its power as a business and networking tool as well.David Riklan, founder of SelfGrowth, is dedicated to creating great opportunities for people, and has implemented a number of different ways to help entrepreneurs in many fields to promote themselves and their businesses.SelfGrowth has over a million visitors every month, and David is a master at turning that traffic into opportunities.
Here are some of the ways you can get access to huge exposure for your business through SelfGrowth.
Ezines:
Hundreds of thousands of people (including me!) have signed up for one or more of SelfGrowth’s weekly and daily newsletters on topics such as: Home Based Businesses, Self Improvement, Natural Health, Brain Improvement and IQ, Selling and Sales Skills, Relationships and more.You can advertise on these newsletters or contribute articles and reach a huge number of people.
Articles:
Selfgrowth is always looking for more articles on all kinds of topics.You can write and submit articles on your area of expertise, and once approved, your article will be published on the site and be available to anyone searching the site for information on that topic.
Advertising:
Selfgrowth has a number of different advertising opportunities which are very targeted and can help you to reach your audience.Remember, more than a million people go to this site every month, looking for information and resources on many topics — you can reach them through targeted, opt-in email blasts, text ads and more.
Become an Expert:
SelfGrowth.com has created a designation of Expert in a host of different areas related to self growth and development, and you can submit yourself and, if approved, be listed on the site as an Expert in your field, with an Expert page and profile which can include a description of yourself, your background and work, your published books or articles, your affiliations – any information you would like to share to help people get to know you and what you have to offer. For example, I am listed as an Expert in Coaching and Business Coaching, with my information and background, my offer for a free business coaching consultation and links back to my website.
Networking:
As a corollary to the Expert program, SelfGrowth recently launched a networking capability by which you can easily connect to and network with other Experts in any field, refer business to each other, collaborate and create new projects, etc.When they first launched this capability, I was literally flooded with requests from others asking to network with me – I’m still trying to catch up with the backlog!
So go ahead and check out Selfgrowth.com. see what you can find for yourself and your business!
