If you want to tweet in only ten minutes, you can do so successfully and I’ve outlined ways to do that in my Tweets In 10 blog posts. It is possible, but sometimes it’s not practical, to limit your Twitter effort to a small ten minute window. For example, maybe you want to limit the amount of time you’re on Twitter but still want to speak to your audience throughout the day. Or, maybe you want to spend ten minutes on Twitter but don’t want to look like you’re ONLY spending ten minutes on Twitter. Or maybe you want to spend ten minutes on Twitter but you have an appointment the next day during the time that you would normally tweet. Or maybe you want to roll out a great new promotion at a very specific time. For these reasons, or for many other reasons, the ability to schedule your tweets is very helpful.

So, scheduling prewritten tweets for later publication is a good idea. It’s very convenient, it extends your engagement beyond the time when you’re sitting in front of your computer, and can still save you time (by batching all of your tweeting at once even if you’re scheduling it for publication later).

There are tools you can use to write tweets and schedule them for later but the tool I use and recommend for this is HootSuite. However, it’s not the only one out there. If scheduling tweets is important to you now (or you think it might be important to you in the future) make sure that whatever application you use gives you the ability to schedule tweets.

Scheduled tweet best practices

• If you’re going to schedule retweets, keep them scheduled for the same day. There’s no rule that says you have to but it’s a weak use of retweeting if you retweet something a day or week later.
• Don’t use scheduling as the ONLY way you use Twitter. Either use Twitter with in-the-moment tweets and scheduled tweets, or use Twitter only with in-the-moment tweets. If the only way you are using Twitter is to schedule tweets, you are missing out on the value of Twitter. Unlike a blog, which is a medium that can handle content that is all scheduled, Twitter is a real time medium of engagement so scheduling won’t always be an effective use of your time.
• Schedule tweets that are informative or motivational. For example, schedule a tweet containing a famous quote that you find inspiring or schedule a tweet that says you like kittens. Don’t schedule tweets where you are engaging other people. For example, don’t schedule a tweet that says “Hi @IAC_Heather, how are you?” because when I respond and you turn out to be watching a movie and you don’t get my response, that’s not cool.
• The farther out you tweet, the more timeless your tweet needs to be. Some tweetable stuff is eternally timeless (such as those inspiring quotes I mentioned earlier) but if you schedule a tweet about something not timeless, and the news turns against it prior to the tweet publication, you’ll end up looking foolish. A good example might be a tweet about your favorite stock. If you like XYZ stock and you get really productive and schedule a tweet about it for next week, that might seem great until the CEO is arrested at the end of this week for embezzlement! Then next week’s tweet is no longer relevant and you’ll waste time going in to look for it to edit it. So, scheduled tweets should be the kind of thing that won’t be impacted by news.
• If you need to outsource some of your marketing, and you want to outsource some of your Twitter engagement, scheduled tweets are a good thing to outsource. That way, you can be a prolific tweeter while giving some of the non-engagement stuff to someone else and keeping the high-value person-to-person engagement for yourself.

Bonus Tip:  A Good Balance
I personally like to make sure I have a good mix of scheduled tweets versus live tweets versus auto tweets.

Things I auto tweet: Everytime I post a blog, using a WordPress PlugIn; Everytime an article of mine gets published on Ezine Articles, using their Twitter feature.

Things I schedule tweets for: I retweet my auto-tweets for about 12 hours after the initial tweet. This is the same tweet as the initial adding (RT) to it at the end. This assures my followers on opposite schedules each have a chance of reading my blogs. My product marketing tweets are scheduled as well, I do not market a specific product more than once a week, so for example, my Twitter Kit that you have purchased I will schedule one tweet a week promoting this. My #followfriday tweets can be scheduled and tweeted each Friday for my favorite tweeters.

Live Tweets: My day to day interaction with my follower base.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Tweet this! Plug-ins for Your Browser‏
2. Tweets in 10 – Let’s Hear You Hoot!
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

I love membership programs and advise many of my clients to build them. You’ll spend a fixed amount of time each month on creating content for your members and your membership can grow to an unlimited amount. Sure, if your members pay $19.95/month and you have 1 member, it might not seem like a lot of benefit if you spend 5 hours a month. But if in the following month you spend 5 hours but grow to ten members, it starts to seem a little better. And if in the month after that you still spend 5 hours but grow to fifty members, it gets even better. And a few years down the road you might still be only spending 5 hours per month on your membership program but you could have hundreds or even thousands of members. That’s some significant profitability!

So we’ve talked about why membership programs are good and I’ve started you on the journey of developing some ideas for your own membership program. Now I want to get really practical. I want to give you some ideas about actually starting up your program. This article is important for this reason: I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who want to start a membership program. And nothing is holding them back from doing it. However, the details of actually getting the program into place can sometimes be enough of an obstacle to keep them from getting it done.

