Founder & editor of five sites and newly-published author of dating rules book, Memoirs of a Dating Dad. Daniel lives in Florida with his two sons and Fiancee, JenB.

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This article, How to Use Pinterest to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings, is syndicated from http://bosmol.com and is reposted here with permission.
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The topic of my last post dealt with the health and maintenance of your business. This week’s post is brought to you by Amber Callahan, founder of PlantFit.  She is going to talk to us about the importance of maintaining your own health, especially as busy entrepreneurs.

This is a lesson that I have had to learn over and over again in my life.  One would think that it would not take multiple experiences to learn that you have to take care of yourself in order to take care of those around you and accomplish your goals.

In the last four months I have been through several changes: I quit my salaried job in public education, became an independent contractor as a personal trainer and launched my own website, PlantFit.  For three of those four months I worked at both my full time education job and trained at the gym in the evenings and Saturday mornings.  Oh, and did I mention that I am mother to a two year and an eight year old boy and a wife?  There was more than one time over those three months that I was not sure if I would survive without total meltdown.  For the last month and half I have been working as a personal trainer and working on my website.  So, in essence, I am working two full time jobs still, in addition to taking care of my family.

The key for me is to have a plan each week both personally and professionally. Without a plan, goals do not get accomplished and you tend to run out of time for yourself.  My plan each week includes meals, exercise (me) time, work time and family time.

Meals

I spend about 30 minutes on Saturday morning planning our meals for the upcoming week.  This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I account for nights that we typically eat out in the meal plan, as well.  I make my grocery list from my meal plan, get the grocery shopping done and then typically spend a few hours on Sunday afternoon prepping veggies and making some of the meals and snacks ahead of time.  This eliminates the daily game of “what are we going to eat today?”  Meal planning and cooking on Sundays has given me a great amount of time back during the week and has been a huge stress reducer.

Exercise

Through all of the stress of the last several months (and continuing stress of self employment), though, the thing that has kept me sane is running and exercise.  I plan time to exercise five to six days a week. I do not miss a run or a workout unless there is truly an extenuating circumstance (I ran an hour in the rain this week.  I do draw the line at lightening!).  This can be challenging even though work in a gym. Trainers will often over schedule clients and not schedule time for their own workouts.  I have to be selfish, though, and take time during the week for my own physical and mental health.

Work time

When I am at the gym, this is a no brainer, but my work time at home has to be scheduled too.  My family knows that if I’m on the computer, then I am working.  I have weekly goals for my website and without scheduled work time at home; those goals will not be met.  My challenge is finding the right balance between work time and time training at the gym.  We are working on me being able to better utilize down time at the gym by buying a laptop so that I can be more productive when I am not training at the gym.  This will cut down on time at home on the computer.  I am currently working towards setting office hours at home, too.

Family time

This time has to be set aside as a self employed individual in the days of mobile devices.  I find myself plugged into my iPad constantly checking email, responding to Facebook posts, etc.  I put the iPad down, though, and focus on my family every day.  One of the things I also did recently to buy back more family time is hire Zoom Moving Pictures to get my website where I want it.  I was working hours upon hours and not getting the results I wanted.  Christina was able to do what would have taken me months and countless hours away from my family!

In order to take care of yourself and maintain your sanity while running your own business, focus on planning time during the week for those things that are most important to you, whether it be work related or personal.  Without a plan, time gets away from you and goals go by the wayside.  Too often the things that get cut are the ones most important for you to be physically, mentally and emotionally ready to take on the daily challenge of self employment.  This week make a conscious effort to take care of yourself by making time for yourself!

Amber Callahan is creator of PlantFit, a fitness and healthy plant based eating blog and website, and a personal trainer at Art of Strength Sugar Land (www.getfitsl.com).  In addition, she is a wife and the mother of two young boys.  She keeps her sanity by running, exercising and eating healthy, tasty meals.  She is currently training for her first full marathon, as well.  Follow her blog and check out her website for healthy recipes, workouts and other information to help you live a healthy, happy life!

