• You want more interaction
• You want more effective positioning
• You want more promotion
• You want more of your personality injected into your relationships
• You want to put your finger on the pulse of who is listening

… And an event can do that.

In this article of Tips In Ten I’ll give you a few ways to promote your event. If you have all the details already worked out, you can do a fairly significant amount of promotion in just ten minutes thanks to a variety of social media tools.

What kind of events am I talking about?
An event would be any time-specific situation where you gather a group of people together. Events could be online or offline or a mix; anything from a teleconference, teleseminar, or webinar to a face-to-face meeting or an after-hours networking event at a local cafe. It could be a large event or a small one. It could be an open-invitation event or a closed invitation event. It all depends on your business and your market. Here are some examples of events I’ve seen or participated in:

• A time management coach who is trying to create some local interest for his or her coaching services might put on a free seminar at a local library.

• A social media consultant who wants to introduce newbies to the world of Twitter and Facebook might put on a webinar.

• An entrepreneur who has a big list of clients might rent out a café or bar one evening and invite people for some networking and finger food.

• A freelancer who is just starting to work with a brand new client and wants to meet his or her team for the first time might hold a teleconference to introduce themselves.

If you are looking for some effective ways to grow your business, consider the following kinds of events:

• Phone-in teleseminars where people call or email their questions and you answer them.

• Seminars (or webinars) where you dish out advice on hot topics that people need answers about.

• A collection of speakers or experts who can share insights or field questions.

• A networking event where like-minded people share and connect with each other and promote themselves.

• Webinars to walk people through a complex idea or situation where showing is more effective than telling (and where showing a bunch of people at once is faster than showing them one at a time).

• Meeting a group of people at once (such as in a project management setting or a sales presentation).

So there are a lot of reasons to have an event. Use your imagination and create regular events to grow your business.

So, let’s say that you have an event and you want to promote it to get people to come to it. What do you do?

What you need before you promote it
You need to set up the event. Know the date, time, venue (Online? Offline?) and how people can get there or connect to it. You need the topic and a compelling title. If you’re creating an online event, don’t forget to keep time zones in mind. (Scheduling a meeting for 9AM Eastern on a weekday might sound like a great idea to get a good start to your day but you won’t make any friends with the people in Pacific Time who are just crawling out of bed and trying to get breakfast for the kids.)

I won’t give you a lot of details on how to develop and create an event because this Tips In Ten is about promoting your event, not setting one up, and those details really depend on how you are going to deliver your event. But you need to do that part first.

Then, write down these four things and they will become the core of your ten minute promotional blitz:

• What: What is the event called?
• Why: Why should someone go?
• When: When is it?
• Where: Where do they go or click?

Now it’s time to promote your event.

Promoting your event in ten minutes

Email your list. (Duration: 2 minutes). Obviously, you should email your subscribers, clients, and prospects with short, friendly invitation. Something along the lines of: “You’re invited to my teleseminar on time management next week. We’ll talk about the 5 ways you can get more time out of your already busy day and the 3 resources you absolutely need if you hope to be more efficient. To attend…”. It’s clear and straightforward.

Blog about it. (Duration: 1 minute). Easy: Copy and paste your email into your blog. Maybe add some flair (or don’t if you’re pressed for time). Again, you’re just communicating the what, why, when, and where. If you don’t have a lot of people to invite, you may need to write a little more sales copy into your work to “sell” your readers on why they should be there.

Tweet it. (Duration: 15 seconds). Easy. Just tweet the main benefit, the date and time, and how to get there. Or, if you don’t have enough space in your tweet, try something like: “Free webinar on time management” with a link to the blog post you just wrote (above). Schedule regular tweets to promote your event.

Post the event on Facebook. (Duration: 2 minutes). Facebook is an easy way to promote events to friends and fans and the general public. Sign in to Facebook. On your home page, you’ll see “Events” on the left:

When you click on it, you’ll get to this events page:

Click the “Create an Event” button. And that will take you to the events creation page:

On this page, just follow the instructions, most of which you already determined when you were setting up the event. Add a picture if you want. You can select guests from among your friends, invite others with an email address, and add a personal message if you’d like (which you can rip off from the email you’ve already sent out). Choose whether or not to make it a public event and whether or not to add the guest list to the event page. When you’re done, click the blue “Create Event” button.

