"The Routine of Getting Out of Routines"… hmmm…

Well… let me tell you a story that might explain it a bit better to you… then I’ll tell you what I learned from it and how you can too.

The Broken Promise That Led To Profits and Disorganized Organization

You see, if you know me personally… you know that I have flashes of brilliance where for 2-3 weeks I have laser sharp focus on a specific project (or routine) and get stuff done like no other.

You probably have these too.  Think back to the last time you listened to a Tony Robbins CD and got all pumped up (for me it was Eban Pagen w/ his Wake Up Productive program … which absolutely rocks!)… go on a mission to reform yourself from your time wasting ways… and rule the world.  You know you’ve done that.

Well…

I had one of those kicks in November right before I wrote my post saying that I was going to chronicle my next 30 days and let you know the progress.  Check out the post… I sound pretty darn motivated huh?

The Broken Promise That Led to Profits…

In that post I basically laid it on the line saying that I was going to create a routine to wake up early (I’m a very unpredictable riser) and write every single day for the next 30 days… and if I didn’t I was calling out readers to pin my @ss to the dart board (not literally with some kind of punishment.

Afterall… isn’t it better to publicly state your goals and create real consequences if you don’t follow through with them??  I thought so…

Anyhow, I made the promise… kept it strong for a while (actually… more like 3 or 4 days)… and really hoped to blow past the point of "habit gravity" (the amount of time it takes to defy the gravity to resist making a good habit).

Well… as you’ve seen… it didn’t happen.

I made it to November 7th with I think my 4th post … I didn’t even make it 25% of the way to my goal!!

A broken promise at it’s best… and I let down the 2 readers who actually took the time to cheer me on in my little conquest.

So, you’re probably asking why and how that broken promise led to profits.

Well… technically… maybe that particular promise really wasn’t directly the cause of the profits.

It was my routine of getting out of routines.

Jumped From One Routine To The Next

So, what you don’t know is that right around this same time (Nov 7th), I was working my @ss off creating the best program on finding private money for real estate investors in existence… I mean… the 2 main teachers have recruited about 6 times more private money than the guy who currently has the "best selling" course on the topic… not kidding.

And… we launched the program to a few students (about 20) and had a very successful launch… but what made me even more happy was the fact that multiple students have already seen returns on their investment of 100x or more.

I don’t say this to toot my own horn… but say it to give an "alibi" for why my posts in my little 30 day chronicle stopped abruptly and have been in hiding since today.

Essentially, I tried to start this new routine in the midst of a huge new undertaking in one of my businesses… and one of those had to break… and I was determined to ensure that it wasn’t the routine (creating the product) that was putting food on my table (or at least buying me the flat screen we have in our living room now ;-).

For my inner conscious it was an easy decision to break the "minor" routine of the 30 day chronicle rather than break the other new routine I had created the same time to work several hours a day creating the product to be the best it could be.

So in the end… it was my "routine" to create consistency in my writing to this blog that gave way to the "routine" to create growth in my business.  Does that make sense??

Well… now that I really have no clue where I’m going with this post… let me sum it up with what I learned and what I think needs to be done in the future to keep routines like this.

Creating A Routine Of Staying In GOOD Routines

We all have routines… both good and bad.

For some of us we have a routine of waking up late… I absolutely love the feeling of waking up at 6 am… love the productivity I see when I do it… but I already have a deeply ingrained routine of waking up late that I haven’t put in good effort to break.

As for good routines… well… that’s where my main problem is right now. I have a routine of getting out of routines.

I’m the type of guy that gets focused 30% of the time… and during that 30% I create 90% of my income and good results.

So, what I’ve learned the last 60 days is that I need to make it easy for myself to create and stick with good routines.

Here’s the elements that are necessary to create and stick with good routines:

• You must make the routine easy to do … If you want to make a routine for working out… make it as easy as possible. Put your workout clothes out right next to the bed and put your cell phone or car keys (something you need everyday) in your workout shoes so you HAVE TO look at those clothes EVERYDAY.  This simple act will force you to at least make the conscious decision to break your routine or stick with it.
• You shouldn’t try to create two new large routines at the same time … This is where I went wrong back in November. I tried to create two big changes in my everyday life and one of them had to give because my subconscious freaked out when too many new things were happening.  So, in the future I’ll work in 1 new routine at a time until the routine becomes… well… routine ;-).  Only then will I add a new routine to the mix.  One at a time.
• Public commitments don’t always work … Just voicing something publicly doesn’t always work.  You have to be committed to it yourself… if you’re not it’ll fail.  Simple as that.

So… what all of this rambling means to me is that I’m going to create 1 solid routine a month in 2009.  Concentrate hard on just that one… and by the end of the year I’ll be dominating every part of my life. That’s the plan anyway.

