Month: July 2017

I’ve talked in the past
about starting now,
about how we shouldn’t wait
to build our businesses.

Starting a business
and opening a business
are two different things, however.

I plan to finish a book
this month.
To maximize sales,
I won’t release that book
until September.

How long to wait
and when
to open a business
depends on the business.

I talked to the owner
of a toy store
yesterday.
Sales in his industry
are concentrated in December.
He opened his store in May.
That means he has to survive
SEVEN months
without half-decent sales.

Work on your business today.
There are a gazillion things
to be done before a business opens.

Open your business
when it makes the most sense
sales-wise.

I officially run
a one-woman business.
I’m the only full-time employee.

But the only reason
I can do that
and be successful
is by delegating some tasks
to other business partners.

As I grow,
I suspect I will delegate
even more tasks.

Kevin Kruse
shares

“Ultra-productive people don’t ask,
“How can I do this task?”
Instead they ask,
“How can this task get done?”
They take the “I” out of it
as much as possible.

Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues
and they are not micro-managers.
In many cases good enough is,
well, good enough.”

Delegate tasks.

Every once in a while,
I take a cyber vacation.
I take a break from social media.
I only check email once a day.

Why?

Because this trains me
to dial back
responding to messages.
I concentrate on the tasks
I have to complete.

Kevin Kruse
shares

“Ultra-productive people
don’t “check” email
throughout the day.
They don’t respond
to each vibration or ding
to see who has intruded their inbox.

Instead,
like everything else,
they schedule time
to process their email
quickly and efficiently.

For some
that’s only once a day,
for me,
it’s morning, noon and night.”

Consider limiting
your access to email and other messages.

When I worked
in New Business Development
for a major beverage company,
we would spend time
every year
with the customer.

Not to sell them anything.
Not to talk about our products.

We would spend time
following our customer around
as she went through her normal day.

We would do this
with our immediate customers,
the stores we sold into,
following,
for example,
the employee who stocked
the shelves.

And we would do this
with our final customers,
following,
for example,
the mom of two
as she went through
a typical shopping trip.

Knowing our customers
allowed us
to better design our products
to make them happy.

Consider living
like your customer
for a day.

I love my to-do lists
but I don’t simply
list the tasks.
I schedule the tasks
in my calendar.

Having a time slot
for the tasks
increases the odds of
completing them.

And this is easy to do
in today’s world.
We can access our calendars
at any time
from any where
with our phones.

Jordan Harbinger,
co-founder of
The Art of Charm,
shares

“Use a calendar
and schedule your entire day
into 15-minute blocks.
It sounds like a pain,
but this will set you up
in the 95th percentile…”

Don’t simply list your tasks.
Schedule them.

I’m a USA Today Bestselling writer.
I have a readership
many writers dream of having.
I’ve been writing my entire life
and have taken hundreds of courses.

I’m taking a writing course this week
and on the FIRST day,
I learned something new.

You don’t know everything
there is to know
about your industry.
You don’t.
That’s impossible to do.

And what you don’t know
might be holding you back,
might be hindering your success.

Take a course.
Read a book.
Talk to an expert.
Expand your knowledge.

It can’t hurt you
and it will likely help you.