In order to get going with your membership program, you’ll need to create a membership site, a payment processor, and you’ll need a way to manage memberships.

• Membership site: A membership site is the place that your members get to in order to access the content. It can be a separate website altogether or it can be a section on your existing website. Whatever you choose, it just needs to be secure – a place that isn’t indexed in the search engines and that requires someone to sign in with a username and password.

• Payment processor: You’ll need a payment processor in order to take the money each month. Ideally, your customers should enter their credit card information once and they get billed each month.

• Membership management: Membership management is required to make sure that people who have paid get access to your membership site and people who haven’t paid (or who stop paying) don’t get access to your site. In the early days of the web, this was managed “by hand” but there are membership management tools in place that can do this work for you.

These elements make up your membership program. They aren’t necessarily 3 separate things – sometimes you can get applications that do a couple of these functions for you.

Technologies that you might find useful

First I’m going to give you a couple of payment processors to think about:

Paypal: Paypal offers a simple-to-use payment system that accepts recurring payments. They have a basic and advanced option. The advanced options costs a little more but gives you more in return. You can use Paypal’s interface to customize the “Buy Now” or “Subscribe” button. You’ll still need a membership management system to help you keep track of who is authorized to have access and who isn’t.

Authorize.net: Authorize.net is the software that works with banks and permits you to accept credit cards and echecks. This software is a standard in the industry and offers you flexibility with recurring billing and customer payment profiles.

Next I’m going to give you a few membership management programs to look at:

Amember: This program is a popular, easy-to-use membership management program. They sync with payment processors so you can get set up quickly. And they are priced quite reasonably so it makes starting up your first membership program really affordable. It is worth mentioning that they have a 1ShoppingCart integration.

MemberGate: MemberGate isn’t just a membership management site or a payment processor, they offer the actual membership site itself! This makes them a great starting point for new membership site users who want to get started with little or no effort.

Wishlist: Wishlist is a membership site WordPress plug-in. If you run a WordPress website and want to have a membership program, you can use Wishlist to make it happen. It syncs with many popular payment processors so you can easily and quickly build a WordPress membership site. This plug-in is really very powerful and if you run a WordPress site you should seriously consider using it. Check out their list of features and you’ll be surprised at what it can do.

And here’s a shopping Cart system that can bring it all together:

1ShoppingCart: 1ShoppingCart is a leader in payment processing and it’s the one I use for a lot of my sites. It is worth mentioning that you still need a payment gateway/processor (either Paypal or Authorize.net in order to actually accept the payment) I like them because they not only accept recurring payments but they also offer other functions like email marketing. So if you’re looking for a complete system, this could be it. This site doesn’t offer membership management but it does have a great affiliate program so you can encourage your members to sign up other members and they will get some affiliate commission. It’s a great way to build your membership!

Putting them all together: So now it’s just a matter of getting things put together: Create your content, add it to a non-indexed website, get a membership management tool and a payment processor synched together and connected to your site… and you’re ready to go!

These aren’t the only tools you can use but they are fairly standard tools for a fairly standard membership program… and I hope you see how easy they are to get started. If you want to get really creative and are willing to consider other kinds of membership programs, here are some other tools you might consider. (Please note, I have not tried all of these – they have been recommended to me by others so I can’t speak to how easy they are to use. However, I’m mentioning them here because I think they are worth looking into).

Letter.ly: If you want a membership program that isn’t supported by a site but is rather just a paid email newsletter. Letter.ly is one to consider. Payments are processed through Amazon.

SocialSam: If the membership site you want to create is based on the connections between your members rather than exclusively to the information you provide then SocialSam might be the solution for you. SocialSam is a private social network membership site, which means that people pay to join your exclusive social network.

Once it’s all together
Okay, so you’ve built a site (or extended your existing site), you’ve got a membership management system and payment processor in place, and you have some thoughts about content for the next few months (at least). What now?

First you need to add some content. You need to have something there so that your first subscribers will join and immediately see that you have valuable information in place. I’d suggest adding a minimum of one months’ worth of content – perhaps more. Consider adding 2-3 months of content to start so that when your first members subscribe, they’ll see that there is plenty there.

Second, you need to start getting members! You can do this by marketing your membership site in a few different ways. I’ve already hinted at a few of them, but here they are along with some additional ideas:

• Be sure to add a link to your membership site in all of your marketing - blogs, articles, email signatures, you name it. Generate awareness about your membership site.

• If your payment processor has the functionality, offer an introductory “test drive” offer where your subscribers get the first month at a substantial discount and the payment is then set to the normal amount for future months. If you have a lot of valuable content in your membership site, this might be a good way to get people signed up.