For January… my routine is going to be waking up at 6am every day.  I’ll let you know what works for me and what doesn’t.  When I’m waking up at 6am everyday for 20 days I’ll consider the routine engrained… and I’ll move onto the new one for February which will be sticking to my "morning routine".

So… for ‘09 start creating positive routines in your life… but do them one at a time and make sure it’s something you truly do want to do… not something you think you should do.  See the difference?

Am I going to promise to write everyday now?

Nope… I’m going to write a couple times a week though… see you next week!

It’s kinda funny when you really sit back and think about success…

… I mean… what does the word “success” look like to you?  What picture do you see when you think about “success”?

Just this afternoon I was getting some work done and finishing up a few things on this little launch that we’re doing over at our private money website (an offshoot of the real estate site)… and I got to thinking about the success that I was *hoping* we would have next week.

And truthfully…

I kinda bummed myself out there for a few minutes.  Weird huh?

My Image Of Success Was…

As my wheels were turning in my mind thinking of the people we are going to help next week… and the profits we’d make in return for our time and effort we’re going to put into coaching our students to success… I seriously didn’t get all that excited about the profits.

Not because I didn’t think our coaching program didn’t rock (it surely will… we’re seriously giving waaaayyy too much for the chunk of change we’re getting in return.)

But… what it was came to me tonight when I was watching a video of a guy a year younger than me who has the freakin’ world by the toe right now… and is “successful” (in my eyes).  He’s in the real estate world… but that’s not what caught my eye… it was how he was out there having fun and doing things that most people wouldn’t do because “man… I’ll never do that” creeps into their minds.

Furthermore…

I’d be willing to bet that this kid still feels like he’s nowhere near where he wants to be right now because his picture of true “success” is bigger and grander than where he is now.

And to tell you the truth… earlier today when I was thinking about how successful next week would be, I was that guy that let the “I’ll never do that” creep into my mind (but just for a second ;-).

Here’s The Thing

This little launch that we’re doing is a very small launch just to our internal list… and this is truthfully the first launch that I’ve ramrodded the marketing strategy from start to finish.

And…

Even at this moment I feel like there are a couple missing pieces in the whole thing that may or may not make a big difference.

You see, all of this crept into my mind and made me compare my “success” next week to a low metric that I had set in my mind as our “ultimate goal”… and this low metric still wasn’t all that impressive.

So, just about half hour ago I got up from my computer (finally) and started to clear my mind and really think of where I am and what success will mean… not only next week but in the next 1, 5, 25 years.

And truthfully…

I realized that I slipped into a trap of momentarily mentally shooting too low and not defining my success to where I truly know I want to take it… and where I know we will take it.

Redefine Your Definition of Success…

Here’s the deal, ever since that little mindshift (about half hour ago) I’ve been looking at the project in a whole new light… and have a new motivation to drive this project to success way higher than I had “hoped” for just a week or two ago.

And in the end, when the dust settles… I can guarantee that the launch will be better off… for my partner and I and for the students because I’m carrying this new definition of success forward.

It’s a small mindshift…. but sometimes all it takes is to redefine your definition of whatever success is… and stop shooting for just “success”… but shoot for “true success”.

What’s True Success?

Pretty simple really.

Think of if its an ideal world and if you could have anything… if your project (or launch in my case) could hit whatever metrics you would absolutely love and be completely thrilled at hitting… you know… that “ideal” outcome.

That’s true success.

Too many people (myself included… in momentary lapses) shoot too low.  Too many people have success in their minds and then over time that vision or picture of true success erodes down to just plain ol’, “Ya, that was a success“.

When in reality, it should be more like, “that freakin’ rocked! If I had to script it I wouldn’t have written it any differently than this!“.

Really, in my opinion… that’s when you hit true success… and thats when you live up to your potential in work, play, and this one and only life we’ve got.

Thats just me though.  How about you?

On day 4 (or is this 5) of my 30 day chronicle of my life and biz… in an attempt at creating a ritual of writing everyday… I am scatterbrained as ever.

Here’s the deal…

I’m in the middle of this little launch in my real estate business… and it’s heavy on videos and audio that to tell you the truth… I’ve crammed the last week to really create for our readers.

As you know… my wife and I are buying our first house… and we’re having some little speedbumps that are keeping us from closing when we want to close… and these speedbumps are costing us a bunch of money, time, and headaches.

And…

I’m working on about 3 other projects that are all suffering a bit as of today.

Here’s why…

I Can’t Focus Right Now!

I wrote a post about the importance of focusing a while back and… just like all entrepreneurs… sometimes fall off the focus train and become completely scattered.

Today I’m in one of those modes… and it sucks a big one.

You know the feeling… you have a few projects going… get phone calls… have new fires come up… and all of the sudden you look back at your day and you see that you pretty much got a whole lotta nothing done.