Saturday 8:30 at night and the A/C goes out. Isn’t that when it always happens? Thankfully, we’re able to get somebody out the next day and it’s an easy fix. Actually, it could have been avoided if we had just done a little bit of maintenance on our part. Something as simple as pouring a little cleanser down a pipe twice a year.

As soon as our A/C guy said it, I realized he’s told me the same thing every summer when he comes out. After he leaves, I get to thinking about our home and everything it needs. That snowballs into comparing home maintenance to that of a business.

Routine Tasks

Some tasks are routine. There’s no real skill that is required for these. Sweeping the floors, cleaning the counters, etc. It’s almost robotic in the way that we take care of them. And if you neglect them, it’s quickly noticeable.

Squeaky Wheel Tasks

These are the ones that require some skill or just a pain in the butt to take care of. Fixing that leaky faucet, mowing the yard or, for me, it’s weed whacking. I call these the ‘squeaky wheel’ because you can try to ignore them  but, eventually, it becomes easier to deal with them. Or call somebody else to take care of it.

Forgotten Child

Then there are the out of sight out of mind items. I don’t look at my rain gutters every day. I take my working A/C for granted. As I’m coming into the house and I see the gutters need cleaning out I think “Oh yeah, I gotta take care of that” and then I go inside and go about my day. It’s easy to forget about these until it’s broken. The signs are there but since they’re not immediate, you forget.

Maintenance

Taking care of your business is just like taking care of your home. There are the daily things you do, the squeaky wheels and then the forgotten. Neglect your home and your A/C quits working and cracks in the wall start appearing. For your business, those cracks are sales slowing down. Customers start going elsewhere. You’ve invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it. Now is not the time to put things off.

But it takes effort to keep all the parts running smoothly, especially if you’re trying to do it all yourself. In your home, you probably have some help. You hire experts. Lawn care service. A cleaning lady. You have somebody come in and do a maintenance check on the heating and air. Pest control. But are you doing the same for your business? You hired someone to set up your website and social media pages but who is maintaining them? You know how much email marketing helps but are you doing anything about it? Quit putting those things off and hire some experts to accomplish them for you.

Take care of your business and it will take care of you.

• embed the magazine on your website.
•  provide your readers with a link to your Scoop.it profile where they can read all the magazine issues.
• provide the RSS feed link.

You can see an example of all of these below.

Embedding the magazine. You can select the size of the embed as well as how many articles to show.

Link to Scoop.it profile. This link takes visitor to your profile where they can see all of the online magazines that you curate.

You are also provided with the RSS Feed Link.

Does this look like you on a typical day on the job? Would you use the words overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed to describe yourself at work? Is your work philosophy “If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself”? Wondering why your business isn’t growing?

You might be standing in your own way

You’re spreading yourself too thin by trying to do it all yourself. If you don’t delegate, you can’t do what you’re really good at and accomplish what your business needs.

Deciding what to hand off

Ask yourself these 4 questions to help you decide.

1) Which tasks do I dread?

Maybe it’s making the PowerPoint for your upcoming presentation. Or you hate proofreading your articles.

2) Which tasks are a time suck?

You open your email at 9 AM and are still at when lunchtime rolls around.

3) What tasks don’t require your skills?

Are you really the only one who knows how to post updates to the business Facebook and Twitter accounts?

4) Which projects need to be done but you don’t have the time for or skills to accomplish?

You know online video is necessary to grow your business. But producing and editing don’t come easily for you.

Now you’ve identified some things you could (and should) delegate. The next question you’re asking yourself is “Do I have the money to hire someone to do this”? Consider these two points.

1) When you are doing these tasks, you are not generating revenue. By not delegating, you are actually losing money

2) It isn’t necessary to hire a regular employee to accomplish these tasks. By outsourcing to a virtual assistant, especially one with the skills you need, will save money. A regular employee costs you money with health insurance, payroll taxes, equipment….the list goes on. Working with a VA means paying only for the hours and work you need accomplished.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to let go and grow your business!