• As mentioned, set up an affiliate program where members can refer others to become members and they get a commission for the referral. (Hint: The best kind of commission matches is an ongoing monthly commission every time the referred member pays).

• Give people a taste of the membership site so they can see what’s inside before they buy. Offer screenshots of what’s inside the membership or even a couple of sample blogs, articles, and videos. Nothing too much – and you don’t have to constantly change it – but just enough to whet their appetite.

• Have an option for people who aren’t ready to subscribe. There will be people who don’t want to pay the ongoing membership… yet. They aren’t yet convinced that you can provide them with all the value you say you can. So offer them a free newsletter that they can subscribe to. Give some value in the newsletter and build a relationship with them over time. In that way, you’ll convert people who you might have lost otherwise.

Membership programs are fun, easy, and profitable to operate. If you don’t have one set up for your business, you should think about it as a way to take your business to the next level. Use the information in the last three Tips In Ten issues to get set up easily and quickly and start transforming your business from an hourly model to a membership model!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Membership Programs in 10 Minutes – Part 2
2. Understanding Membership Programs in Ten Minutes – Part 1
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 2

In this article of Tips In Ten, I want to talk about what you can turn into a membership program. And in the next article of Tips In Ten, I’ll tell you about some technologies that can help you to build your membership program quickly.

So, what can you turn into a membership program? The short answer is “just about anything.” All membership programs have one thing in common: They give the customer semi-exclusive access to something that they find valuable. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t get the same information free somewhere else, but a membership program does mean that they get access to specific information in a way that is more helpful to them, is easy to find, and is free of clutter (i.e, there are no advertisements or annoying pop-ups to view the information). It’s not just information that they’re paying for; it’s access. Remember that, because it will help you to find the right content for your membership program and charge appropriately for it.

So, with that in mind, what can you sell in your membership program?

A High-Level View
It starts with a compelling offer to a niche market. This isn’t any different than any other business model. You need to identify the niche market that you’re serving and you need to figure out what problems they face and how to solve them. Then, you can build content around solving those problems.

Whatever you decide to do, you need to make sure that your content is:

• Valuable: You want people to buy into your membership program and stay there, paying each and every month for greater value. Typically, customers equate value with the following elements:1.    Exclusivity (they can’t easily get the same information somewhere else)
  2.    Applicability (they can immediately put the information to use to solve their problems)

• Sustainable: You want to make sure that you can provide additional value over time while remaining true to the purpose of your membership program.

Spend some time thinking about the subject matter you’re going to offer in your membership program and make sure it is broad enough to sustain a fairly long-term plan. You don’t want to run out of information in a year or two down the road!

And here’s another tip, drawn from an observation I’ve made: If you are really well-known in your market as a leader, you can have a fairly general membership program and people will sign up just because your name is attached to it. However, if you aren’t as “famous” as you’d like to be, you might have to be a little more specific with your subject matter because people will weigh the perceived value of your content based more on the subject matter and its applicability to their lives rather than on your name.

More specifically…
Once you have the subject matter in mind, you need to think about the media through which you will deliver it. You might consider creating:

• Articles
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Ebooks
• Reports
• Blogs
• Webinars
• Teleseminars
• PowerPoints

You can choose one or several. Pick things you are comfortable with and consider expanding into others over time. It depends on what you like to offer and what your customers will respond positively to. If you like videos, you might consider an all video membership program where you record regular videos for your members and post them on your members-only website. If you prefer to write and your customers don’t mind reading, then create blogs and articles and reports for them. If you have some great connections to noted experts, get them on a panel and record it (audio or video) and share that.

But that’s not all!
So far I’ve listed information, but that’s not the only thing you can offer in a membership program. Here are a few others:

• Consider downloadable tools (such as Excel Spreadsheets, for example, or Private Label Rights content that your customers can repackage and sell)

• Consider a classroom-style program where you teach a small group of people. Use a classroom program (like Prfessor.com) or use a round-table conference call system where a half dozen people call into one number and talk to you. I’ve seen both work successfully.

• A membership program might also be useful for connecting people. For example, I’ve seen this model work in a situation where members of a profession want to connect and share ideas or refer out-of-town clients.

• You might also consider user-generated content (like a forum) where your customers can talk to each other and you can come in from time to time and share your insight.

Now it’s time for you to think about what you want to offer for a membership program. Here’s what I suggest:

1.    Start with your current market. You already know what they need and you already have a connection to them and some positioning as an expert. It will be an easy step to build your membership program and offer as part of your current marketing efforts. (Conversely, if you start with a completely new market, you’ll need to ramp up your positioning and marketing. You’re starting at zero if you work with a new market). Add a link to it in your email signature and in the footer of your blogs and articles.

2.    Brainstorm what needs your prospects and customers have and how you have been solving those needs. For example, if you are a coach, think about the most common problems that your clients bring to you and what you do to help them. Are there elements of your coaching that can be “generalized” for broader consumption?

