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The Time to Quit

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Reaching Revenue Goals or Keeping Trick or Treat from Coming More than Once a Year

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Do you like Halloween enough to have a replay of it when you visit your annual revenue figure on December 31?  If you want to guarantee a treat, instead of a trick, when you cast your eyes on the very bottom line at the end of the year, you may need to do a few things now. 

Which of these reactions do you lean toward when it hits you that you only have two months left to reach year-end revenue goals?

• A nearly uncontrollable urge to launch a frenetic flurry of program and year-end sales?

• Or a full-blown, paralytic episode of deer-in-the-headlights syndrome?

The good news is that you’re not destined to live one or the other of these extremes.  But in order to avoid them there is one thing that you’ll need to do right now:

Develop a plan. 

Wait! don’t click away! 

Hey, I know that as four-letter words go, “plan” wins the Most Distasteful award in the hearts and minds of many entrepreneurs.  But wouldn’t it be great if the next trip to your accountant could be as much fun as a trip to Disney?  It can be. 

All you need is an index card and a pencil to create a winning 9-week revenue plan.  And I’ll walk you through it now.

• On the blank side of a 3x5 index card, write the dollar amount that you want to generate between now and the end of the year.

• Write down the thing that you are expert at AND is in the highest demand right now.  Hint: this is the thing that people always ask you questions about.

• List the current products or services that you have “on the shelf” connected to this expertise.

• Pick one of these to focus on for the rest of the year.

Now, flip the index card over.

• Number the lines 1-9 to represent the next 9 weeks.

• Write your pick from number 4 on the back of the card next to the weeks that you will launch this item. Hint: lower investments or items that deliver high-impact results allow for shorter promotional periods.

• Do the math to determine how many participants you need for each launch to reach the dollar amount you wrote for number 1 on the back.

• Fill in the promotional activities associated with each launch on the remaining lines.

Voila and congratulations!  You are the proud owner of a plan!  Now, go forth and execute your plan and prepare to fall in love with visiting your accountant! 

If this sounds great but leaves you less than crystal clear about how to get it done, CLICK HERE and I’ll fill you in on how you can get your hand held through the process.

Got Stress?

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Creating Social Networking Balance

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All things have a cycle or stages.  One of the most awkward and difficult stages of life is puberty.  Not only is it tough on you when you’re in it, it’s a rough ride for the people around you too.

Believe it or not, there is a social networking equivalent to puberty.  I call it Twuberty and it’s a natural part of the cycle many entrepreneurs go through on the road to embracing social networking.  The process goes something like this:

• Labor – This is a place where resistance wrangles with resignation.  You’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that social networking needs to become part of your marketing plan but you’re pretty ticked off about it.   

If you’re here you know what I mean.  You don’t want to learn something new or figure out how to add one more thing to your already busy schedule.  These tug of war contractions continue until acceptance is finally born - often accompanied by tears, like most newborns.

• Infancy - You’ve reluctantly taken the plunge but find yourself whining about it a lot and wishing someone else could just socialize for you.  Full blown temper-tantrums that include screaming at your computer screen are not uncommon at this stage.


• The formative years – You’re not sure exactly when it happened but one day you notice that you’re actually enjoying tweeting and growing fake vegetables on cyber farms.  You’ve done a complete 180 and gone from, “I’ll never understand what the big deal about this is,” to, “I can’t believe I waited so long to get on board.  I LOVE social networking!”


• Twuberty - As quickly as you fell in love, you fall out of it and with as much warning – none.  You suddenly realize that you’ve become obsessed with looking for some tweet to re-tweet or a YouTube video to post on your wall and you fear you might soon succumb to tweeting about what’s on your breakfast plate!  You’re angry.  You feel tricked and trapped and are quite sure it is someone else’s fault that you feel this way.  You begin to doubt the value of this social networking thing after all.

I’m not making this up.  I have watched more people than I can count travel this exact path.  Twuberty is your moment of truth - the place that separates the men and women from the boys and girls. 

If you are able to pause, take a deep breath and resist the urge to toss the baby out with the bathwater, you may just move into the final step:

• Maturity – The place where you find your sense of social media balance and cross into virtual bliss.  The place where obsession is replaced by strategy.  The place where profitable business relationships begin to take form.

The good news about all this is that it’s usually a pretty quick process; taking just days for some and weeks for others and never more than three months, in my experience.

The even better news is that there now exists a tool to help you get to maturity faster and provides firm and steady support once you get there.  It’s called the KISS’em Klub and I’d love to tell you all about it. 
 

If you’d like to share your experience with social media life cycle, leave a comment.

How to Create a 25-Hour Day

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Okay, so I can’t really teach you how to manufacture more time.  But I do have a couple of simple tricks that will make you feel like you can.

The fastest way to start running your time ship tighter is by getting a grip on a top time gobbler: email.  Here are just a few ideas that will let you get your email inbox under control – beginning today!

The super-duperest secret weapon of time management

It’s so simple, yet so powerful.  Batching.  It’s the quickest and easiest way to buy back a chunk of your life each day.  Here are some ways to put it into action:

• For outgoing email:  This works great with folks you have to communicate with often, like a VA (virtual assistant), certain clients or team members. 

When you realize you have something to share or delegate, create an email; but instead of clicking ‘send’, save the message as a draft.  When another thought or task comes to mind, add it to the draft and click ‘send’ just once, at the end of the day.

This puts an immediate end to lengthy send/reply email conversations.

Hint: if you really want to streamline the process, ask the other party to respond within the body of your sent message.  Here’s a sample of the format I use now with my assistant.  ***precedes her reply.

Hi Karen,

1.  Can you schedule an appointment with client X for next week?

***ok

2.  Did you receive the information about this month’s MYB guest?

***not yet, I’ll send a reminder today.

• EOM For outgoing email:  When sending a message that you can completely contain in the subject line, use EOM, (end of message) to let the recipient know that’s the whole thing.  It saves you from having to type a subject line and a message.  It also saves the recipient from having to click to open, then click to delete or respond.

Like this:  Subject: Going Soul-o template all set for this week-EOM

• Batch your email tasks: Be the master of your email, not the other way around.  For example, you might want to check your email in the morning, move things that need a reply to a folder called “reply needed.”  Then, at the end of the day, go back to that folder and reply. 

Of course, you need to be flexible and deviate when something warrants immediate attention. 

Saving a click here and there may sound silly and like it won’t make a difference.  And if you send and receive only ten emails a day, it probably won’t.  But when your daily email flow is in the dozens or hundreds, believe me, you’ll be happy for every click you can conserve! 

Don’t take my word for it. Try it.  Then come back and leave a comment about how it’s impacting your life.