… And you’re done. Easy!

Post the event on LinkedIn. (Duration: 3 minutes). LinkedIn has a similar event creation interface so if you are holding an event with a business purpose, LinkedIn gives you exposure to a wider audience. Sign in to LinkedIn. Along the top of your Account interface is this menu:

Hover your cursor over the “More” link and you’ll see “Events” on the list. Click it and you’ll end up here:

Select the “Add an Event” tab (as shown) and simply put in the information you’ve already been disseminating elsewhere: The name of the event, the date and time, the venue name, etc.  And if you click on “Add more details”, you get the following:

That’s it. It’s pretty easy to get your event out there in front of your prospects and clients and generate an audience.

Of course there’s more that you can do if you have more than ten minutes to spend (or if you delegate this part to someone else).

Check out social media event sites like:

www.eventbrite.com
www.meetup.com
www.eventful.com
www.upcoming.org

These event sites might be appropriate for you (although some of them are more applicable to in-person events than online events).

Related posts:

1. Running a Fan-Attracting Facebook Page in 10 Minutes a Day
2. How to Get ‘LinkedIn’ like a Superstar… in Ten Minutes a Day
3. Ezines in 10 Minutes a Day- Part 2 – Picking your Software

In this article of Tips In Ten, I’m going to give you some basic steps to train others without spending more than ten minutes a day. Even if you don’t have staff yet, you might some day. Or, you’ll soon have an assistant or virtual assistant to train. Or perhaps you’ll outsource to someone and you want to give them a rough idea of your business. And, this might even work when putting together some instructional content for clients, too. So this issue is about “training” but it could relate to training anyone.

There are just four simple steps that you can do and most of the time it will take just ten minutes to put this together. In some circumstances where it will take longer, you can break it up over a few days. However, if you regularly train people and you get into a pattern with developing this kind of training, you probably won’t take more than ten minutes anyway.

Before I start, I want to give you a couple of ways to deploy your training. There’s no need to get fancy but you should use something that works for you. Depending on what you’re comfortable with, you might want to do:

• Written training (i.e. in Microsoft Word or some other word processing program).

• Audio training (where you record your voice talking to the trainee). If this is your preferred method, your computer probably has a standard “sound recorder” program in the Start > Programs > Accessories menu. Or, a free audio program I really like is Audacity which allows you a lot of freedom to record and edit sound.

• Video training (where you record your voice, your face, and perhaps a screen-cap video for the trainee). If you want to record your voice and face (and a whiteboard or other visual aid), you can just use your computer’s built-in camera or an inexpensive computer camera. If you want to record videos of what’s on your screen, Camtasia is really good.

Feel free to use a mixture of these three different types of training media, depending on what you are trying to teach. If you are trying to teach a program that has a lot of detailed things to do, Camtasia is great. If you want to give audio instructions about how to answer a telephone, audio is good. If you have some basic concepts or a training about a simple website, a written document (with images) is fine. Once you’ve made all this training, be sure to store them in one convenient place with obvious names so your trainees can access them later.

Here are the four steps I recommend for your training:

Step 1: Give them the bigger picture. (Duration: 1 minute)
This is so important and often ignored! Most trainees will do a much better job at whatever you are showing them if you just tell them why they are doing it and how it fits into the bigger picture. If you are teaching them to use Twitter on your company’s behalf, for example, don’t just show them the technical aspects of tweeting; instead, start them off by briefly explaining why Twitter is important and how Twitter fits into your company’s social media marketing strategy. You don’t have to spend long on this, just a moment to tell them why it’s important.

So you might say, “We believe that social media is a powerful way for businesses to interact with customers and we’ve chosen Twitter as one of our social media tools. You will be tweeting on behalf of our company to share our brand with our followers.”

See how easy that was? It only took a moment and it gave a nice, clear picture about Twitter’s role in the company.

Step 2: Give them the highlights. (Duration: 2 minutes)
Next, you are going to just hit some of the important things they need to know. It doesn’t have to be very detailed (you’ll get to that), but it should give them an overview of what they are doing and how they are doing it. I like to think of it like this: In a moment, you are about to give them the detailed instructions but first you are going to give them some key things to remember so that when you touch on those things in the detailed instructions, they will jump out.

Just keep it really simple and quick with bullet points. Keep it to ten or fewer highlights.