For instance, today I recorded a podcast, got our next video for the rei site done, put out a couple fires… one of which is really eating at me right now (the one about the house and it closing later than we wished… and costing us a bunch of money)… and a couple other things.

Heck, I wasn’t even going to write this blog post today because I thought I didn’t have the time to do it… until I remembered that I had already publicly voiced that I’m going to write for 30 days straight and if I didn’t I would do something big that I really don’t want to do.

Here’s Where I Went Wrong Today

Okay, I finally sat down and reflected on the day a bit.  What made me less productive and more scattered today than usual?

Here we go…

• I went to bed late last night (2am) because I was pushing to get a client’s work done
• I woke up late because I’m the type of guy who has to get 8 hours of sleep or I’m total garbage the next day
• Waking up late pushed back my schedule and I didn’t go through my morning ritual like usual
• I started working BEFORE I wrote out my priorities for the day… and got off on tangents
• I ate breakfast late and still haven’t had a 2nd meal…

All in all, this is the perfect recipe for a very unproductive day and being scattered as heck like I have been today.

How You Too Can Have The Most Unproductive Day Ever

Here’s my simple 5 step roadmap so you too can have your most unproductive day ever.

1. Stay up late and do work that you hate doing… it’s really great for your energy and morale
2. Be sure to wake up as late as possible… then first thing go and open up your computer and check your email (the first thing you do everyday should always be getting distracted as heck by 92 emails in your inbox)
3. Forget about eating breakfast… in fact… forget about eating lunch too… because you’re too busy answering emails and putting out “fires”
4. Don’t plan anything at all… just work on whatever comes up and even then… most importantly don’t completely finish everything you start
5. Stare at the computer screen for 6 hours straight… it’s like the technology version of carrots… very good for your eyes and energizing as heck.

And a bonus step… to follow that day up with another awesomely unproductive day… be sure to stay on your computer all evening and after midnight… then repeat the whole process again.

A lot of entrepreneurs have a tough time with this… I did too for a long time.

How about you?? When do you know when you’re doing a great job as an entrepreneur… either offline or online… doesn’t matter.  How do you know?

• Is it the profits you make?
• Is it the traffic or leads you generate to your business?
• Is it the new projects you get done?
• Is it that you’ve stayed in business for more than 12 months?

I’d guess that most people would go for one of the first two bullets… I did… and still do sometimes.

But for me now…

It’s What My Customers Say About Me

At first when I started out I was always focusing on earning money and seeing how much profits I could squeeze out of my market.  That was when I knew I was doing a great job as an entrepreneur.

But now as I’ve matured as an entrepreneur (both online and offline) I’ve realized that for me… I know I’m doing a great job when my customers take the time out of their day to actually tell me of the great job I’m doing.

It’s awesome everytime I read an email from a reader that basically says that my real estate site is the only one they trust and feel like its worth their time to follow consistently.

That’s a huge accomplishment for me… when you can build a following of people that love what you do for them… the profits will always come.  And they have… all without selling out on my own morals or risking my integrity.

Here’s A Few Awesome Things My Customers Have Said Recently…

Ya, prompted testimonials are cool and are valuable as a marketing tool… but the ones that are totally unsolicited and just come outta the blue by the customer are the best. Here are just a couple of the nearly 100 great emails I’ve gotten over the past several months from my readers… Both of these came in last week.

“Yours is the only REI site worth visiting. You’re not too heavy on the spam and you give a lot of good opinions and reviews.”

- Michael P.

“… I went through your link because I appreciated the extra step you took with videoing the registration and, generally, appreciate your ethical approach and the value you deliver in the limited free time I have to stay up-to-date and consume real estate and internet marketing knowledge.”

- Greg G.

Gotta love those kind of comments huh?  That’s what providing real value and being true to yourself does for ya… the profits always follow.

Strive For Raving Fans and Followers… Not Just Profits

When you strive for raving fans and followers rather than just going after profits… not only (in my opinion) will you end up making more money in the end… but your customers will be way happier… and they’ll stick with you for the long haul.

Raving fans spread the word about your stuff… and help to evangelise the business and your word.  It takes a while longer to build a following than it does to simply throw up some ads and try to pull the wool over the eyes of your prospects… but it’s way worth it.

Give it a try… let me know how it goes.

(or… ask me how the heck I’ve been building a great following in my businesses… maybe I’ll share the specifics w/ ya).

I may have told the story a few times… but I’ve been dabbling online for a couple years now… but really seriously only for the last 6 months or so.

Way back in late ‘06 I started The REI Brain dot Com to help teach investors what I’ve learned about real estate investing… and what other successful investors have learned as well.  That site didn’t start to churn a real income until about March of ‘08… not because it was hard to get it to that point…

… but really because there were specific steps I should have taken a year and a half ago to drive traffic and to monetize the site that I didn’t take until the middle of ‘08.

