I’ve spent a lot of time and effort learning how to actually become productive and get tasks done started on well ahead of their deadline.  That doesn’t mean I’m not pressed to finish items by the time their due, but it does mean they actually get done without me and the team having to spend the night sleeping at the office.

But instead of a comprehensive guide to stop procrastinating today, I just want to focus on the start to your day. There is a lot of advice from business leaders, including Brian Tracy in Eat That Frog, that tells you to start each day with the thing you want to do the least or is the most difficult.

While that may be fine and well for some people, it’s terrible advice for the professional procrastinator. I’ve personally tried it and hated it. The result was me sleeping later, doing everything I possibly could to avoid starting my work day.

The very advice that was supposed to make my day more relaxing and productive by getting that undesirable task out of the way actually made it more stressful and less productive.

So here’s what I’ve found to work a whole lot better. I start each day with something easy. It allows me to ease into my work day and get something productive done. I can look forward to getting started on my work because I know that my first task of the day is one I can easily handle and will enjoy doing.

I start with just 30 minutes of uninterrupted work on my easy project. And that is enough to overcome the “hump” and to get going.

Once you’ve gotten started on work and you’ve done something easy, it really doesn’t seem too daunting to start on that task or project you’ve been avoiding.

Let me give you an experiment to do. Go turn on your faucet and turn the water to a temperature that is just a little too hot to be comfortable for you to touch… not scalding – we don’t want you to get burned, but just uncomfortably warm. Measure the temperature of the water and write it down.

Now go ahead and turn the faucet on again, but this start the water lukewarm and slowly increase the temperature of the water, just nudging it up little by little. Keep going until slowly until you get back to the point where the water is again uncomfortably warm.   Write down the temperature of the water again.

What you’ve probably found is that the temperature of several degrees higher the second time around because you allowed your body to acclimate and adjust to the slowly increasing water temperature.

You could just as easily do this experiment in the shower in the morning.

This same principle can be the same for you in your business. If you can get started with something easy each day, it’s like turning on the water at a comfortable temperature. Once you’re already started, tackling the difficult task won’t seem so bad each day and you’ll get it done without stressing out about it.

You can look forward to your day in the morning because you know it’s going to start with something you like or don’t mind doing.  And really, half the battle to getting things done is to get them started.

Give it a try for a week and let me know what you think.

And no offense to McDonald’s employees but some of them aren’t necessarily the brightest crayons in the box, know what I mean?

So how is it that these kids do what most people can’t?

They have a system. In fact, they have many systems.

There is a procedure in place for absolutely everything.

Although I never worked at a fast food restaurant, my job in high school was broken down into checklists. In the morning, when I went to work, the first thing I had to do was clean up from the night before.  There was a two page checklist and an order that I was to do everything in so I simply followed my directions and nothing was every forgotten and a good job was done every time.

I eventually memorized the entire thing but got it out every morning just to be sure I did everything.   Since I had a checklist to follow, I knew that there was no excuse for forgetting to do anything so I always double checked.

Systems. Procedures. Checklists.

These are all critical for successful businesses.

I was recently going through my business and even though me sending email generally results in me making more money, I wasn’t sending emails very often. In fact, I wasn’t even sending them once a month. If I felt like writing an email, I would. Otherwise, I wouldn’t send out an email to any of my lists.

So I started to make checklists of things that need to be done every work day for myself and eventually for my team as well. Now writing an email and sending it to my list is on there. I don’t send a promotion every day and since I have a lot of different lists, the same people aren’t be contacted each and every day, but the results of have been undeniable. I’m making quite a bit more money every month.

Whether your have an office full of people or you’re a solo operator working from home, making your own checklists will be immensely helpful to you. Figure out what daily actions need to be done to make more money in your business, put them on a checklist, and go do them. If you don’t know what are the best actions to take, then just make your best guess and do those things. If you see results, keep them on the checklist. If they don’t help your business, ten take them off the checklist and add something different.

Get out there and develop your business building system and you’ll have a successful business in no time.