3. (Helpful timesaver) Look around your business and find information assets you currently have (or can quickly produce) to start building content. For example, repackaging old blogs into a single document might be good. Sure, it might not be the ONLY thing you offer but can be helpful. Another great tool would be to use any recorded coaching calls you’ve done (but don’t forget to ask for permission from the person you were recording).

4.    Decide how much you want to charge and, at the same time, how much information you want to release each month. You will be spending some time each month on creating and publishing information for your membership program (and it will take a little more time in the early stages but ultimately you’ll spend less time overall than if you did hourly work).

5.    Brainstorm enough content for a year. This might take some time and creativity but it’s important for two reasons: First, you want to make sure that you can sustain your information over time. Second, you want to have a publishing plan in place so that you’re not trying to think of new material every month.

6.    Create content for 3 months in advance. Try to stay 2-3 months ahead of yourself at all times so that you have a bit of a buffer zone just in case life gets in the way and keeps you from creating content. Believe me, you’ll go through this material fast and if you don’t stay ahead of it, you’ll find yourself doing some last-minute scrambling. The other advantage to working ahead is that you can build additional customer loyalty by promoting upcoming releases. For example, send out an email two weeks before you add something to your membership site that says something like: “I’m really excited about the upcoming release. You don’t believe the valuable information it provides about [whatever your topic is]!”

7.    Set up your membership program (more on that in the next article).

8.    Market your membership program as another way for potential customers to get access to your expertise. Include a link to your membership program in all of your marketing efforts.

Just to be clear: I’m not saying this will take ten minutes. This Tips In Ten series is meant to give you 3 helpful overviews about membership programs in ten minutes. It will take longer. Ultimately, you’ll end up saving a lot of time by creating a successful membership program with the ideas above and switching from an hourly business model to a membership business model that provides recurring monthly income for substantially less work.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Membership Programs in Ten Minutes – Part 1
2. Understanding Membership Programs in 10 Minutes – Part 3
3. Article Submissions in 10 Minutes a Day – Part 3

This article is written for 3 different audiences in mind. Nearly all of my readers will fall into one of these 3 categories:

• Some businesses might hire a designer or developer (or their tech-savvy nephew) to build the site and get it up-and-running; other businesses might hire a virtual assistant to keep it maintained. But there are a lot of “in between” things that need to be done but which might not be completed by either outsource party.

• There are some businesses that are just starting out on a total shoe-string budget (“total shoestring budget” meaning they either eat or pay someone to help with their website so they’ve chosen to eat instead). They can’t afford to pay anyone to do the work. But they also don’t really know where to start.

• Some businesses have a website and just need some ideas to grow their site sensibly without wasting hours every day. They may do a lot of this work themselves, perhaps out of necessity or interest or habit.

Ultimately, there are two secrets to creating and maintaining a really good website in only 10 minutes a day: First, you need a plan. Second, you need a Content Management System. If you have these two things, you can do nearly all of your work in just ten minutes. The plan keeps you on track. The Content Management System (CMS) helps you to reduce the amount of time you spend performing the tasks on your plan.

Create a plan

A plan will keep you on track. Too often while building and maintaining your website, it’s easy to get caught up in things that either seem to be “must-haves” or are the latest thing of the moment. For example, you might have a great site but then suddenly notice that two or three sites you really admire have something that you don’t. You drop everything else in your day to add it in. At the end of the day you review your productivity and discover that you didn’t bill any time today because you spent so much time working on your site. A plan will help to fix this.

In fact, you’re going to need two plans (although I tend to stick them together and refer to them as one plan; but they’re actually two different plans).

• The first plan is a web design/web development plan. It’s the “back-end” of your side. Changes you make here govern the look and functionality of your site. Even if you outsource most of your site, you’ll end up handling some of this stuff (like that whiz-bang “must-have” widget I mentioned above).

• The second plan is a content plan or publishing calendar. It’s the content (mostly words but sometimes video or images) that people see.

The reason I stick these together is because sometimes there isn’t a clear delineation between the two. Also, I often think of stuff for one list while I’m working on stuff for the other. It’s just easier.

So here’s what to do:

Start by listing everything you need to do on your site. If you don’t have a site yet, you’ll need to start at the very beginning, of course. List it all. You’ll end up with a big list and that’s okay. In fact, it’s about to get a whole lot bigger…

Next, break up each project into ten minute chunks. That’s right. Ten minute chunks. In nearly all cases, I’ve found this to be quite possible. On the odd occasion you might need to work longer, but overall you can manage your time well while still building a great site in just ten minutes at a time. Some of your project-break-ups will depend on your skills and abilities. If you’re a decently fast typist, you might be able to blog a single blog in ten minutes. Well, that’s one task. But if you write a lot or peck one finger at a time to type anything, you’ll either want to outsource your writing or break up your single blog into two or three projects.