A Month In Review…

I’m not one for posting monthly “income reports” like some other bloggers do… nothing wrong with it… I just don’t feel the need to validate myself by showing others what I make.

But, October was an exceptional month for me online (what’s exceptional to me might be pennies to someone else. It’s all relative.)… and I want to kind of break it down a bit how it’s happening.

First off, my online income isn’t all of my income at all… I run a marketing consulting biz and have several great clients on retainer… I own rental units… and I’m actually taking partial ownership to a great company with an excellent partner that I’ll let you know about later on.

But, my online income is fastly making up the majority of my total income… which isn’t a problem with me.

So, here it is… Here’s what I’ve learned as far as how to make money (online or offline)

Providing Value

I’d always heard people say, “If you provide value to other people… true value… you’ll get it returned to you 10x over”.  I’ve always believed it… but I guess I had a hard time figuring out what kind of value I could provide to people.

Anyhow, when I started the real estate investing site I was just posting articles with my commentary.  They were great articles and still bring in some traffic to this day to the site.

But…

I re-looked at what I had written on the site… and it provided value… but nowhere to the point that I had a vision to do for my readers.  My readers are investors who are looking to be successful and make better lives for themselves through real estate… and up until early ‘08 my content truly wasn’t “instructional” enough to really help my readers find that success.

So…

I started to write tutorials, unbiased reviews of products, do free full content webinars, and started to help other guys with great websites and products (that I truly felt were great resources) spread the word too.  Once I started to provide “real value” to my readers it started to come back to me big time.

Product reviews make up probably 40-50% of my online income.  In October these reviews churned in a decent mid 4 figures.

Advertising hasn’t been as big as I’ve wanted it to be… but I really haven’t done ANYTHING to attract new advertisers… that just produces a few hundred a month… but hey, that more than pays for all of my own advertising for the site… so I’m just fine with that for now.

Letting readers know about products (not full reviews, but rather by friendly endorsements) has been pretty good to me… and made up about 40% of my online income again… so mid 4 figures in October alone.  The key here is to once again provide value.  I don’t pitch every product that comes to me… in fact I only “pitch” about 5% of the products that come to me… and they have to meet my own criteria or I won’t endorse them for my readers.

• Have to be of true value… provide great content and instruction for a reasonable price
• Have to be actionable… if something can’t be taken and immediately put to action it’s pretty much worthless to most customers
• I have to actually see and use the product myself… most people online will endorse any ol’ product that comes their way to make a buck.  I guess I’m a bit “odd” in this respect.  I want to build trust with my readers so I only endorse products that I have used and truly believe can help them get to the next level in their businesses and life.  Pretty simple to me really… that way I build value and trust over the long term rather than looking for short term gains.

Those are the main three criteria I use before I promote another persons product.

What All Of This Means…

I know, I know… I tend to get off on tangents sometimes and that’s something that I’m trying to work on right now (my wife always points it out to me when I ramble ;-).

Anyhow, this all has a point and does circle back to the title of this post.

All in all, October has been my best month online and I crossed over 5 figures in PROFITS (not gross revenues)… which was about 3k better than September… and September was better than August (nice little upward trend… like I like to see it ;-).   A $4k day at the start of October helped out a bit for sure… which I can tell ya about later on if you want to hear it.

When I got to adding up my income from October and trying to analyze exactly why the income keeps going up every month… I started to write down the things I’ve been doing recently that I wasn’t doing a year ago.

And it was a bunch of simple stuff… but mainly it all boils down to providing TRUE VALUE with no catch.

I’ve been putting out great content for my readers and clients, being honest, and having no catch.  By no catch I mean… I don’t put out a half assed article or video and ask people to pay a kings ransom to “get the rest”.  Heck, my buddy Patrick Riddle and I even did a full 2 hour workshop completely for free and didn’t pitch one single product on the damn thing at all… but, since that workshop the list that was generated from that little free workshop has generated multiple 4 figures a month… pretty nice huh?

October has been my best month online… not because I’m selling people harder or more… but because I’m giving them more… and being honet with them. That’s all there is to it.  I help my readers get where they want to go in real estate investing and don’t cram affiliate offers down their throats everyday.  Basically, I treat my readers as if they are my close friends (which I kinda have grown to really think of them that way) and I do what I would do for my firneds really expecting nothing in return… but knowing that by helping them it always comes back to me way more.

And… when it comes to the point where I actually create a product and offer it to my readers (which that is coming up very soon… and it’s going to be of huge value)… my readers will trust me more and will already have a high perceived value on my information.  And… of course, any product that comes out of any of my websites or companies will be the best single product to solve that particular problem on the market… and it will be the single best way for my readers to solve that problem. Period.

Anyhow, I’ve gotta sign off… heading to the Oregon State and ASU game today… gotta get ready.

Chat soon. Provide more value.  And help people out along the way.

