I’m gearing up for the webinar on Mon Jan 4, 2009 from 10am – 11:30 am Pacific Time. [New date added: Sat Feb. 6th from 1pm – 2:30 pm] This is a really exciting time in my life. My mentors are admitting to me that they are interested in my advice. With a mentor it usually goes the other way around, but when it comes full circle like this it means I am growing. The playing field between me and the people I most look up to is evening out. I don’t expect it will ever shift the other way. I would never want it to and I am not that superficial or presumptuous. Yesterday I was asked by a mentor what I am doing to stay on schedule. This is coming from the exact person who this past year was most instrumental in helping me to get focused.
Ideas, ideas, ideas
If you’re like me then you have a ton of ideas floating around in your mind. All kinds of things and they’re all exciting and you want to start working on all of them right away. I have lost entire days to fleeting thoughts that lead to the creation of great content almost in hopes that I was going to launch this idea in one day and this was going to be a grand slam. Then when I post links and blogs posts and tweets and updates on LinkedIn and Plaxo reality sets in. Any good idea is going to require some time, thought, planning, and a methodical approach. As my friend Jim from Pace University pointed out to me this year you want to take simple, measurable steps. He suggests a big dry erase board.
I’ve seen and heard this method before, but being a computer geek I have a “computerized” version of this. I use Microsoft One Note, an electronic notebook to keep a lot of my information organized.
- I have a to-do list page.
- In there I have sections.
- One area is for things that need to be done in the immediate future.
- Another area is for ideas.
- Then I have a section for call-backs and other (e-mail) direct follow-ups with individuals.
I make sure I look at this at the beginning of each day before I start. These items need to be transferred into my calendar so that I actually plan very specifically when they get done.
More on this during the live webinar.
Saving Money
This year I spent some time doing some research on what people out there suggest as far as money saving tips. Most of what I found I felt was either impractical (ie it works for people who have money, but doesn’t help the person who’s struggling – who needs this kind of thing the most) so I wrote up some of my own and posted them in my blog.
Productivity
I also watched some videos from Tim Ferriss, author of the 4 hour work week. I haven’t read the books yet, but I plan to. Based on the short videos I got a few ideas. He’s right, we are addicted to information and we are overwhelmed and overloaded with it. First I cut my e-mail check back to every 30 minutes (from every 5 minutes). Then I cut it back to 2 hours. Now I am starting to simply keep outlook closed and only open it 2-3 times per day. If necessary you can set up an auto-responder as Tim suggests let people know that you will be checking e-mail intermittently and that if someone needs to reach you immediately they can call your cell.
I like the idea of encouraging people to call my cell phone – it gives me a live selling opportunity to everyone who calls. I learned a long time ago to think of every phone call as a selling opportunity. Encourage people to call and I encourage more opportunities for me to sell them on my services. I will also weed out the BS calls in the process. Family and personal friends aside of course I really do not want to spend my time on people who aren’t interested in what I have to offer.
More on this during the live webinar.
Efficiency
I got a call from a guy earlier this year offering to sell me printing equipment. The real workhorse type printers meant for large volume printing. He was shocked when I told him I had no need – especially given what I do. I went on to explain that I and most of my clients were practically paperless – that a big part of what we do is leverage technology to run more efficiently – paper kills trees and in most cases is a waste of money. I don’t get the messages in some people’s e-mails about not printing the e-mails. It’s E-mail, it’s not supposed to be printed. Going back to MS One Note, you can send your e-mails to one note as a new page and make notes there. As far as I am concerned anyone who prints an e-mail should be banned from working in an office ever again!! I’m kidding of course but you get my point. What a waste! If you’re printing an e-mail you are not using the technology that is available which means you are creating inefficiencies. Bad inefficiency creator! By the time I was finished telling this guy about being paperless and using technology to be more efficient I had him asking me about my services – turns out he had a side business he wanted to talk to me about. He hasn’t become a client yet and maybe never will, but that seed is planted. At some point somewhere along the way he is going to be talking to someone and he is going to remember me and maybe even refer someone to me. More on this during the live webinar.