Now you’ll have a long, long, long list. The next thing you need to do is prioritize them. What needs to happen first? Then what? And after that? If your list is really long and overwhelming, I sometimes find it easier to start at the end and work backwards. For example, a list of 100 items might be really confusing to think what needs to go first, but I can usually identify what needs to happen last! Then work backwards through the list slowly.

Once that’s done, you have something meaningful to work with! It’s basically your step-by-step recipe to building and maintaining a website. And every single day, sit down and do one of those things. Period.

To help you do that, you’ll also want to…

Implement and use a Content Management System (CMS)

Years ago, people used to hand-code sites. I say this because I’ve done it and I know other people who have as well. When you wanted a website, you sat down at your computer, opened Notepad and started typing:

<html>
<head>
<meta>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
… etc.

It’s like riding a bicycle, you never lose it! The advantage was that you ended up knowing code like a pro in no time! But there was a disadvantage. After the fourth or fifth page, your site became difficult to manage. In my own personal experience I remember the odd occasion when I’d think “oh, I want a different link structure” and I’d need to go back and make changes across every page. The bigger the site got, the harder it was to maintain.

A CMS makes it so much easier. A CMS gives you an interface to manage and update content easily without having to open up the code on each page to make changes. Finding and implementing a CMS with your website will take longer than ten minutes. However, once have a CMS in place, it will dramatically shorten the amount of time it will take you do to the rest of your giant “to do” list mentioned earlier. So it’s worth the up-front time investment.

There are several Content Management Systems out there. If you click over to Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Content_Management_Systems — you will see what I mean. (Don’t worry so much about selecting one from the list – I’m about to recommend one).

So, there are lots of CMSs out there but I think the best one for most small business owners is WordPress. WordPress is an opensource (free!) CMS and there is a huge community of people who develop applications (called “plug-ins”) and designs (called “themes”) and offer them for free to WordPress users. A WordPress website gives you plenty of control: You can build website pages and/or blogs, giving you the power to design your site however you want to design it. Of course, you don’t have to use WordPress, it’s just one that I like and would recommend. I’ve been using it for years and coaching others to build successful businesses with the same CMS.

Ultimately, you need to find a CMS that works for you: It needs to be easy to learn and easy to implement. You don’t want to spend too long figuring out how to navigate around it and you don’t want to spend days trying to upload it to a server.

And then what?

Once you have your CMS in place, start rocking that to-do list! Do one thing a day, every single day. (If you have time, or find yourself with 10 minutes between supper and your favorite TV show, why not fire up your list and your CMS and do the next thing?)

Cross off each item as you go but be prepared to add more items as they come up. (You might get more blog ideas or you might find that something else needs to be added to your site).

The biggest challenge you’ll have is to discipline yourself to only do ten minutes a day. If necessary, set a timer and just do it.

Lastly, remember this important fact: Your website will never be perfect. It is always a work in progress. It is always going to be modified. Accept that it is imperfect and don’t lose sleep (or waste time) over not having the latest shiny widget on your site. You’ll eventually get to it on your list, but in the meantime you won’t waste time!

Related posts:

1. Building a Fanbase of Followers in 10 Minutes a Day
2. Saving Time with One Small Addition to Your Website
3. Brand Management in Ten Minutes Will Save You Hours

For busy professionals, multitasking is a must-have skill that allows you to shoehorn more productivity into an already packed schedule.

It’s an often-maligned skill, too, because of the frequently quoted problem that multitasking results in poorer quality work. But I disagree. Like other skills, I believe that multitasking is something you can develop and improve and use strategically. Here are some tips to help you do that:

• Start small. Don’t multitask your rocket science work AND your brain surgery work right out of the gate. Instead, multitask a few different less-essential things until you get good at multitasking.

• Triage your work. Not everything should be multitasked. Driving, for example, should remain separate from reading, talking on the phone, putting on make-up, etc. But a lot of things – things that aren’t life-and-death situations – are able to be multitasked. Multitasking on billable work is debatable. I’m personally of the opinion that if you charge by the hour, you shouldn’t be multitasking billable hours. But people who bill by the project and can take as long as they want on something might be okay with multitasking. Especially if they…

• Know the bandwidth limit. Even awesome multitaskers have a limit. It’s like bandwidth. You only have so much mental capacity to use at once. Most tasks don’t take up all of your bandwidth. Some tasks (like driving your car) should probably take more bandwidth than you think they should. But talking on the phone to a coworker doesn’t need to take up as much bandwidth as it does.