(tricked ya… that’s not a real video… it’s just a picture

I’m always on the lookout for awesome new tools and ways to save me time and give my customers a better user experience.

As you know… video is pretty much a must nowadays and if you’re not using video you’re going to be left in the dust.

Anyhow, as I type this… we’re in a little “launch” over at the real estate investing site where we’re going to be teaching our readers over the next couple weeks how to get private money for their real estate deals.

Long story short… we’re using video heavily in this series and I was pulling my hair out trying to find an easy and cheap way to get video up on the site… other than posting it to the masses of video sharing sites.

Nothing wrong with using Youtube, Viddler, etc. to host the video… but I’d rather have full control over the video and make sure there’s no chance the reader can click on the video and be taken to the Youtube site and diverted to someone elses videos.

My Easy Flash Video Solution

I was watching a few internet marketing product launches recently and did a bit of investigative work to see what they were using for their flash video.  Some were simply using the JW FLV Player and streaming from Amazon S3 (if you’re not streaming your videos from S3 and you’re getting any traffic at all… you should seriously start doing it… cheap as heck and great servers.  By cheap I mean… I only paid .15 cents last month… ya) … but I got frustrated at the whole thing after 30 minutes of toying around with it and trying to get it hooked up to my .flv file.

Then, I kept seeing this “ezs3” thing coming up in the code for some of the big guys (Ryan Deiss and others) and decided to check it out.

Basically, what this “ezs3″ thing is is a service that makes it easy as heck to put flash video on your site hosted through Amazon S3.  Here’s a video I put up today using this service… looks extremely sharp and loads very fast.  And… you can customize the look of the player pretty much any way you want very very easily.

The Benefits Of EZS3

Yes, at the JW FLV Player site there is a free tool that will build the script that you can embed into your website.  I was actually going to go that way but I’m not a huge techie so it took me way too long and I got confused about half way into the process when I was trying to link the video script to the actual .flv video file hosted on Amazon S3.

So, I signed up for a free trial over at EZS3 (it’s 14 days free, then $20 after that a month… a bargain IMHO) and tested it out.

Here’s What I Did:

• Uploaded my .flv video file to Amazon S3 easily through the free S3 Firefox add on in my browser.  Took about 3 minutes.
• Got in my EZS3 account and hooked it up to my Amazon S3 account.  Took 45 seconds.
• Created a player, customized it, and got the script to paste on my web page.  Took 2 minutes (probably actually way less… but I was toying with some of the links).
• Pasted the code in my html file… and uploaded it to the net.

The whole process took me about 6-7 minutes… if I were to do it now I could probably get a video from the raw .flv file to the net in a nice flash video format in under 3 minutes using EZS3.

And… that video I showed you before is the result of that first try with their service.  I’m sold… and will for sure renew my membership at the end of my 14 day free trial.

Check Out EZS3… But Don’t Take My Review For Gospel…

Try it yourself…

If you’re already using Amazon S3 to stream your videos from this solution is way the heck easy for you to implement… and it may just save you a ton of time and money in the process because it’s only $20 a month and its easy as heck to use.

Here’s a few other cool things about EZS3 that I like a ton:

• Has great stats to show how many times the video (or any other file you use with this) has been viewed.
• You can pretty much fully customize the look, size, functionality, etc. of the video player… very flexible.
• Can use this service to easily display other files too… like pdf’s, other video file types, camtasia studio projects, etc.
• Can change the video display unit on the fly… even after you’ve already published the script to the web page.  It all runs on Javascript so you can make changes after you publish the video to the net, right in the EZS3 membership panel and the changes take place immediately.

Anyhow, I know this post looks kind of like an infomercial or a big ol’ product review… I didn’t mean for it to be like that… I really did just find out about this service today and am now sold on it for my own biz.

Check it out… get the free 14 day trial… let me know what you think!

For the longest time I’ve been one of the biggest advocates for consistently posting great content on your blog… I mean… that’s the one sure way to get your site on the map and to start to generate some traffic. But I haven’t’ been doing it… until now…

Here’s the deal…

Right now I’m in the middle of a ton of huge changes.

1. My wife and I are buying our first home right now (I own rental properties… but it’s never made sense to buy a house until now)
2. I officially am completely on my own now (as far as my work)… working fully for myself and no longer having to answer to anyone else… which is great… and I’ve seen two of my highest income months ever the last two months (October w/ just my online income I jumped over $12k for the month… we’ll see if I can keep it up
3. Moving to a new town where we know pretty much no one
4. I’m taking part ownership of an existing business with a very well known marketing and sales consultant… gonna be fun as heck

You’re probably asking where I’m going with all of this… aren’t you?

Well…

Right now is a time of huge change for me (good change)… and last week I decided that this is the perfect time to go ahead and change pretty much everything that I’ve been putting off or sucking at lately.