There is still plenty of money to be made from the Internet and it should be an important cog in overall marketing strategy, however, the cutting edge is moving away from your computer to something a bit smaller and it’s something that’s probably already sitting in your pocket… your cell phone.

The cell phone has becoming the dominant way people communicate with each other and it’s also become a device that delivers entertainment and news. New smartphones are really becoming a universal remote control… for your entire life.

So how do you make money from it? That’s the billion dollar question.

While money is being made in providing the platforms (cell phone manufacturers – Motorola, Apple, RIM) and the gateway (you cell phone provider – Verizon, AT&T, Sprint), that really isn’t where the opportunity is.

The real money is going to be in mobile advertising.

Being an early adopter and a pioneer in this field doesn’t come delivered on a nice silver platter.

It still isn’t as well understood as what works on the Internet.  Yes, the fundamentals are still effective (otherwise they wouldn’t be fundamentals).  The real challenge is in adapting the fundamentals to the advertising medium.

Just like people were hesitant to spend money on the Internet at first, advertising on phones right now is receiving plenty of resistance from consumers and response rates can be pretty low when trying to deliver a full, complicated marketing message.

Simple, easy to understand offers tend to work best.

Marketing Effects offers a few different mobile marketing solutions and if that’s something your business is interested in implementing, feel free to give us a call at (402) 608-1121 to discuss what options are available and what strategies will be most effective for your business.

These days we’re bombarded with information everywhere we turn. If you run an online business, you probably are contacted by people every day who claim to have all the answers to making your website a success and all you need to do is whip our your credit card, and they’ll teach you everything they know.

And, of course, you go along with it because we’ve been trained to become “well rounded” individuals.   That’s what we’re taught in school, right. You need to know a little bit of everything in order to be a successful individual.

<i>Bunch of Malarky!</i>

You don’t need to know a little bit of everything.   You need to know a lot about one thing.

Pro Tip: Focus on one thing at a time, and do that one thing well. Then you can move onto the next thing.

What you really need to do is pick on system for building your business and stick with it. Commit to it and put the blinders on to all other opportunities.

Early on, I found that I had my best success when I picked just one thing and focused on doing that well instead of trying to learn everything all at once.

If you really want to succeed and make money, you need to go on a low information diet.

You can become a well rounded internet marketer later.

So many courses get it completely wrong. They want you to be exposed to as much as possible. They teach you a little of this, a little of that. They want you to be able to see the big picture. The problem is that it’s overwhelming to try to learn it all at once. In fact, you’re much more likely to say there’s just too much to do and do nothing than you are to just get started with what you can.

I like to take a very different approach.   I take one topic, get specific, and really dig down until it’s completely covered.   Then it’s time to put on the blinders and get going on it until it’s done. Once I’m done, I can move on to something else, but not until then.

As an example, I’m not really a well rounded person.   I don’t keep up to date with current events – I have no idea what’s going on in the world (except for really big stuff) other than what I hear from friends when I’m out having a beer. For me, that’s where I’ve decided to keep my information limited.

My business, Marketing Effects, really isn’t well rounded either – we’ve added a few services over the years but we stick to just a few instead of trying to be a jack of all trades in marketing.  Our team is really good at a few things (like SEO, Google Places, mobile marketing, and Pay Per Click) but there are plenty of things you’d never in a million years hire my company to do for you simply because we’re not any good at it.

So decide where you’re going to start and get going. Forget about this notion that you’ll make the wrong decision. It’s more likely that if you make a decision, any decision, you’ll do better than if you spend a lot of time waffling and trying to make the perfect decision.

For the entrepreneur, there is no resource more limited than time.

There are 24 hours in a day.  No matter what you do, that’s all you get.

Some of those you have to spend sleeping.  Some have to be spent eating, and there are a variety of other activities that take up our time.

So making sure you’re making the most out of the time you do have and making sure you’re spending it where it’s going to be most effective, is absolutely critical to your success.

We’ll be spending today’s lesson covering how to becoming more productive starting today!

So let’s get started.

And what better topic to start with than getting started.

