I recently wrote a series of Time Management Help but I see so many of my friends in Internet Marketing suffering from a sense of being overwhelmed, that I feel compelled to revisit it with some hard, cold advice. I hope this helps you.
When I was right out of graduate school and in my first corporate management role I was really revved to get ahead. It seemed that my fast-paced company couldn’t go fast enough to fully benefit from what I thought I had to offer. I was constantly inserting my ideas and my recommendations and opinions into everything I could. All I could imagine was how I was being held back by this monstrous bureaucracy. After 6 months I was actively looking for another company. To me the grass was definitely greener on the other side of the hill.
Fortunately for me I had a mentor who happened to be my boss and a world class PR and Advertising pro. He watched as I restlessly struggled and pushed. It must have been humorous to him, but he saw something worth working with and helped me understand a great truth.
In one of our weekly lunches he told me the story of how he was also young and aggressive early in his career, and he had a mentor as well who saw something worthwhile that should be grown and nurtured. Certainly in his case it must have worked. So I asked him what it was that his mentor had told him decades before.
The advice was timeless he said. And just as great advice always is, you’ve got to let it sink in a bit to fully appreciate it. The advice his mentor gave him, and he was then passing on to me was simple. “Bloom where you are planted”. With all that build up I was expecting something like “don’t invest in derivatives”, or “go raise capital and start your own firm”. But “bloom where you are planted”? What was I, some kind of an Orchid?
But over time this advice rang through my racing mind and helped me settle and focus more and more. My career began moving and I was on my way up the ladder. By forgetting about the grass on the “other side of the hill” and focusing on my own patch, I was able to grow my own reputation, departments, and responsibilities into something valuable for my company.
If you are a network marketer or an online marketer this advice is absolutely good for you too. It seems that so many of us fall prey to the “grass is greener” syndrome, just as I did as a young manager. In the case of home business, this results in joining additional companies, hopping around from training to training, or system to system. It really doesn’t take long until you have more than you can manage. In many cases your businesses are all in start-up or stalled because there is not enough energy and attention to move them forward.
So it becomes a matter of focus. As I have written before, focus is the real key to success. Well, there are others, but focus is definitely on the key chain.
So “bloom where you are planted”. If you have multiple businesses and none of them are performing well, decide which one you most want to grow and focus your attention on that one. Sure people in your other companies are going to be disappointed, and some of your downline in those companies may ask you to reconsider, but focus. Work one business at a time until it is running smoothly, then add.
If you are distracted by offers for training and tools, focus. Look at your business and decide what is necessary to grow it. You may find that you already have all the training and tools you need. Decide what needs to be done in your business, make a plan, and then do it with focus, energy, and do it with massive action.
Bloom where you are planted my friends. I hope this helps you as much as it has helped me. I have to dust it off once in a while and remember myself. Best of luck!
To begin understanding online marketing, one should first understand its older brother, direct marketing (you may know it as mail-order marketing & advertising). Direct marketing uses a number of channels, some free and some paid. There is marketing by mail, by phone, by 800 number, by radio, by TV, and even by personal visit. More important to our purpose, Direct Marketing can also use the Internet. For most of us corporate marketers who learned about mass marketing, direct marketing is perceived as a lesser form of marketing. Well, having immersed myself in direct marketing I am one MBA who can report that it is a serious, reliable, and measurable discipline which produces results which are often far superior to mass marketing. And it is absolutely necessary if you want to succeed in online marketing.
Direct marketing is marketing focused on the buyer, hence “direct” to buyer marketing. Trust me, if corporations appreciated the possibilities offered by direct marketing, they would begin to use direct marketing techniques to absolutely skyrocket sales. So take notes if you are a corporate marketer. Be on the lookout for ways of identifying and reaching your target audience directly. The good news is that with the internet and social media, now it is easier than ever before.
And the advent of the Internet and social marketing has made the Internet marketing form of direct marketing very attractive to entrepreneurs and home based business owners. Not only is it easier than ever to find and reach the target audience, it is inexpensive. It is entirely possible to market your products and services for free using online techniques, although it is much faster with paid advertising.