Two years ago, we started our own business. It seemed like a no-brainer. Mike has been in video production for 20+ years. He knows how to produce, direct and edit video. He already owns all of his own professional video, audio and editing equipment. We’re set! All we need is a website and people will come running. Build it and they will come right?

Wrong! The website went up and the crickets chirped. “You need a Facebook page and Twitter account!” I declared. That will get the word out. So, I set them up, put up posts and waited. Still the phone was silent. No emails. We were announcing we’re in business. What’s going on?…..Any of this sounding familiar?

Truth of the matter is this. There are hundreds of thousands of business websites in your niche alone announcing “I’m here! Come look at me!”. Heck, the last time I checked on Google there were 619,000 for Videographer Houston. So what do you do?

Identify your target audience and get to know them.

What are their needs, desires, motivations?

Make no mistake. YOU are looking for them not the other way around. People search online for solutions to their problems, not for you.

Your content strategy needs to be centered around their needs/desires/wants. Don’t sell them a product or service. Give them a solution. The next four steps show you how.

Step 1 – Product/Service Evaluation

Take out a piece of paper and make three columns. Column 1 – Features. List all the product’s features. Column 2 – Benefits. What is the benefit of each feature. Column 3 – Who Cares. List the people that care the most about each benefit? Be specific.

If you have multiple products or services, you may want to do this for each one. Look for any trends in the benefits and audience.

Step 2 – Audience Evaluation

Look at your third column. This might be a really big list. You need to think on a smaller level. Who really cares about these benefits? For example, you have “small business owners” listed. That’s a big group. Break it down. Which small business owners? Are they new or seasoned? Are they in a certain industry?

Google your niche. Who are your competitors targeting? Here’s the more important question, who are they ignoring or not reaching? How can YOU reach them?

Step 3 – Visualize

Picture the people from your audience. Get to know the on every level. Are they married? Have kids? What do they do for a living? What are they like emotionally? Busy? Depressed? Stressed?

Now that you’ve got a clear picture of your ideal client, you know which of your benefits are going to be most important to them. You know what motivates them.

Step 4 – Talk Your Ideal Client

You’ve already Googled your niche. You saw the terminology the competition uses. You could stop there but you want something to take you over the edge. This step I learned from Sandi Krakowski in her book Read Their Minds: How To Hear What The Marketplace Wants and Build a Huge Business.

Go to Amazon.com and search for books in your niche. Click on the top selling books and scroll down to the customer reviews.

It is in these reviews that your target market is saying what it is they want to hear. By reading these, you can learn their pains and struggles and how they define them. They say it in their own language. You learn how to position your solutions to their problems. Use their words to explain your benefits. So simple and easy. So very powerful.

You’re almost finished your book and you are working with your Virtual Assistant to prep for your Book Launch.  One of the “To Do” items is a Blog Tour.

Why do you want to do a Blog Tour before your Book Launch?

Well, there are a number of reasons that it is a good idea.  First you need to decide where your target audience hangs out and what blogs are popular in that niche.  Are there certain Blogs that you want or would like to be featured on?  Here is where the work begins.

It takes time to build relationships.  If you start to become known to the Bloggers on the sites you want to be featured on, then it is easier to gain approval from them for a guest post.

How to gain approval you ask?

Simple, post comments on blog posts on their site and become known.  Make sure you have your Gravatar set up as a face will then be attached to your comments.  This gives a little more of an “in” with the blogger as you become recognized on that site.

Being a Guest blogger on these popular sites establishes you as an expert in your field.  Then, when your book is finished and need an audience to get in front of, they will most likely welcome you with open arms because the groundwork has already been laid out.

If you liked the information provided in this blog post, I invite you to stop by my blog page for some additional tips and information.  Please stop by and introduce yourself.  Love to hear from you.

Brenda Delvecchio, Virtual Assistant, www.virtualinitiative.com