• Group like projects together. The most effective kind of multitasking is when you group similar projects together. For example, if you manage half a dozen Twitter accounts, and you want to spend a focused amount of time on Twitter, you can multitask this easily.

• Prep for multitasking. Before you multitask, make sure you have everything ready to go. The purpose of multitasking is quickly lost if you have to get up from your desk or if you spend your time searching for a folder or opening programs. (That’s another reason why grouping like projects together is a good multitasking idea).

• Keep a list. A list of “multitaskable” tasks should be handy. This should be stuff that you can do whenever you have some extra bandwidth. Email sorting, quick email responses, filing, Twitter-follower-list-adding, reviewing your schedule for the day. These are low bandwidth activities that you always need to do. Keep that list nearby. When you discover some extra bandwidth, pull out the list.

• Set time limits on your work and focus on improving your multitasking skill. The purpose of multitasking is to get more work done in less time. So if you have two projects that each take an hour, and it takes you two hours to do them both, then it doesn’t matter if you do them at the same time or if you do them consecutively; there’s no time saved. Instead, focus on doing both of them well in 1 to 1.5 hours in total. This will take some time because multitasking is a skill.

• Have a goal. This is a good time management tip for anyone, whether or not you want to multitask. But if you do multitask, it will make your multitasking easier. That’s because consciously knowing the goal can help you unconsciously work toward it. And, you won’t be half-heartedly working around the project without a clear purpose; you’ll be actively working toward the goal.

• Get into the zone. Multitasking isn’t something you do to avoid real effort. It’s something you do when you are focused and operating at your peak. If you find that you’re trying to multitask but you’re only doing one thing at a time, put something aside until you can focus. I don’t juggle but it seems kind of like juggling: You see jugglers starting with 3 items and then once they have a rhythm, they seem to be able to effortlessly add more in later. Compare that to someone who tries to just START juggling 17 items at once. Seems harder to do. (Back me up here, jugglers!)

Multitasking is a muscle that needs to be worked. When you schedule your day, sit down and quickly identify two or three projects you can multitask at the same time. Work at it. Evaluate how you did. Try again another day. Build your multitasking muscle strategically.

Start juggling!

Related posts:

1. Effective Lead Generation in 10 Minutes
2. Making Work Easier: Tactical Tips for Better Productivity

With only hours to go before 2010, your planning is probably finished. Your strategizing is tucked away. Your dreams are sitting on your desk, waiting for you to show up on Monday morning. You’ve done everything you can do this year and now it’s coming to close.

And the champagne is flowing generously.

Before things get too carried away, over the next few hours, take a moment to pause and consider what I’m about to tell you: The week between Christmas and New Year is often an INSANE week, filled with gifts and festive activities and diets-be-damned eating. And the entire year leading up to this moment has been INSANE for many people, filled with bad news compounded by bad news. This past week – and this past year – has possibly been all about you running around and trying not to go crazy.

All that is about to change
Take a brief moment and reset your thinking. Make the following 10 promises to yourself for 2010:

1.    Promise to give the very best of yourself to every customer you meet. (They will reciprocate with repeat business).

2.    Promise to be positive, upbeat, enthusiastic, optimistic, and encouraging. (Smile brightly and the world will smile back).

3.    Promise to see every crisis as an opportunity. (You might just find the springboard to stellar success).

4.    Promise to invest in yourself and your business. (You know it takes money to make money… so spend a bit on your business).

5.    Promise to be more productive and make the most of every moment. (You can do more in the same amount of time).

6.    Promise to find the balance between work and family. (It’s a reward that can’t be counted).

7.    Promise to leap into new challenges. (Action and boldness are key ingredients that will help this year to be spectacular).

8.    Promise to be productive and to fight procrastination at ever turn. (Cut out that time playing Farmville in Facebook in favor of more revenue-generation).

9.    Promise to focus on operating a smart, efficient, profitable business. (That’s what it’s all about).

10.    Promise yourself that 2010 will be a great year for you and for your business. (It all starts with this decision).

These promises aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. They are achievable every single day and the business that commits to these 10 promises will have a successful 2010.

Here’s what I’d recommend
Write these promises to yourself. Put them on your desk. Read them every day before your day starts and review them every day before you sign off for the evening. If you’re REALLY serious about succeeding and these promises make sense to you, then create a metric for each one and use them as a checklist. (For example, for the “see every crisis as an opportunity” promise, why not create a list of things that stress you out and then choose on each week and find the opportunity in it).

When you countdown and shout “Happy New Year” today, you’re not just celebrating the turn of the calendar, you’re saying goodbye to a year of challenge and saying hello to a year of opportunity. This is an exciting time for business owners!

On that note:

10…
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No related posts.