Us business owners typically don’t have much trouble getting started.  Myself, I’m a professional starter.  I love to start new projects.  The problem is that finishing isn’t nearly as much fun as starting.

So here’s what I’ve learned to do.

Once I start on a project, I work on it in 30-60 minute increments.   I actually have a little timer on my computer that rings and when it rings, I stop what I’m doing (if possible) and take a short break, 2-5 minutes.

Then as soon as break time is over, I start on the project again.   I don’t worry about finishing.  The trick is simply to start.

Make sense?

And here’s where the magic happens.  If you just start for 30 minutes, and you keep starting, the project gets finished.  You never need to worry about finishing anything (the idea of finishing things can be pretty intimidating – I know it is to me), all you need to worry about is starting.  Eventually, you’ll find that in the middle of a 30 minute work block, your work is done.

I’ve written in depth manuals in one weekend using this technique and used it to record, edit and produce entire DVDs in a couple days simply by starting for 30 minutes – once you’ve got the ball rolling, it’s amazingly easy to keep going.

Deciding What To Do

Of course, if you’re going to be productive, you need to spend your time doing the right things.

If your business is in crisis mode, it’s actually pretty easy to decide what to do.

You may want to write this down and hang it up on the wall (you could carve it on a stone tablet, but those tend to be tougher to hang up):

Do Whatever Is Going To Make You The Most Money The Fastest

If you have several ideas that you all think are equally good, then pick one (throw darts, pull ‘em out of a hat, doesn’t matter) and do that one.  Finish Keep starting on that task until it’s done.   Then move on to the next one.

If you have a lengthy, complex project that you think is going to make you a heck of a lot of money but it will take months to complete, put that project on the back burner for a bit and pick a project that you think will take days or even hours.   Do that one first.

How To Spend Your Time

How should a business owner spend the bulk of their time?  It tends to vary pretty wildly, but here’s a pretty good formula for success.  (learned this from Internet Marketing legend, John Reese).

Spend 50% of your time creating.

Spend 30% of your time promoting.

Everything else needs to fit in that 20% of time.

Let’s break it down so you can see some of the activities that fit into each category.

Category 1 – 50% of Your Time – Creating

• Creating New Products
• Testing Your Ideas For Your New Products And Proving They Work
• Writing Blog Posts
• Recording Video
• Doing Interviews

Category 2 – 30% of Your Time – Promoting

• Writing Ads
• Writing Emails
• Setting up Joint Venture relationships
• Search engine optimization
• Pay per click
• Banner Ads
• Offline Advertising

Category 3 – 20% of Your Time – Everything Else

• Customer Service
• Managing Your People
• Bookkeeping / Accounting
• Reading Forums / checking email / Playing on Facebook / Updating Twitter

There are more things you can do of course in each category, but that covers a lot of the big ones where people spend entrepreneurs their time.  (And if you have an actual physical store, spending your time running the register is not the correct place for you to hang out – that’s what your employees are for.)

Massive Action?

Motivational and success speakers love to use this little gem – massive action.  They’ll tell you that in order to be successful, you need to take massive action.   And when you’re sitting in a conference, you actually feel really pumped up like you really can take massive action just like the speaker tells you to.

Problem is as soon as you get back home, that whole massive action thing sounds like a pretty daunting task.  The truth is that trying to take massive action is a lot like trying to eat an elephant all at once – you can’t do it.

Instead of trying to take massive action, you need to take little actions.  And then you keep repeating them.

So let’s take a project, any big project.  (If you don’t have one in mind, let’s pretend you’re trying to write a book)

When you look at the “big picture” or the whole thing it once, it’s easy to become discouraged and think it’s just too much work, it’s too hard, or it will take too long.

And even if you’re able to just sit down and get going on it, it’s easy to get discouraged because you feel like you’re not making any progress.

So here’s what you do.

Breaking Down A Project

You want to take the project and break it down into small, manageable parts.  If we use the example of a book, we would break the book down into chapters first.  Then we’d break it down further and break each chapter into a series of sub-topics.