Moving Toward Change… and The Chronicle

Okay, like I said… since I’m already going through a bunch of changes… right now is the best time to integrate some other positive changes into my life… including:

• Consistently posting to this blog and my real estate blog at least 4-5 times a week… each (I’ll need help with this one)
• Really ingraining my morning ritual into my life.  Waking up early, working out, a bit of meditating, etc. Basically… getting my day going right rather than waking up at 9 am every morning and being tied down by my email all day (I started out trying to do a morning ritual a few months back… it didn’t stick… but I changed my ritual around a bit and it’s been sticking great so far!)
• Building a team of awesome people around me and my business(es).  A couple months back I hired my first Virtual Assistant… and still haven’t used her to her greatest potential.  I’m still doing a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing… so I’m going to work hard to systematize my biz and build a team of people around me so we can all prosper together

There are a few other small changes I’m going to make in the next couple months too… but the ones I mentioned are the most important.

So… what I’m going to do is set out to do each of these new changes every day for 30 full days… at the end of those 30 days they should be part of my life and become rituals that I’ll keep on doing.

But…

It’s important that I stick to it EVERYDAY for 30 days or I could fall off the wagon… and these changes are so important that I guess I’ll just have to kick myself in the @ss and make sure I go through with it.

The Start Of A Chronicle

I’m not sure if the word “chronicle” is the best word for it… but that’s what I’m going to use because it just sounds right.

Anyhow, the next 30 days is going to be crazy as heck for me… and I’m going to write in this blog everyday to show some accountability… and to show how I progress from where I am… to where I want to go… and we’ll see how that affects my income and the amount of extra “leisure time” I can create for me and my wife… because in the end… that’s what its all about… working less and doing what you want to do in life.

So, I’ll post updates daily… I can’t go back now because I’ve already written it down as part of my new “morning ritual” that I’ve been following everyday this entire week so far.

Who knows what the heck I’m going to write about… maybe things like:

• Things I find out about myself and little tricks to make creating rituals easier
• How my new rituals affect my income and “leisure time”
• Marketing or business building stuff I’m trying right now in my own biz… and how you can apply it to your own biz
• How daily posts affects my traffic and blog subscription stats versus posting once or twice a week
• Random things I just want to pass on

… who knows.

Anyhow, thats about it for today.

I just created a sense of accountability to YOU… if I hit a road block and don’t update… I hope that you’ll call my @ss on it and whip me into shape by posting a chiding remark or comment (or you can be nice too here on the blog.

I’ll Take It One Step Further

Hey… I’ll take it one step farther and create even more accountability for myself…

If I miss a single day of updating this blog between today (10/30) and 11/30… I’ll personally do something that I truly DON’T WANT TO DO… not sure what that is yet… but it’s gotta be good for it to stick.  This is a little experiment… lets see if it works.

And…

Hey… if you have an idea of what I will have to do if I don’t make a post everyday… post it in the comments section below. No matter how crazy it is… I’ll consider it and pick the best “motivation” by this next Monday.

It could be that I donate $5 for every comment I receive on ANY blog post between today and 11/30 to a charity of YOUR choice…

… or that I do something stupid or embaressing…

… whatever… but it’s gotta be good.

So, have an idea?… don’t be shy… this single “away from” motivation could mean the difference between me succeeding and failing… no pressure huh?

I’m settling into my “new morning routine” of waking up early (tough to do when you’re a lone ranger internet marketer) and getting crap done early in the morning… it makes me feel better when I get up early… but it’s tough to create a new routine for pretty much anything in your life.

Anyhow, as I’m writing this this morning… I’m getting work done on my business… without actually having to do the things myself.  My Virtual Assistant is taking care of things for me.

You see… three months ago I had a breaking point in my online business.  I was spinning my wheels and pretty much getting nothing done everyday… but I was working hard as heck at it.  You know the gig.  You do EVERYTHING in your business… you find yourself buried in your computer for hours on end hacking your way through html, submitting articles and social bookmarks, etc.

The “busy work”.

Then… once I started to actually make some good money online (away from my offline marketing consulting)… I decided that something had to change… and what had to change was TAKING ME out of MY BUSINESS.

I Was Hurting My Own Business and Progress

So, here’s what I did.

Nothing special… crazy new… nothing like that.

I just took the advice that people were giving me for months on end and buckled up and finally hired my first virtual assistant.

Just like with anything… the first month is pretty much a wash as far as having the work my VA did for me actually take time off my hands.  The first month you have to train your VA, write up the processes for things you want them to do, and on and on.

But…

Once you get past that first month or two… and your VA passes the test… you’re on your way to being a REAL ENTREPRENEUR and having that entrepreneur lifestyle.

What I Outsource Right Now

Right now, I admit that I still suck at really handing off everything I should to my Virtual Assistant… just haven’t cut the umbilical cord on everything yet.