Oh, he seems like a nice enough guy, and his books (Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, or Death by Meeting are decent enough books), but in a recent article with Forbes he seemed to take a stand against virtual teams. In the article “When you Absolutely Can’t Meet Face to Face“, Lencioni is interviewed by Terry Waghorn about virtual teams, virtual meetings, and virtual work.

Lencioni talks about “the challenges of being dispersed” and he says “no single tool or device can replace face-to-face interaction” and “a virtual team needs to acknowledge that its being distributed is a disadvantage” and “there is simply no substitute for sitting down face to face with your team to solve problems in real time”. That’s not right at all. Virtual teams are not at a disadvantage.

Here’s why I think Lencioni is wrong. If you go into a business relationship assuming that the virtual team is at a disadvantage, all of the disadvantages will be highlighted. But a face-to-face connection has its disadvantages, too! Rather, I think businesses should simply accept the circumstance they’re in – virtual, face-to-face, or mixed – and embrace it.

Here’s why I think virtual teams are better:

• Virtual teams create highly collaborative and work focused meetings. In my experience, the right leader with the right technology can get far more accomplished in a virtual collaboration than in a face-to-face collaboration. (The “right leader” needs to be in control of the meeting and the “right technology” needs to work consistently and allow everyone equal access.)

• Virtual teams save costs and time. There is no traveling time, there is little or no meeting costs (aside from any meeting technology you’re using). This increases the amount of time that people have to be productive. That is a win in my books.

• Virtual teams can speed up projects. Teams that are dispersed across timezones can give more attention to a project than teams that are stuck in a single project. If I work on a project when I start work (in the Eastern timezone) and pass it off successfully to those in subsequent timezones, the project gets much more attention each day than if several of us try to work concurrently on the project in a single timezone.

I understand what Lencioni is trying to say: He wants teams to connect relationally. However, I believe you can still do that successfully through virtual tools. And, on balance, I believe more gets done at a lower cost with the right leader leading a virtual team.

Good Luck and Happy Blogging!

Related posts:

1. Being Personal while being Virtual…
2. How to Develop Organizational Culture in an E-Business

However, success tends to breed success. Soon you may find yourself with a steady stream of projects. You may even get to the point of turning down projects that you simply do not have time to complete. The decision then becomes, do you continue to do it yourself, or hire someone? It can be a difficult decision. But you must take into consideration that continuing to work alone can be counterproductive.

There are several reasons for this:

No business owner is good at everything
You probably have a natural aptitude for the work that your business produces. You can quickly and easily turn out finished projects that are of the highest quality. Other types of work, however, may not come so easily to you.

Perhaps you have trouble producing high quality written work. You struggle with putting words together in just the right combination to convey your meaning. Consequently, preparing written reports, ad copy and other documents takes you an inordinate amount of time. Or maybe math is not your strong suit. While words flow quickly out of your fingers, you struggle to understand spreadsheets, complete payroll and perform other tasks that involve long strings of numbers.
No matter what your weaker area is, you will find yourself dedicating extra time to those projects. You will lose valuable productivity simply due to a natural weakness.

No business owner has time for everything
The sheer quantity of tasks that must be performed by a small business can be onerous. Even if you are the rare person who is equally talented in all aspects of business management and production, performing them all by yourself ensures that you have less time to produce your main product. Every task takes time to complete.

So you have to make the decision, should you do it yourself or hire someone?

The solution
You may not be ready to hire an on-site part time or full time staff just yet. That’s okay; after all, those costs can be high when you factor in overhead and equipment purchases. But there is an intermediate step you can take: Outsourcing. Whether you choose a virtual assistant to work consistently with you or a freelancer to take on specific projects, you can scale up or down or hire on an as-needed basis.

The advantage here is that you can start small and slowly build your business in an organic way, rather than hiring an employee and hoping that you’ll get enough extra business to cover their wage. Outsourcing your work is the way to go!

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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Based on the research I have done, I am going to test out the Uberman sleep schedule, maybe slightly modified. If you want to read more about Polyphasic Sleep, check out Lifehack.org or Steve Pavlina’s diary of adjusting to and living with the Polyphasic Sleep cycle.

First let me say, that my assistant Joan is screaming No! Her exact words when I asked her were:

It’s hard to say.  IF you can get to that REM cycle in that short amount of time, then it probably will.  However, according to the article, you have to be disciplined to take the naps at the scheduled times every day. This I see as a problem for you because depending on what you are doing and what is going on, you will miss the naps. As it is you can’t stop and go to bed when you say you are going to now.  Anything like this, you HAVE to follow to the T or it won’t work. Personally, I would never do it.  Naps only make me cranky. I normally only get about 5-6 hours of sleep on any given night, but when I sleep, I really sleep.

You seem to do better when you quit early for the day – like around 7-8pm and then get up at 6:30am.  It’s always easier for me to get you up when you work that schedule. I think if you will follow a regular working day and quit at a regular hour and sleep normally that you will do much better.  When you work all night, it seems to take you two to three days to get back on this schedule. But during those two to three days you seem out of sorts. That’s just my observation from working with you.