Writing a book = hard

Writing a sub-topic for a book = easy

And there’s no rule that says you need to start at the beginning of a project.  If you’re having trouble getting started, pick the easiest part to start on wherever that is.

For example, when I’m doing my writing (books, manuals, articles, heck even this lesson), the beginning is almost always the last part I do.

Getting Stuck

What happens when you get stuck?  It happens.  You’ll be cruising along and suddenly you hit a snag where you’re not sure what to do.  Let’s go back to the writing example again.

You’re writing a section of your book and you realize you wanted to use a quote or statistic but you never actually got it.  Now you could go try to track it down, but if you’re in the flow, that’ll stop you dead in your tracks.  Just make something up that and then mark your text like this [******INSERT CORRECT STATS HERE****].

That’ll catch your eye when you go back and get the correct info and it won’t slow you down.

But what if you run into a problem you can’t easily solve.  Maybe you’re trying to setup your shopping cart and you’re not sure how to integrate it with your merchant provider.

Hop on over to a site like Scriplance.com or Rentacoder.com and post your problem – offer to pay someone 5 or 10 bucks if they can do it for you and then record a video on how they did it so you know for next time.  Your tech problem is now solved.

It’s almost always cheaper in the long run to pay for the answer than to spend hours trying to figure it out yourself.

Deadlines

I don’t remember who said it anymore, but I was once told “man’s greatest invention is the deadline, because without it there would be no other inventions.”

And for the most part he’s right.

Deadlines push us to get things done that we’d otherwise put off.   I think just about every college student I’ve ever met has pulled an all-nighter here and there cramming for a test or finishing a report they’d been putting off.

I know for me during finals week, I was always good for one or two.  Rough, but I survived as does everyone else.

For a business owner, you’re not necessarily going to have someone setting deadlines for you so you need to set your own.  And it can be tough to get back in the habit of meeting deadlines if you’ve been avoiding it for a while, but once you get back in the swing of things, it’s just like riding a bike.  Your productivity will soar.

Distractions

Distractions will kill your productivity.  Plain and simple.   And it’s easy to get caught up in what lifestyle master Dean Jackson calls the OCD loop.

Looks a little something like this.

• Get up
• Go to office
• Check email
• Reply to emails
• Post on Twitter
• Check for voicemail
• Return calls
• Check stats
• Make sure campaigns are working
• Check website rankings
• Browse forums
• Check the news
• Check email
• Reply to emails
• Post on Twitter
• ******repeat loop until it’s time to quit working for the day

We now have so many distractions in our lives that we can spend our entire day focusing on distractions under the illusion that we’re actually getting productive work done.

Here’s an easy way to get rid of a lot of those distractions.  Turn off your Internet connection.  Then turn off your phone.  You’ll quickly find yourself with a whole lot less distractions and you can now get some work done.

Comfort

Is your working environment comfortable?  Are you able to focus on the task at hand.  If not, fix that… right now.

Now keep in mind this varies a lot from person to person.

For some people, they enjoy working in their home office.  For others, they absolutely need an office that isn’t at home in order to get anything done.

For me, I take my laptop to a local coffee shop and I can work for hours on projects that I’d only get about 30 minutes of work in at my home office.   (I focus better when there is noise and people around me.)

For Internet marketing rockstar, John Reese, he prefers his recliner because that’s where he’s most comfortable.  (I’ve actually tried it, it’s actually kind of nice once in a while.)

Find a place that’s comfortable for you and work there.  If that’s your kitchen table, then have at it.  If it’s sitting in your bed with your trusty laptop, go for it.  If it’s sitting in your living room using your plasma television as a monitor, do it.

You’re an entrepreneur, the head hancho, the big cheese, not an office drone – there’s no need to lock yourself in a cubicle all day (unless you’re into that sort of thing).

Planning

This is the last thing I want to talk about is planning.  It’s far easier to be productive and get things done when you have a list of targets for the day.   I prefer to think of them as targets instead of goals, because it’s okay to miss targets.  You can always try to hit a target again.  If you don’t achieve your goals, it can be kind of disheartening.