To use the Twitter example again, I might say: “You are going to spend ten minutes a day interacting with followers on Twitter using a combination of tweets, retweets, replies, and direct messages. You’ll also be actively following other people. What we are looking for is an engaged audience who thinks of us as the experts. And we always want to make sure we are engaging our audience and not just promoting ourselves.”

I wrote that as if I was doing an audio or video but you could easily arrange those into about half a dozen bullet points for a Word document. Now, when the trainee reads this and reviews the detailed part (in the next step) they will recognize the important parts that you want them to cover.

Some other valuable items to cover in this section:

• If you are measuring them on something, tell them what the measurable is.
• If there are several ways of doing something, tell them that and point out which way you are showing them.
• Tell them whether you are giving them a general overview as a guideline or a strict “must-follow” step-by-step system.

Step 3: Give them the details. (Duration: 5-8 minutes)
If you’ve done the other parts, this is going to go quickly and easily. Just show them how to do what you want them to do. Keep it simple. Make it step-by-step. Go through the material quickly but be mindful that you don’t blaze through so quickly that they will miss important parts.

If you are going to use a Word document, use screen capture (Press “Control” and “PrtScn” at the same time and that will copy a picture of your screen to your clipboard, then you can click “paste” in your Word document and the image of your screen will be pasted there).

If you are using audio or video, speak naturally and clearly into the microphone and jot down an outline before you start so that you don’t ramble on beyond your time limit.

There’s no reason why you can’t spend more than ten minutes but here’s what I find: You are already busy and don’t have a lot of time, but the only way to train your staff is bite the bullet and take the time to train them. So if you take ten minutes now to get them started, and you take ten minutes later for some intermediate training, and another ten minutes down the road for advanced training, that’s probably going to be easier to carve out of your busy days than half an hour all at once.

On the odd occasion, you might need to create something that takes longer than ten minutes. If that happens, break it up over a couple of days so that it doesn’t become a time stealer for you. In general, though, you should adequately cover a lot of material even if you restrict your time to ten minutes.

Step 4: Help them troubleshoot. (Duration: 1-2 minutes)
In some cases, I’ve found that a troubleshooting training session is worth ten minutes all on its own. But there are times when you only need to spend a moment or two helping your trainees avoid disaster. Give them a couple of the top things to watch out for and ways to deal with it. Then point them to a resource to get more information if they need it. If I was going to add some troubleshooting tips onto the end of my Twitter training, I might say something like, “Make sure you don’t explicitly sell our services while using Twitter because that’s not what it’s for. And be careful when you click on any shortened URLs; don’t click on them if they aren’t from a source you recognize.”

There! You’re done and it only took ten minutes. Now you don’t have an excuse not to train your staff to do the work that will be truly helpful to you! Just take ten minutes a day to create some training and your staff will be able to take on so many more projects, freeing you up to focus your attention on other aspects of your business.

Related posts:

1. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
2. Run a More Efficient, Profitable Business in 10 Minutes a Day
3. Growing Your Business with YouTube in Just Ten Minutes! – Part1

In this article of Tips In Ten, I’m going to give you a plan to grow your business using only ten minutes a day. Now, that might sound humorously insufficient but I would disagree: Ten minutes may not seem like a lot of time but the more widely practiced alternative is for an entrepreneur to think about business growth only when they remember. Instead, short and consistent improvement can be achieved even in just 10 minutes.

So, my very first piece of advice is this: Spend 10 minutes a day working on business growth (I’ll show you how in a moment). If you need to spend longer (and you probably will from time to time) do so, but at the very least take the 10 minutes. What you’ll probably find, as I’ve found, is that the 10 minutes is a required minimum you set for yourself to ensure that you actually focus on it every day. And, from time to time, you’ll need to do (or delegate) additional work.

Growing your business in 10 minutes a day: The preparation
Business growth sounds like a big, unwieldy concept that is not easily mastered so don’t sit down during your 10 minutes of scheduled business growth and ask: “How am I going to grow my business today?” It doesn’t work like that.

Instead, think of your business as a number of different systems that all work together, much like your body is made up of a number of different systems (respiratory, digestive, etc.) that all work together. This whole business growth concept is based around dividing up your business into smaller systems and making small, measurable improvements to each system.