So this could work, but unless you are committed to stopping – no matter what – and talking all these naps, then I don’t see it working for you personally.

Heh! If that is not a challenge, I don’t know what is. Let me tell you why I am testing this out:

1) My profession deals with productivity, if I am not willing to try something that may make me more productive, then I am not very good at my profession.

2) I am raising a little one, which requires that I be ‘available’ at specific times, that don’t always mesh together to make the most convenient schedule for me.

3) I have always been most productive at night and early morning (between the hours of 1am to 7am).

4) I work from home and am able to build a schedule that suits me best.

That being said, my last ‘sleep’ was this morning from 7am to noon (after I sent the little one off to school, I hardly got any sleep last night). Right now would be my normal time to go to sleep. Based on my schedule, the times I need to make sure I am awake and the general rule of this sleep cycle is being up 4 hours, sleeping for 30 minutes (I am going to change these up a bit), I plan on doing the following:

2:30am to 3:30am – asleep

3:30 am to 7:30am – awake

7:30am to 8:15am – asleep

8:15am to 12:15pm – awake

12:15pm to 1pm – asleep

1pm to 5pm – awake

5pm to 5:45pm – asleep

5:45pm to 9:45pm – awake

9:45pm to 10:30pm – asleep

10:30pm to 2:30am – awake

As you see, I am doing 45 minute sleep cycles (except the 2:30 to 3:30am one which is an hour) and 4 hour awake cycles. The uberman schedule states that you are awake 21 to 22 hours a day, I think pushing 20 is just enough for me.

This cycle will let me be up when the little one goes to school, comes home from school, needs dinner and goes to bed. It will also permit me 8 hours awake during normal business hours ( don’t worry clients, I am not turning into a slouch) and it will also permit me time awake when I do dinners, movies and of course my productive nights when I get writing and other things done. Don’t get me wrong, I am not expecting to work 20 hours a day and sleep 4 hours a day, what I am hoping for is that I have a better balance in my life utilizing productive times for me. I will have time to also do the things I love (reading, cooking, etc.).

So, it is 12:43am on Tuesday October 13th. This begins in a few hours. At 2:30am I will go to sleep for the first sleep of this new schedule. I will attempt to keep a log (while probably not as good as Steve Pavlina’s) over the next 30 days to see how it turns out. Whether this will work for me, or be a permanent thing, only time will tell.

Note: I am going to use the #ppse hashtag on twitter to make any ‘small’ comments about the experiment, so I don’t have to write a blog post every time I wake up

Related posts:

1. Definitely NOT going to work! (Surprising Reasons)

In comparing mileage notes, it was interesting to think of the parallels with business: The SUV took a massive investment to start and run, and it would only run for a short time before it needed more fuel. Many businesses – especially small businesses and solopreneurs – are like that: They market their business, then do the work, then need to market again for more business.

Conversely the “Prius” of businesses can do a bit of marketing and go for miles on that small amount of marketing “fuel” investment.

So that begs the question: How can businesses go from gas guzzlers to efficient?

The secret is in branding, positioning, and effective marketing that runs without a lot of effort. I’m going to mention a few items here that I think can help businesses make that transition:

• Twitter, when combined with a professional Twitter client like HootSuite (2.0), allows professionals to schedule tweets and tweet more consistently and effectively.

• An assistant, or a virtual assistant like IAC Professionals (hello, of course I’d suggest this!) takes the pressure off of business owners by taking care of some of the marketing to increase their billable time. One client just reported that he had a record-breaking quarter because he gave his virtual assistant nearly all of his marketing tasks to do for him.

• Checklists, CRM systems, and autoresponders are all ways to improve the efficiency of your marketing to reduce the amount of time you need to “stop for gas”.

• As I’m writing this, one of my clients just told me about a coaching class she’s offering. It’s relevant here so I thought I’d mention it: Trish Lambert of Success in Sweatpants is a certified “Book Yourself Solid” trainer (based on Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid system and book). She’s offering a “coaching in sweatpants” class that covers how to build a foundation for success, how to build trust and credibility, and how to promote yourself. The classes cover critical topics like “how to have a brand”, “how to be an expert”, “how to have effective sales conversations”, and more. Read more about it here: Coaching in Sweatpants and sign up for her class!

Business growth does come from marketing, but not just any marketing. It comes from strategic marketing built on a solid foundation and one that aims at reducing how much you actually market while increasing the effectiveness of the time you do spend marketing.

Speak Soon!

Related posts:

1. Trying To Go it Alone: Why It Is Less Productive To Work Alone
2. Making Work Easier: Tactical Tips for Better Productivity