So at the end of each work day, take 5 or 10 minutes to make a list of targets for the next day.  The next day when you are getting started, you’ll already have most if not all of your day planned out.  All you need to do is get started.

And at the end of each work week, make a list of targets you’d like to achieve the next week.

At the end of each work month, well, you get the picture, right?

Okay, we’re 2,000 words into this here.  I’m sure I could carry on for another 2,000 or so, but the point of this workshop isn’t to have you spend all your time reading what I wrote… so let’s get to today’s objective.

Homework  Assignment

Make a list of ideas that you think will make you money the fastest.  Pick one to work on.  Break it down into small, manageable pieces.  Take 30 minutes to start on that first piece – pick a piece that’s easy and that you know you can do.  If you feel like continuing, then by all means, keep going (just remember to limit yourself to 30 minutes at a time).  And you are hereby forbidden to put in more than 3hrs on this project today (that’s six, 30 minute sessions).

Who wouldn’t?

While earning money online sure as heck can beat shoveling horse manure for a living or roofing, there is still a certain amount of effort that goes into making money online.

As a consultant, and business coach, I’ve run into this “easy money syndrome” time and time again.

Let me tell a story from a speech I gave back in 2006.  I was invited to speak at a seminar and I decided to reveal my strategy for building profitable websites.  I managed to cram as much into the hour I was allotted and a lot of people were taking furious notes to try to keep up.

After I finished my presentation, one guy came up and wanted me to clarify a few points in my presentation because he thought he misunderstood what I was saying when I said there was actually manual labor and work that went into doing this.

He wanted an automated solution to do all the work for him. I told him it was a bad idea and it wasn’t sustainable. He gave me this perplexed look, then decided what I was saying was just too much work and pursued a fully automated solution.

I ran into him 18 months later… he had to go back and get a job because he found he couldn’t make enough money with his “easy money” method.  My strategies were still working and continue to work to this day.

The Paradox

While there is such a thing as “easy money” on the internet, I’ll tell you the problem with it. Everybody is looking for it and when it’s found, it’s just like a gold rush back in the 1800s. The first few people who get there make a fortune. Another few make a fortune selling shovels. Everyone else loses.

I don’t look for easy methods anymore because there’s no long term future there. I look for opportunities that use the skills I have, can acquire, or can buy (hire), that other people don’t or simply won’t do.

Find areas where you have an advantage you can maintain vs trying to find something easy that everyone can do. If it truly would work for everybody, it’s a bad business because they will and you’ll quickly find yourself undercut by people willing to work harder for less pay.

If you want to have a business that will be around a few years from now, focus on the aspects that require a little thought and effort to implement.

Newspaper circulation has been declining slowly over the past two decades, but over the past three years, there has been a sharp drop in circulation numbers with many newspapers reporting double digit percentage drops in their daily circulation.

However, Sunday editions continue to the lone bright spot for most newspapers with circulations numbers dropping much more slowly or even rising slightly even while daily numbers continue to plummet.

What It Means To You

As a small business owner, you’re probably wondering how this will affect your business.  If you’ve been highly dependent on the daily newspaper to bring in your customers over the years, it’s a good time to start looking at other sources as many newspapers are considering publishing less often and there may not be a daily edition of your local newspaper for much longer.

If you only advertising in the Sunday edition, you can expect that to stick around for years to come but don’t expect advertising to become any cheaper even if there are fewer eyeballs reading the paper.

Effective Newspaper Advertising – Best Practices

While not as effective as it used to be, newspapers can still be a good way to bring new customers into your business and with a demographic skewing older and more affluent, it’s an attractive market to target for many businesses but if you’re going to do it, you should take the time to do it right.

Here are some tips:

Grab Attention

Your newspaper ad needs to grab attention.  Almost nobody is going to pick up a copy of the newspaper hoping to find your ad running – maybe your mother or spouse, but that’s about it.  For everyone else, you need your ad to grab attention.