Dividing up your business: Here’s a good way to divide up your business into a series of systems or functions (although you might find that your particular business or industry demand slightly different ways to divide up your business’ systems or functions):

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Production & Delivery
• Accounting & Finance
• Organization & Management
• Innovation
• Human Resources

If you can improve each of these systems, your business will easily outpace your competition.

Determining metrics: Next, think of a metric for each system. This is where a lot of entrepreneurs fall down because they know that they need to grow their business, and they can usually identify what elements of their business need to grow, but they don’t take this critical step of identifying the metric to measure improvement.

So, sit down and think of a metric that applies to that particular system. It doesn’t have to be the only metric that perfectly measures everything in that system; just working on some aspect of that system is going to make a difference. I’ve written an example metric beside each system, below, but you might think of something more appropriate for your business:

• Marketing: # of blogs per week
• Sales: # of conversions per week
• Customer Service: # of complaints per month
• Production & Delivery: # of returns
• Accounting & Finance: Profitability
• Organization & Management: # of total hours worked
• Innovation: $ invested on innovation
• Human Resources: Staff turnover

Figuring out what to elements work on: Once you have your list of systems and you’ve determined metrics for each one, brainstorm what elements contribute to that metric. For example, “# of blogs each week” is pretty easy: The element that contributes to that metric is quite simply the number of blogs you publish. “# of conversions” is a little more complex because it includes how many people are in your prospect list and how “warm” they are and how often you communicate with them. “# of complaints per month” is also complex because it includes the quality of products you make or services you deliver as well as the speed with which you deliver them.

These three preparatory steps of dividing up your business’ systems, determining metrics, and figuring out what elements to work on, may not actually take very much time and once you’ve done those steps, you probably won’t need to do them again for another quarter. Just spend the next three months – doing just ten minutes a day – and work on the elements that contribute to the metrics.

Now schedule it in. During each scheduled 10 minute period of business growth, focus on one of the areas you’ve listed above. (I’ve listed 8 business systems to work on. I’ll use that as an example but you might have 6 or 7 or 9 systems.) So I might schedule 10 minutes on Monday to work on Marketing, 10 minutes on Tuesday to work on Sales, 10 minutes Wednesday to work on Customer Service, and so on. I skip the weekends and loop around into the following week so that over 8 weekdays I’ve spent 10 minutes on each of the systems I want to focus on. Then I start over and I do that for an entire quarter.

Growing your business in 10 minutes a day – the easy and fun part!
Okay, so you’ve arrived at the 10 minutes in your schedule that you want to work on business growth. Just work on some of the elements that contribute to that metric. The goal isn’t to make a profound change today that will skyrocket you to success. That’s not realistic and probably wouldn’t happen in one day even if you spent more than 10 minutes on it. Instead, the point is to just improve the element so that the metric improves.

If it’s Monday and you’re working on marketing and your metric is the number of blog posts published, write a blog post for each day of the week. If it’s Tuesday and you’re working on sales and your metric is the number of conversions, analyze your successful and unsuccessful sales to see what common points led to successful sales and what common points led to losing the sale.

(And now we’re going to pause here for a moment while you say: “Wait a second, Heather, I thought you said I could do this in 10 minutes. Writing blog posts from Monday through Friday will take far more than 10 minutes; analyzing sales will take more than 10 minutes.” To which I respond: Yes, that’s true. However, the point of this 10 minute business growth session is to springboard your business growth, not necessarily accomplish everything in such a short time. So, take 10 minutes to brainstorm 5 blog posts and then delegate the writing to your assistant or a freelance writer. Or, Take 10 minutes to pull together the information so you can look at in the evening between episodes of your favorite TV shows).

Now just do that every day. When your 10 minutes of business growth arrives on your schedule, something with those elements to improve the metric of the system you want to work on that day.

Here’s the result: You’ll have small but consistent, measurable and incremental improvements across nearly all areas of your business. Ten minutes won’t feel like much but it adds up. Just make sure you “move the needle” a little every day and your business will grow. Come up with something in those 10 minutes to move the needle and either do it in those 10 minutes, get it ready to do later, or delegate it to someone else. However it gets done, you’ll contribute to your business growth in a surprisingly short time.

Business growth doesn’t happen on its own. It takes attention and effort but all too frequently it’s something that gets pushed aside for more urgent matters. You can easily correct this by spending just 10 minutes a day working on business growth. It may not seem like much but it will add up!