So have you noticed any websites that have huge bold headlines at the top, followed by a whole lot of narrative text and periodic pleas for you to buy? If so you’ve encountered one of direct marketing’s most recognizable features, the sales letter. You may have observed how long some of them are, seemingly unending. This is because measurements have proven that longer sales letters sell more than shorter sales letters. You may also have noted that the content is not heavily adorned with a lot of imagery. This is because measurement has proven that editorial-looking sales copy sells better than fancy, decorative, pretty sales copy. Oh, you may also have noticed that they seem to make some pretty amazing claims. Well, you guessed it, measurement again.
Dan Kennedy is considered by many to be the father of modern direct marketing. He lays out 10 Rules for Direct Marketing, or as he states it, “The No B.S. Rules”. There are reasons occasionally for violating some of these rules, but for the most part consider them Direct Marketing Law. These laws apply to Internet Marketing just as they do to mail and other forms of direct marketing:
- There Will Always Be an Offer or Offer(s)
- There Will Be a Reason to Respond Right Now
- There Will Be Clear Instructions (for Customers) on How to Respond
- There Will Be Tracking and Measurement
- Whatever Brand Building Occurs Will Be a Happy By-Product, Not Bought
- There Will Be Follow-Up
- There Will Be Strong Sales Copy, Not Vague Hyperbole
- In General, It Will Look Like “Mail-Order Advertising”
- Results Rule, Period
- You Will Be a Tough-Minded Disciplinarian and Keep Your Business On A Strict DIRECT Marketing Diet…
So here are the 10 “No BS Rules” for Direct Marketing. Each of these rules deserves a chapter in our study of Internet Marketing. Direct marketing is a mature form of marketing deserving our respect and attention. In upcoming posts and videos I intend to indirectly convey more about Direct Marketing through my discussion of Online Marketing. Until then I highly recommend Dan Kennedy’s benchmark book, No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing For Non-Direct Marketing Businesses. Yes, it’s a long title and not just a little irreverent. Welcome to Direct Marketing.
I want to make it much easier for newcomers to learn online marketing by creating a structured overview, a construct or framework, upon which newcomers can begin developing working mental models of the business. Unfortunately the current learning curve for online marketers takes most people a year of hard work, lots of expensive training, courses and webinars, and a lot of trial and error.
Most marketing disciplines have the advantage of academicians and theoreticians who devote inordinate amounts of time to structuring and dissecting their disciplines. While we wait for the academic world to catch up, I intent to create a series of posts and videos I will construct a newcomer’s framework understanding and mastering the new discipline of online marketing. I hope this can help you.
Some of the topics I will cover include:
o Direct Marketing Parentage
o Attraction Marketing – Did They Teach This In College?
o Internet Marketing Models – Lead-Based Marketing (typical for MLM), Affiliate Marketing, etc.
o Managing Your Web Resources
o Selecting Products and/or Services (Solutions) For Sale
o Communicating Your Solution Effectively (The Art of Converting Leads)
o Building Traffic To Your Site
o Just What Is A Sales Funnel And How Do You Make Them (And What Is A Funded Proposal And An Autoresponder?)
o Personal Branding – Becoming The Recognized Expert
o Affiliate Marketing – Creating A Virtual Sales Force
o Powering Up – Joint Ventures With Current Leaders
o Series on Lead Generation Marketing Strategies (Categorized as Online Strategies, Social Media Strategies, Advertising Strategies, and Networking Strategies)
o Series on Selling Skills
o Other Stuff I Think About As I Go
My intention is not to create a detailed training program. This has already been done quite well by a few sources, and to a lesser degree by many others. Instead this will serve as an overview, much like a survey course you might see in college. The point is to provide a framework and a more global perspective on where the parts all fit in order to speed the learning process for newcomers, and help fill in some gaps for others. Wish me well because your future downlines may be grateful.
Personal Branding Authenticity is at the cutting edge of network marketing and online marketing these days. But I think there are some misconceptions about being authentic, and we should straighten them out. I know that a lot of people worry that they have to share personal information to be authentic. If you’re like me, the very idea of exposing any dirty laundry is a frightening thought! Heck, even my wife sometimes doesn’t always see the REAL ME! How on earth am I going to put it out on Social Media, in blog posts, and everywhere for the world to see? Do you feel this way too? Let’s explore what it means to be authentic when we brand ourselves. Let’s decide whether or not our fears are warranted.