If your only goal is to get the name out for your business, you’re going to find yourself spending far more money than necessary.

Make An Offer

When you get done creating your ad, ask yourself what reason that person has for acting right now.  A newspaper is meant to be read and thrown away the next day.  That means you need to give the reader a reason to either cut out your ad or pick up the phone or visit your website right away.

That means giving them a special offer that’s only available for a limited time.  It doesn’t have to be a discount, it just needs to be an offer of some type that will compel the reader to act now instead of turning the page and forgetting about your ad.

Negotiate

Don’t pay the rate you’re quotes – ever!  Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.  Newspapers need to sell the space in their newspapers to someone.  If they have unsold spaces, it ends up being sold very cheaply as remnant space so they’d rather sell it to you even if they have to sell it at a discount.

But don’t expect to be given the discount if you don’t ask – you have to negotiate.

Advertise Regularly

For media like newspapers, television, and radio, being in the regular rotation and being seen often by the same people is key.  It’s often been said that people need to see your ad 7 times before they buy or pick up the phone to learn more about your products or services.

That means that running a big full page ad here and there is likely to be far less effective than a smaller Sunday ad that runs every week in the same section of the newspaper.  You want to advertise in the same section every week because that will put you in front of the same people again and again.  Remember that in advertising familiarity = trust.

One tip that professionals will tell you is that even when you’re advertising regularly, you need several different ads to rotate so none get stale.

However, most people take the role of the hare and go all out guns blazing only to fizzle out shortly thereafter.

Maybe you’ve done it too.  Perhaps you’ve gone to a seminar and come back with a big list of changes you’re going to make to improve your business.

Maybe you’ve stuck to them for a week or two but slowly but surely, those changes didn’t stick and you and your employees all went back to the way things, mainting the status quo.

The reason is due to the fact that making big changes is very uncomfortable for most people and we tend to want to return to what we knew. So we end up sabotaging ourselves and returning to what we’re comfortable with.

To make big, lasting changes, the real trick is to make small ones.

Let me explain.

Let’s say your goal is to increase the profits of your business (isn’t that what we’re all aiming for?)

If you could make a 1% improvement in your business’s bottom line profits each day – just 1% will make your business grow by a factor of 37 in a year – that’s right 37x more than it makes right now.

For those who want to see the math, here’s how it works (if you’ve every done compounding interest, it’s the same).

1*(1+1%)^365=37.78

Making a 1% improvement is doable, right? If your website was getting 100 visitors a day, then all you need to do is get one more.

You can try increasing your website by 1%, can’t you?

Maybe you want to increase the conversion rate of your website. Instead of converting 1 in 100, see if you can convert 1.01 in 100 people.

Can you make yourself 1% more productive?

These small changes will add up over time in a big way. Instead of looking for the big and scary changes, look for the small and easy improvements to make.

You’re probably more likely to get your employees on board with this too as you’re not asking too much of them or overwhelming them with what sound like “unreasonable” demands.  Just ask them to come up with one small thing that would help them do their job just a little better.

Success in business and in your personal life really can be just a small change away because once you make one small improvement; it’s easy to make another one.   You just need to remember to keep making them. Keep looking for little improvements you can make.

These days everyone wants to know how they can use all these new fangled social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to make their business more profitable.

While it can be a major boon for any small business to have a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter account, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way.  Many of the old rules that we’ve all learned about marketing in the past simply don’t apply here.

Making matters worse, if you do it wrong, it can do more harm to your business than good.

If you’d like getting your Facebook Fanpage setup and getting started with Twitter, then please call (888) 666-0974 to discuss how we can help you use social media the right way.

All the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing have their own programs and so does Facebook.

Unfortunately, managing all of those campaigns and getting traffic cost effectively can be a bit of a nightmare for many small business owners who are already busy running their business.

But now you can have your cake and eat it too. Let Marketing Effects run and manage your Pay Per Click marketing campaigns.

Whether you just need someone to optimize your campaign one time or you need our complete monthly managed solutions, just call one of our pay per click marketing specialists at (888) 666-0974 to get started.