Bonus Tips:

Here are a couple of final recommendations:

• For some of you, “# of blog posts” isn’t going to be a great metric. I just used that as an example. Perhaps you use AdWords, so improving your click-through rate might be a better metric. Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s a metric of significance to your business. There’s no sense in choosing a metric that doesn’t actually contribute to your overall business!

• Do these 10 minutes of schedule business growth sessions early in the day. I’ve found that if you schedule it later in the day, it’s too easy to put off for something else that seems more important. However, if you schedule it as one of the first things you do in the day, it’s far easier to actually do.

• Do this for one quarter. Then, when the quarter is up, you have three choices: Either work on different systems (if you only worked on a few in the quarter), or create new metrics for the systems you’ve already been working on, or just continue doing what you’ve been doing.

Related posts:

1. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3

Here’s what happens for me and maybe this happens to you to: I’m working away and pretty proud of my consistent productivity throughout the day. Then I look up at the clock and realize that I’ve done no work for the past half an hour. I’ve been staring at the screen or mindlessly clicking through blogs in my bookmarks or flicking the corner of a piece of paper and dreaming of a sunny vacation.

The afternoon slump. It’s not very nice but it happens to us all. Pushing through should not be an option for you. I believe that you will get way more done if you spend ten minutes and follow the advice below and then work for twenty minutes than if you try to force yourself to work for 30 minutes. So, right away, get rid of the notion that you need to push through. Embrace your physiological rhythm.

Also I should mention: You could go have a nap, and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge you if you did (and, in fact, I know an entrepreneur who swears by their afternoon nap). The reality is, though, that an afternoon nap is not ideal for many people: It’s a nap that can turn into a long-term snore-fest and you can wake up groggy and be all messed up for the evening. Or maybe the kids are running around the house and a nap isn’t realistic because it’s as loud as the circus. But there are things you can do.

Here’s what I suggest:

First, you need to recognize that it’s going to happen. (Duration: negligible).

This is probably the hardest thing to do because it’s easy to just be zoned out for a while and look back on that wasted time. Perhaps you need to set an alarm in the afternoon and do 30 minute mental “check-ins” to make sure you’re doing okay. You can get to a point where you will realize – while you’re slumping – that you’re in the middle of it. If you’re still not sure, try the following tips at about 3:30 in the afternoon.

Second, you need to get out of your chair. (Duration: negligible).

The biggest lie of the afternoon slump is that you are doing something productive, even when you’re not. The times when I miss that I’m slumping is when I’m working on something productively and then I start to fade so I go and check my email and Twitter and Facebook, etc. It FEELS like work. But it’s not. So you need to get out of your chair. In fact, you should get out of the office.

Third, go grab a little something to eat. (Duration: 2 minutes).

Don’t eat anything huge. Don’t ruin your supper. Just eat something with a bit of protein in it. Make sure it’s healthy; not candy! I might recommend some nuts and yogurt or an apple and a piece of cheese. Those are two great snacks to have during your afternoon slump. If you want to be more productive, buy those things next time you’re at the grocery store and consider them an investment into your business productivity. (Clarification: They’re not a taxable business investment… but they are a personal investment into your success and well worth the money you spend.)

Fourth, do some exercise. (Duration: 5 minutes).

You don’t have to spend 30 minutes on the Bowflex. If you’ve got a treadmill or Stairmaster, do 5 minutes. If it’s nice outside, take a quick walk. Nothing strenuous; nothing that will overheat you or make you sweaty. Just get the heart pumping and get some oxygen into your brain.

Fifth, drink some water. (Duration: negligible).

Drinking water is generally healthy for you and I always feel great after a glass or two of ice-cold water to wrap up my afternoon slump. If you’re not into water, keep a pitcher of fruit juice in the fridge. Nothing is quite as refreshing as a big cold glass of mango juice or a citrus blend.

Sixth, refocus. (Duration: 2 minutes).

Look at your list of stuff. If it’s like mine, you may not get it all done by the time you sign off for supper. So make a plan for it. Is there anything pressing that needs to be finished before the day is done? Attack that work with your reinvigorated mind. Are you going to do a bit more work after the kids are in bed? Reschedule it. Is there stuff that needs to be pushed off until another day? Reschedule.