But, here’s what I have my own VA doing for me:

• Article posting
• Social bookmarking
• Editing videos
• Submitting videos to video sharing sites
• Creating podcasts and editing the podcasts
• etc.

Really… I want to start handing off even more tasks… I guess I just need to buckle down and really think of the things in my business that AREN’T FUN.  Truly… if you’re an entrepreneur you should be doing it because you enjoy doing it.  So, anything you don’t think is fun should be outsourced.  Period.

How To Know What To Outsource Yourself

Here’s what you need to do…

1. Write down the tasks that you’re currently doing yourself in your business throughout the day/week.
2. Write down how many hours you spend on each task every week/month.
3. Write down what you hope to make in income in the next 12 months… then divide that by 12… then by 30… then by 8 (basically compute your hourly income based on what you hope to make in the next 12 months).  For instance, if you hope to make $100,000 over the next 12 months… your hourly worth (figuring 8 hours a day… which is WAAAYYY to many hours to work a day is $34/hr.That’s the number that you value your own ti

   me at.  Anything that you can hire someone for less than that # should seriously be considered to be outsourced (for like $5 $10 an hour to a VA).

4. Then, take the 2 tasks that are taking up a ton of your time but worth the least to you as far as your time value.  Find a virtual assistant, draw up a process map for them to follow to complete those two tasks for you… and hire the VA for a couple weeks as a “trial run”.
5. IF you like the VA, stay with them and increase the hours as needed
6. If you don’t like the VA, keep looking until you find one that is great!

It’s really that simple.

Here Are Some Websites To Find Great Virtual Assistants

• www.elance.com  (bid type site)
• www.guru.com   (bid type site)
• www.agentsofvalue.com  (great company according to a friend of mine.  They’re based in the Philippines and charge about $5-$8 an hour)
• www.teamdoubleclick.com  (mostly based in the U.S… charge between $15-$30 an hour)

I found my current virtual assistant simply by typing in the type of VA I was looking for in Google.

At the time I was looking for a virtual assistant to do audio/video type stuff.  So I went to google and typed in “multimedia virtual assistants”… scrolled through a few sites… interviewed a few people… and went with the one that I felt the most comfortable with.

Really there’s no science to this. You just need to buckle down and make the decision that you’re going to find a virtual assistant for x number of hours a week and run a week or two trial until you find a VA you like.  Spend the $100 it takes to hire a VA for a few projects and get after it.

Do what you love to do and what you think is fun… have someone else do the other stuff… that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about… it’s not about doing everything you can in your biz.  Sound good?

Let me know your thoughts and questions.

When I was pounding the books in college and “learning” about marketing at OIT (I like to say it’s the “MIT” of Oregon I learnerd all kinds of great marketing stuff.

You know the stuff…

• Talk about what separates you from the other competition
• Breaking down your customers objections
• How to do market research when you create a product or business
• How to write up nice looking and fancy fliers and ads

… the stuff that really pulls in the customers in droves… right?

Well… not really.

Marketing To Customers Versus Talking With Customers

The other day I was chatting with my little bro who’s in his sophomore year in college right now working on a marketing/business degree.  When I was talking to him about his damn economics test he was working on I had flashes in my brain of what I “learned” in college about running a business and marketing for THE REAL WORLD.

This is what I came up with after remembering what college taught me…

What I learned in college about marketing was more about BRANDING and ADVERTISING… not MARKETING.

I had no clue back when I was in college… I thought I was a friggin’ marketing expert when I graduated.

Little Did I Know…

When I finally got out into the real world and started my own business… as a “Marketing consultant” of all things… it took me a little while to learn what marketing really is… direct response marketing that is.

Marketing TO customers and prospects (as I learned in college to do) is WAY different than direct response marketing and talking WITH customers and prospects…

… and I can tell you with 100% confidence that you build stronger customer loyalty, increase response rates, have happier customers, and have WAY MORE FUN talking with customers and helping them solve their problems than marketing TO customers. But maybe that’s just me.

People Like Conversations…

People are social creatures and like to feel like they’re in a conversation… no one likes to be talked AT all day… they like to be talked WITH.

So, in your marketing here’s a few tips to try out next time:

• Talk or write in conversational tones… like you would to your friends.  Rather than sending out an email to your email list looking like a complete ad or pitch… write as if you were writing to tell your best friend about this “thing” you are telling them about.  Keep it short and personal.
• Provide value even in your marketing… don’t push for the sale before you’ve provided value and built trust… you’ll end up far better in the end.  So, next time when you get someone in your store or on your email list… how about trying to give them a bunch of value BEFORE you ask for the sale.  Give people a ton of great actionable tips, information, etc… then AFTER you’ve done that use the law of reciprocity and say, “now that I’ve helped you do x (or solve x), check this out… it’ll help you solve y (or solve another part of x).”.  That’ll close way higher than pushing for the sale upfront without providing value first. (isn’t that what friends do anyhow? )
• Ask people what they want… then give that to them.  Don’t underestimate the “smartness” of your market.  They know way more than you do (most of the time) on what the heck it is they want… or what problems they need solved.  So, ask your prospects what problems they have… then you need to go out and create something to solve their problem.  Don’t create a product then go out and try to find the market for it… that’s backwards… start with the market, then the problem, then the product.