I checked in with Wikipedia on the subject of authenticity and here’s what they said it is: “Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.” Well, that doesn’t sound so embarrassing. You don’t have to tell people the color of your underwear or whether your belly button is an “innie” or an “outie”. It doesn’t sound like you have to embarrass yourself at all. Maybe being authentic isn’t so bad, let’s dig in a little deeper.
Truthfulness of Origins and Attributions. To me this means that I should be honest about the origins of what I’m providing, writing, or promoting. Also if I’m using someone else’s work, I need to attribute it to them. So far this is common sense. I like the word “truthfulness” anyway. I recommend it in all aspects of your life, not just branding…I’m just saying. So, be forthright in where I’m coming from with something and where that something came from if I didn’t create it myself. Okay.
Commitments. Over the years I’ve learned not to make a commitment I don’t intend to keep. In fact I hold this pretty close to heart. Clearly it is good that your brand is known as reliable. But there is another way of interpreting the term commitment here. If you’ve made a commitment you must keep, then you need to be forthright with anyone you deal with when you know that commitment could change how you are working with them or how they would interpret you. In this case, being true to your word extends beyond your initial commitment. Another word for this second interpretation is “transparency”.
Sincerity. To me sincerity is a way we convey that we’re being genuine. It’s an openness to risk allowing people to see how you feel. According to Webster’s Dictionary sincerity is an honest way of behaving. So sincerity is honesty in action. Okay, I’m down with this sincerity thing, it makes sense for your brand to be seen as honest, genuine, and sincere.
Devotion and Intentions. You’ve got to be open about your devotions. It’s kind of like being transparent about your commitments. If you’re devoted to a course of action, a goal, or a way of thinking or seeing the world, you should let people know if you feel it would change their decisions about you or your offer. The same holds if you have an intention behind your dealings with people that would affect their decisions. Be forthcoming, not misleading.
To be sure, there is an element of personal branding that encourages you to allow your personality and preferences to be seen. This also goes with the concept of Attraction Marketing. But from our exploration today, I believe that Personal Branding Authenticity is not so much about revealing embarrassing insights into your personal life as it is about being honest, forthright and transparent in your dealings with other people. I can do that, and I’ll bet you can too. And just in case you’d like a more concrete explanation, I’ll give it a try – when marketing, we should lay off the “spammy” hype and be the real deal. What do you think?
As I’ve written before, the fact is, you cannot manage time, but you can manage yourself in time. Time management techniques are intended to help you gain focus so you can provide your attention where it is most needed in order to meet your goals. It is the dilution of your attention away from these priority activities that ruins your personal productivity and spoils your success. Before you can apply time management techniques to strengthen your focus, you must first understand the problems which weaken your focus.
Problem of “Overwhelm”. Multi-tasking is probably one of the biggest myths ever in personal productivity. It was popularized as a way of dealing with numerous stimuli simultaneously, particularly today’s rich multi-media, such as email, Tweeting, blogs, texting, phone interruptions plus others. If you feel overwhelmed by the volume of communication you are called upon to manage and respond to, if you feel like you are unable to focus on your priorities because you are constantly diverted by multi-media messages, then you need to take decisive action.
So to overcome “overwhelm” you must learn a new skill. You’ve got to get comfortable with a new situation. A sense of being overwhelmed precedes growth. Mike Koenig, the video marketing guru and co-creator of Traffic Geyser, and video marketing coach to Anthony Robbins said that the sense of being overwhelmed is a sign that the neurons in your brain are forming new connections to manage the new stimuli and problems your are encountering. In other words, the sense of being overwhelmed can be seen as a sign that help is on the way.
Problem of Distractions. Distractions are real vampires. They siphon off your energy and distract you from your tasks. It is estimated that after a distraction it takes 15 minutes to get your mind completely refocused onto a task. That’s a serious dilution of focus. Most distractions are made by other people. Someone knocks on your door wanting to talk about the game last night. If you work at home it might be a spouse or a child or a neighbor.
So how will you deal with it? Well, first you’ve got to assess it and ask yourself whether it is aligned with your purpose or goals. If it isn’t, then maybe this interruption has no place in your space and it should be stopped or eliminated. That can be difficult and touchy, but sometimes necessary. Depending upon the circumstances, maybe you can simply manage the disruption. For instance it might be fine for the kids to come into your home office in the afternoon when you’re just responding to calls and emails. But not when you are writing advertising copy or articles in the morning. The point is that you should never let distractions disrupt you from your high yield activities.