Look for the referral sources, not the prospective clients
Another thing I learned this year is to focus on developing referral sources. My marketing efforts in the past had always been focused on getting the clients. This has obviously served me well – I have a well established business which has been around for about 7 years. So I am already one of the 20% that makes it passed 5 years. Then this year it was suggested to me that if I network with people who share similar clientele then they can become a repeated referral source. So the same effort pays off over and over again. NOW THAT’S EFFICIENT! I LOVE THAT!! This is what I have been doing with Twitter – cultivating the potential referral sources. More on this during the live webinar.
How’s that calendar working for you?
I use MS One Note and I’ve mentioned that I transfer the items from my to do lists to the calendar. This is how I set aside the time to make sure these things get done. This was an area I really needed to take to the next level. As I expanded my web presence – there was the QuickBooks Blog, Excel blog, YouTube, Facebook (w/Fan Page), twitter, & LinkedIn. My mentor told me to spend ½ hour per day. That wasn’t enough to keep up with it all. The free webcasts take at least an hour/week. Ultimately I had to put some generic structure in place so that my daily and weekly appointments could work within the framework of this structure. So I laid it all out. From the time I get up to the time I go to sleep each day. I balanced out billable time with business development. Then I had to make a point of recognizing that this is meant to be a guide, not the bible! I now use 2 overlapping calendars in MS Outlook. I will explain how this works in the webinar. One calendar is for all of my appointments and reminders. The other calendar is called my “marketing” calendar, but perhaps a better name would be “Business Development”. This has turned out to be an incredibly effective way of keeping the two areas separate but integrated – if that makes any sense. I think it does. More on this during the live webinar.
Let’s bring it back home – what about all those ideas?
So I was able to at least define the times during which I would be working on the blogs and/or social networks. I was even able to provide anywhere from 1-3 hours for it on any given day. This seemed to allow for me to get something meaningful done while also allowing me the flexibility of blowing it off if I wanted to take some downtime one day/evening. What I saw next was what lead me to my latest genius idea! I was spending this time on all of these different projects, moving from one to the next from one week to the next and then realizing that there was a project I had committed to work on weeks ago and started to but hadn’t touched it since. With all of these ideas in the pipeline I was getting a lot done on a few things, but mostly only a little done on a lot of things. In one of my daily motivators this year I spoke about how multi-tasking is an illusion. Last week I came up with the solution. It combines Jim’s idea with my idea and forms a new variation on the theme. In the course of my ADD-like creation of blogs on WordPress I had accumulated about 15 blogs most of which I had not touched and each of which representing a new idea I did at some point want to implement in the form of a blog. I took one that I was not yet using and who’s initial purpose had been replaced with a Ning Network that I created and re-purposed the blog. It’s now called Nerd’s Projects. This is not a blog I ever plan to promote or invite people to participate in. On the other hand if people to that’s fine. I’ve provided the link for you to see it. What I realized is that the blog software – particularly wordpress allows for a really nice platform for organizing notes and ideas. You can use pages, categories, and tags to cross index and cross reference ideas. So I re-purposed this blog to allow me to identify the “Current Project” and then list all the others that I have come up with and made a start of working on. I’ve made this blog my home page on my browser so that every time I open my browser I am reminded of which project I am working to complete now. Now when I come to those times in my schedule that I have set aside to work on a “Project” this is the only one I work on until it is complete. Then I will categorize it as “Completed” and move on to the next one.
I will be covering all of this in terms of step by step “how to” apply this in my live webinar series beginning on Monday Jan 4th, 2010 from 10am – 11:30am.
I will also be scheduling times on Saturdays. ALL TIMES ARE PACIFIC.
Seth David
Seth David's Blog 