That’s really about all you need to do in virtually any market and you’ll be better off than 90% of your competitors.

Build A Following… Not A List…

All in all, what I’m trying to say here is what I learned in college is great for building brands and building lists.  But when it comes to truly selling and being successful… you need to build followings and that isn’t easily done unless you can make a connection with your prospects… a personal connection.

So, stop building lists… start building followings… and start talking WITH your prospects rather than marketing TO them… you’ll be far better off in the long run and you’ll be wondering why your college professors didn’t teach you that way back when.  I did.

Okay, I’m sitting at my desk this morning listening to some great inspiring music… and thinking about how I got to where I am.

Yep, I’m still on my upclimb as an entrepreneur… my lifelong goals are still way out in the future…  but this morning I was looking at a goal sheet I wrote up over a year ago (that I haven’t looked at since then)… and my jaw literally dropped…

Why?

Because almost every one of those goals I set for myself over a year ago are either met or surpassed.  Pretty damn cool feeling if you ask me. While I did meet those initial goals… in my mind I’ve already transitioned into going for the next level of goals… so still in my mind I’m not anywhere near where I want to be.

I got to thinking about how I got there… and realized that it amounted to just one or two things… simple things actually… but most entrepreneurs simply don’t do it.

Want to hear those two things?

You’re probably looking for that magic bullet that will solve your problems… I can honestly tell you over a year ago I was too.  We always want a quick and easy way out.

Well…

Here it is…

Making it as an entrepreneur is easy as long as you’re:

• Consistent
• Focused
• Committed

That’s it.  I know… you’re saying, “holy hell… I already knew that!  That’s nothing new.”.

But, this is where I ask you… have you reached your goals yet?  Are you successful in your own mind?

A Quick Story…

Early in ‘07 I was technically “self-employed”… although it didn’t feel like it… nor did it have the cool advantages I was thinking I would have as an “entrepreneur”.

Here’s what the deal was…

I was a contract worker (I’ve never been “employed” by anyone else since I graduated from college) doing marketing for a couple companies.  But the way I had set up my work with them I basically set myself up just like an employee of those companies.  Not a lot of “freedom” (at least in my own mind), I wasn’t doing exactly what I wanted to be doing, and I wasn’t making all that much cashola.

Not an ideal situation…

So, what I finally realized is that there were a couple big constraints to my success that I NEEDED to get past.

1. I needed to separate myself from the way I felt I had “bound” myself to those other companies.  Don’t get me wrong… the companies I was “consulting” for I absolutely loved… I loved the owners, the workers, etc. Great company.   But deep down inside I knew I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do so I felt somewhat trapped… and felt guilty whenever I would do “my own” work (even on weekends).
2. I needed to finally focus on what made me happy… and focus on moving my most important projects forward with full force.  In the past I’d be working on a project “on the side” for months and months… and never push it forward.  But, finally about 8 months ago I decided to give myself what I deserved and to really pick a project of my own (not one of my clients projects) and focus on it until it was successful.

The funny thing with this is…

As soon as I DECIDED to focus on and get done a specific project OF MY OWN… it took less than 3 weeks to have it make a huge difference in my life and my business.

Separate From Your Constraints and Focus…

So, there it is.

Find out what is between you and your success… separate yourself from those things… then focus on ONE specific project that can immediately produce results for you.

For me, like I said… I needed to separate myself a bit from the idea that I had to always work on my clients work… and I had to learn to not feel guilty if I spent time growing my own business (rather than my clients).  Yes, that thinking was backward as heck… but I’m sure I’m not alone.

As I said… within 3 weeks my whole outlook on my business changed and I actually created 2 new income streams that are completely PASSIVE and pump out more than $1k in income (from less than 2 hours of work) each and every month whether I work or not.  And… just that little bit of money was enough to make me realize that I was really wasting my time doing what I had been doing for the past 2 years.

That’s a liberating moment.

Since then I’ve been able to create multiple other passive income streams (that are enough for most people to live off of) and have several other exciting projects that will boost my business into the next level that will be happening before the end of the year.

Long Story Short…

It’s nothing new… nothing revolutionary… nothing so kick ass that I should write a book over it…

But…

It’s so important that I can guarantee you that if you’re not as successful as you want to be… those three things can make all the difference in the world for you… it did for me.

• Committment
• Consistency
• Focus

Thats it.

Let me know your thoughts… what’s holding you back?  I’d love to help ya find out and blast through them.

Chat soon,

- Trevor