Operating dozens of internet sites, producing 12 highly successful information products, contributing weekly to InfoMarketer’sZone, consulting with dozens of individuals and continuing to build 4 separate businesses – I often get asked, “how do you get it all done!”
Yes, I get a TON of stuff done and still manage to see my kids off to school, spend time with them when they get home, spend 80% of my weekends with my family and seldom miss major events with my family or friends, and yes – like many others I constantly strive to be more productive, but there are some important points that I can share on being more productive when it comes to building and growing your own business
Try!
Look, 90% of the people who ask the question about “How do I get things done” have not yet committed to just trying 110% in their business. What they are voicing is doubt or curiosity about what it REALLY takes to operate a massively growing business.
Know What You Are Good At
This one’s big…most people spend time complaining or trying to improve things they are NOT good at and have very little interest or passion around. Much of this comes from two main sources
- We are trained in school to work on our weaknesses instead of leveraging our strengths. Not a day goes by when I don’t drill it into my kids that you need to be aware and leverage what you are good at and what you love to do rather than spending ALL your time on things you are not good at.
- Trend chasing…the propensity we all have in looking for success outside of ourselves means we are always pursuing someone else’s dream – we see their passion or success and assume that we need to follow in their path.
You can be ABSOLUTELY sure about one thing…what worked for someone else has a good chance of not working for YOU, but on the flip side, what works for YOU may not work for others…so make sure you are discovering what will work for you.
That means getting to know what you are good at, what your strengths are and what passion/purpose lights that fire that burns within you and turns you into an amazing success — a great blueprint for tapping into your own personal power is Attracting Greatness…the only complete blueprint for complete life & financial success I have used.
Fail Fast – Succeed BIG!
I’ve written about this before, every successful person I know is different in one fundamental way than those that have yet to achieve their dreams…they expect, embrace and even plan for setbacks because they KNOW the fastest way to learn how to do something really well is to test, get a result, modify and improve. Rarely will your first test be successful whether you are learning to walk, ride a bike, speak a new language, become a star athlete, build a loving relationship or become a superstar business entrepreneur.
But guaranteed…if you are afraid to fail or if you play it safe and make sure you do not experience setbacks your climb to success will be much longer and tougher in the end.
The way to get things done faster and see results sooner is to expect setbacks and set out to experience them knowing you will learn valuable lessons each time which will give you INSIDE information on how to improve and see better results the next time.
I hear so many people that I call “WANNABE Entrepreneurs” complain about the smallest of setbacks, if that is your attitude then go get a job with someone else NOW and save yourself further pain and suffering.
Becoming a successful, productive, results-oriented entrepreneur requires that you improve your own self-confidence to a level where you can handle ANY rejection, setbacks or failures knowing that they are only temporary and provide highly valuable insight into what WILL work in the future
Get Involved With Your Market
Want to speed up your results, gain an advantage over 99% of your competition, create an infinite pipeline of business and product ideas that your customers desperately want AND finally know the secret to having the “golden touch” where everything you produce hits the mark in your marketplace?
Then you MUST engage with your marketplace. How?
- Watch and study places where they interact – discussion forums, review sites, social networking sites
- Study products they buy in great numbers and ask WHY? What are the topics in magazines, books, courses that are top sellers in your marketplace? What problem or frustration are they meeting for your customer?
- Feed online prospects into surveys, lists, blogs, social networking sites, teleseminars where your PLAN is to find out more about your prospects. Let them tell you what they want, when and why
- Don’t be afraid to offer consulting services, but do it with the plan to learn from your market and then leverage the results. When I consult, even at $250/hour I don’t make as much as I would if I put that time into product creation or marketing – but I do it because it teaches me about the market, gives me instant feedback, new ideas and allows me to build and test products on the fly…all invaluable to my broader business objectives
Getting involved with your market is the fastest and most accurate method I know to ramp up your business and get more done while guaranteeing better results
Leverage (Product development, affiliates)
Entrepreneurs should always, always, always be thinking leverage.
Here are some examples of leverage – see how much of a difference this can make in terms of effort versus result:
- You put 4-weeks into developing an information product on how to overcome the pain of arthritis that sells for $97 and remains on the market for 5-years. Is that a valuable use of 4-weeks? Imagine if you had have put that 4-weeks into selling someone else’s product or some other task that resulted in short-term results — you would have lost out on the remaining 5-years of profit possibly meaning $Millions in lost profit
- When you own the rights to your own products (ebooks, info products, training programs, software, etc… you also have the ability to tap into channels of authority website owners, blog owners and social networking personalities on the web – in exchange for some of the profits they can bring you Millions in added sales. Now that is leverage
- Using the strength you have in your market, the fact that you have your own product (if you don’t – use the simple systems inside InfoMarketer’sZone to make sure you do) to attract partners to help leverage their expertise with yours and turn a $27 ebook into a $997 coaching program with a partner leveraging your profits by a factor of 2oX!
Ask yourself, how can you build leverage into your business model? When decisions come up in your business, ask yourself “Does this provide me with a leverage opportunity?”
Have a Daily Action Plan
Design a plan around the principles of Execution (Trying), Optimizing Your Strengths, Testing and Failure Feedback, Getting Involved With Your Market and Leverage – so that you have a monthly, weekly and even daily plan of execution so that when the distractions that tempt us each day come up, we can stay on track focused on the ultimate goal of our business.
Entrepreneurs have laser-focus… have you ever been tuned into a song, movie, TV show or video game to the point where you lose track of time or where you are unaware of life around you?
That is the focus you want to bring to your own internet business…having a plan of execution so that you remove uncertainty over what you should be doing in the time you have each day to put toward your business is critical to stay productive.
How do I get things done?
It turns out there is very little magic, but a great deal of experience and knowledge resulting in a very set plan of attack. Now, put your plan into action and soon you will see yourself getting more things done.
Entrepreneurship Training has to be built into Curricula at every level of Education – from Primary to Higher Education and Lifelong Education.
Agreed – now not everyone is ready for or has the desire to make them a successful entrepreneur at a given point in time, but at least they should be trained to think like an entrepreneur – absolultely!