… and now you’re back to work. In just 10 minutes you pulled yourself from the brink of uselessness and you’re now ready to finish your day with excellence.

While I’m on the subject of productivity in the afternoon, there are a few other things I should mention:

Sleep. I’m assuming here that you get adequate sleep at night. Most people don’t. It might be worth your while to have a nap if you don’t sleep well at night. That’s not always possible but if it is, take advantage!

Food. I’m also assuming that you’re eating properly. If you skip lunch, your afternoon slump will happen earlier, impact you for longer, and take more than cheese and the Stairmaster to get out of. Eat a healthy breakfast and a healthy lunch. Avoid alcohol in the afternoon, which can make you really drowsy. (And do I need to say: avoid it in the morning, too?)

Candy. It’s fun to snack and, if you work at home, the food is all right there. But candy, as you’ve heard a million times, gives you a sugar rush… and a subsequent crash afterwards. Save it as a tasty treat for the evening, after work.

Exercise. I’m also assuming that you do some exercise. If that 5 minutes on the Stairmaster is the only exercise you get in the day, then you might want to revamp your schedule to include 10 minutes on the Stairmaster in the morning and 10 more minutes in the afternoon. Sure, you don’t have to be a Mr. Universe or Ms. Universe to be an entrepreneur, but being fit will help you sleep better at night, help you with your appetite, and will help to keep your mind clear. I think it will also make those 5 minute anti-slump Stairmaster moments more effective at helping you to refocus.

Water. Hydrate. We’re supposed to drink a bunch of water each day. Drink it. You’ll feel better and you’ll think more clearly. Hangovers come from dehydration so if you don’t drink enough water in the day, you’ll start to create similar conditions for a hangover, even if you have been at your desk instead of out partying!

Okay, I just wrote a bunch of stuff on sleep, nutrition and exercise and I’m sure they made me sound like a killjoy. However, it all comes down to this bottom line: As an entrepreneur, you need to make various investments into your success, and I think that should include taking care of yourself.

So, if you’re faced with an afternoon slump, you can do these few steps in 10 minutes. You’ll return to your desk totally revived and you’ll recapture an hour or more of your day that had previously been wasted!

Related posts:

1. Master Your Day in Just 10 Minutes – Part 2
2. Keyword Research in 10 Minutes a Day
3. MORE Blogging in 10 Minutes a Day

Part of what makes this process difficult is that we don’t know what is actually important to do and what isn’t important to do. (Many people realize this issue when they start to think about delegating, which is a topic we covered in a previous Tips In Ten). In fact, I’ve coached people who show me their to-do list and say to me, “Heather, I try to prioritize the work in my life as 1, 2, 3, etc… but it ALL seems to be priority 1!!!”.

On top of that is the ongoing challenge of all entrepreneurs to find balance between work and the rest of life (which might include parenting, volunteering, and so on).

So in this issue of Tips In Ten, we’ll cover “part 1″ of how to set and achieve your daily goals: Figuring out what’s important to do.

The truth is, there are a lot of things to do but only some things that are important to do. But it all SEEMS important.

One way that you can help to separate what is important to do and what only seems important to do is to use a system I have augmented from Stephen R. Covey (the 7 Habits guy). One of his “habits” is called “First Things First” and it’s a system to help you figure out what’s REALLY important in life.

I’ll give him credit, of course, for the idea. I really like starting with roles first then moving to the goals that are based on each role. It really helps to make sure that there is balance in your life. However, if you are a big Covey fan, you should know that I’ve dramatically augmented his plan in order to accommodate the business owner’s lifestyle which (in my opinion) should include more space devoted for clients.

Here’s how my augmented First Things First plan works:

First, before you even bother thinking about your to-do’s, think first about who you are. What are your roles in life? Chances are that you’ll make a list which includes:

• Business owner – you own a business.
• Parent – you have children
• Spouse – you have a spouse
• Child – you are a child (in fact, you probably keep meaning to call your mother, right?)
• Friend – they keep you sane

There might be more. Covey also suggests that you include a “role” for yourself in order to make sure you take time out for yourself. (I tend to list myself twice – once as “student” and once as “me” for non-educational activities).

Now here is where I depart from Covey even more: As a business owner, I list my business but I also list some of the critical business relationships that I have with key customers and as the publisher of a newsletter and as a partner for JV projects I work on.