Problem of Environment. The environment in which you work is perhaps more important than most of my points in this article. The bottom line on environment is this. You cannot have a Million Dollar Thought in the middle of the kids screaming, the dog barking, and the TV rattling at the kitchen table.
Achievers actually utilize their time differently in different environments. For all but just a very few, you can’t do all of your high priority revenue producing tasks in the same environment. Maybe you can’t write copy or ads or build advertising campaigns in your home office. Because in your home office there are phone interruptions, email and Social Media distractions, kids and inboxes…just about everything but intense 100 percent peak mental and physical energy performance. Maybe you need to do your high intensity work at the dining room table early in the morning before the family gets up. Or perhaps you’d like to take your work to a nice table in an isolated corner of the local library.
For me I like to clear my desk and focus on the high intensity things first in the morning. When I’m making videos I like to get out of the office and into a room away from the phone and computer. I like to use the office for more administrative tasks like uploading blog posts and articles, making calls and managing Social Media. And I like to get away when I read for self-improvement. So I use three separate environments. You can experiment with this yourself. The point is that if you try to squeeze all these various levels of activities into one environment, it will dilute your effort and your success.
Time Management Solutions – Getting Your Focus Back. Okay, now it’s time for some practical solutions to improving your productivity. Here they are:
Journaling. Just like a personal trainer logs your daily exercise results for later evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, you should log your activities throughout a week and evaluate them on Friday to see what you’ve really been doing with your time, particularly whether how often and how much time you’ve spent on multi-media and how much on priority tasks.
Blocking Time. Set specific blocks of time aside on your schedule to deal with specific issues. For instance if you are most productive in the mornings, set up one-hour blocks in your morning schedule strictly for your creative and goal-driven tasks. Schedule blocks during the less productive times of the day for managing multi-media, accepting walk-in questions/disruptions, and handling mundane administrative or operations tasks.
Setting Appointments. Just like you set appointments to meet with people to exchange information, set an appointment for you to handle your email, Social Media, texts, and phone messages.
Batching. Batching is when you move multiple tasks to a time slot. Follow the above recommendation to set an appointment to manage your multiple media, but consider carving out two days that you handle only priority tasks. Trust me, the world isn’t going to end if you don’t respond to multi-media on Tuesdays and Thursdays, rather you batch the inquiries and handle them only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays you are free of multi-media altogether.
Goal and Cycle. At the start of each task do two things. First decide what you intend to do before you move to a different task. Then set a finish time. So now you have a goal (what you will accomplish) and a cycle (the start time and finish time). This is very powerful.
Drilling. The fact is, if you’re going to use goal and cycle technique above, you may as well drill yourself to work faster and faster. Studies have shown that people who work fast are sharper thinkers. And if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s exactly what you need.
50 – 10 Technique. I’ve written about a breakthrough technique called the 50 – 10 Technique, where you schedule one-hour blocks of time, use the goal and cycle technique above to determine what you’re going to accomplish, and use a timer to work 50 minutes, then take 10 minutes to walk, rehydrate, get your mind refreshed before returning. This technique keeps you fresh and more productive all day long, preventing exhaustion by the end of the day. If you do nothing else, adopt the 50 – Ten Technique.
There is nothing magical about time management techniques, unless of course by using them you come to realize that the biggest impediment to your ability to focus on your high-yield, goal-driven activities is YOU. Then you can understand the true nature of being overwhelmed and learn to manage it. You can learn to spot distractions in your life and remove them or control them, and you can learn to use the right environment for the right task. If any of the concepts and techniques I have presented in this article help you, then I am honored. Good luck and go focus!
Time management help is often a topic of interest for network marketers and entrepreneurs. I’d like to dispel a commonly held myth about time management; you cannot manage time. It is simply impossible. Time is an artificial dimension based on sequence and interval; nobody can manage a dimension. Ah, but you CAN manage YOURSELF in the dimension of time! You see, there is a big difference in mindset between someone who thinks they’re going to manage time and someone who realistically expects to manage themselves. Clearly the end results are going to be different. I’d also like to make another quick point. Instead of just calling it managing yourself in time, let’s call it what it really is, ‘managing your focus’. Because in reality time management techniques are really designed to help you focus your attention where it is needed most so you can accomplish what you need to accomplish to meet your goals.
Focus is implied in my personal formula for success. You see, I think of success as a proverbial three-legged stool. As you know a three-legged stool must have all three of its legs or it fall over. In my formula for success the three allegorical stool legs are: 1) maintaining peak mental & physical energy and knowledge, 2) Working only on priority activities associated with your goals and purpose, and 3) taking massive action on those activities. A tremendous amount of focus is going to be required to bring 100 percent in each of these categories.
You must focus on peak energy and on goals and purpose in order to bring massive focus in the form of action. Achievers are people who can focus. Achievers are magnetically attractive people; magically other people are attracted to those who have keen focus on a purpose. In fact we call them by names like “visionary”, “leaders”, “winners”, and “captains of industry”, just to name a few. The successes of achievers have been almost always supported by their ability to focus physical and mental energy, purpose-driven priorities, and their follow-through with massive action. This is what achievers do day-in and day-out. This is why it is important for you to manage your ability to focus, and this is exactly what good time management techniques can help you accomplish.
Now, what about you? Are you in peak physical condition? Do you have apex physical energy to call upon in order to endure long-haul and short-term challenge? Do you have the mental energy and knowledge to call upon during this effort? And have you identified your purpose or mission in life and with your business? Have you established a vision of where you want to go in achieving that purpose, and have you set clear, achievable goals that challenge you and keep you driven toward action and success? These are the raw materials that need to be in place before you fine-tune your focus into life-changing and business-changing action toward success.
If you are like most people, you answered “no” to most of these questions. But don’t be discouraged. This is your starting point, not your finish line. These are things you can work to improve. In fact these can become important self-development goals and business planning goals for you in the near future. I wish you well in your journey to success. Good luck!
We all need time management help, and if you’re a network marketer struggling to be productive, you’re going to love this. Not long ago my mentor showed me an incredible time management tool that has increased my productivity dramatically and provided me with noticeably more energy to get through the day. What’s so amazing about this technique is its simplicity. It’s so simple I discounted its value, that is, until I tried it. I know this sounds like a lot of build up but I want you to read it and try it for yourselves.
My mentor, Scott Brandon Hoffman, put me on to this technique about three months ago. This technique has allowed me to focus my energy and attention and get my business rolling. It is only right to point out that Scott got this technique from Eben Pagan, the super star of personal and business development. It’s called the 50-10 technique. Here’s how it works.
Most of us sit down at our computer and get engrossed in our work and don’t stop until we are interrupted or we finally get tired. That can be hours if you’re working at home and it’s late at night and there aren’t any interruptions. Have you done this? When I finally stop I’ll often realize that it’s late and I’m tired and I’ve still not finished what I set out to do. This is exactly what the 50-10 technique prevents. The 50-10 technique directs you to work on your task for 50 minutes and at the end of that 50 minutes stop working, get up and completely change your focus and environment for 10 minutes. This physical and mental break is what makes all the difference in your productivity.
During the 10 minutes you should get away from your work environment entirely, get some water and rehydrate. Then step outside and get some fresh air. If you can it’s good to take a quick walk around the block. But you might want to grab a handful of nuts or a healthy snack. Just make sure not to eat sugar because that can mess with your whole system and ruin the productivity. Sometimes when I don’t walk I’ll work on chores, take out the trash or something. The idea here is to change the environmental and metabolic experience so you don’t get stuck in a rut. It’s when you’re in a rut that your productivity begins to decline, slowly enough that you don’t really notice it, until it’s late and you’re still not done with your task.
But wait, there’s more to it. Another part of the increased productivity is the introduction of a starting AND a stopping time. By focusing your energy into a 50 minute block, you get a sense of your time limitations, you start with a completed task in mind, and you can work without worrying about other tasks. In order to free yourself from watching the clock (a source of interruption every time you look up and check the time) you should get a timer. Eben Pagan recommends using an electronic timer. You set it at 50 minutes and an alarm sounds when the 50 minutes has passed. That way you can free your mind to your task completely with the knowledge that all you have to do is complete the task, or that portion of the task, that you set out to accomplish.
I hope this time management help improves your productivity like it did for me. Oh, I’ve got to wrap up this piece now because my alarm is about to go off. I hope you’ll let me know if this technique helps you by commenting. Good luck with it.