Okay, so you have this list of roles. What now?

Every Thursday or Friday, in preparation for the week to come, list your goals and then write down the things you want to do that would enrich those relationships. Be specific! For your spouse, it might be “Go on a date”. For your kids it might “Take them to the park”. For client XYZ it might be “deliver their project”. For your business it might be “implement new Twitter marketing plan”.

You might have a lot of stuff in your to-do’s; in fact, you might have even more now that you’re including your spouse and your parents and other aspects in your life… but at least you’re dividing it up based on the roles in your life. So, rather than one big list, you’ll end up with a dozen small lists.

Now that you have listed all these goals, look at each one and break them down into individual parts. So implementing your Twitter marketing plan from the example earlier might actually be 4 smaller goals like “Open Twitter account”, “Download TweetDeck”, “set up columns”, “Tweet 5 times on day 1″. (Note: Breaking down your goals into more granular goals might take longer than 10 minutes when you do this the first time, but once you’ve done it once and if you do it regularly, it really does just take 10 minutes).

So now you have an even bigger list of goals! This might seem stressful to you but I promise you that it’s better. That’s because a big cause of procrastination is not knowing where to start. So, by breaking your goals down into smaller goals, you’re helping to eliminate that.

Okay, you have a dozen lists of tiny goals. That’s great! You’re now ready to make it work for you: With this list, determine how long each goal will take and then determine if any of them have a deadline.

So, let’s say that you want your Twitter marketing plan deadline for the 23rd. Obviously, all the related goals need to take place before the 23rd. Your list might look like this:

• Open Twitter account. Duration: 5 minutes. Due on the 20th.
• Set up TweetDeck columns. Duration: 5 minutes. Due on the 22nd.
• Tweet 5 times on day 1. Duration: 10 minutes. Due on 23rd.

Now you have a dozen lists of tiny goals and they all have durations (and, if appropriate, deadlines… although it doesn’t hurt to put deadlines on all of them).

Now it’s time to start scheduling!

First, place your deadlines into your calendar (obviously along with other things like meetings or picking up the kids from school or whatever).

Second, add in a mix of other goals from each of your roles wherever you have free space. (You might put a check mark beside each goal once it’s scheduled or you might color code your goals and look later to make sure that there is a good balance of color variation in your schedule).

Third, find those tiny spaces that aren’t filled and include items that fit the available duration. For example, perhaps you have fifteen minutes between two telephone conferences. In the past, you’d just waste the time on Facebook but now you know that you have 15 minutes and you can look at your schedule. Perhaps you can spend the time ordering flowers your spouse (Role: Spouse, Goal: Order flowers. Duration 5 minutes. No due date) and then following through on two of the Twitter marketing tasks (Role: Business owner. Goal: Open Twitter account. Duration: 5 minutes. Due on the 20th. Download TweetDeck. Duration: 5 minutes. Due on the 21st.)
By now, you should have a calendar that includes the important elements of your life all addressed in some kind of balance.

In the next issue we’ll talk about how to make your goals even easier to achieve and I’ll provide you with a few extra tips to make your scheduling and goal execution even more stress-free.

Related posts:

1. Setting (and Achieving) Daily Goals Like a Genius – Part 2
2. First Things First
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible

The trick to success is to know when to micro-manage, when to macro-manage, and when to delegate. There are only 24 hours in any given day and you have to sleep, eat, have family time, catch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy… and somewhere in there you need to work.

Take your personal life, for example.

• Do you mow your lawn? Or do you pay a neighborhood kid or landscaping service to do it for you?

• Do you clean your house or do you have a cleaning person that helps out or does the work for you?

• Do you always watch your children? Or do you have a babysitter, nanny, family member, or daycare provider who watches them for you sometimes?

All of those things are delegation. Now let’s look at why you delegate.

1. If you have someone else mow your lawn, it could be for various reasons like: Paying $10 to the neighborhood boy is cheaper than spending an hour out there mowing you lawn when you earn $100 per hour. Or maybe it’s a “quality of life” issue because you only have 2 days a week with the family and it’s worth more to you to spend time with them than on yard work.
2. If you have someone else clean your house, it could be for the same reasons that you have help mowing the lawn.
3. When you have someone watch your children, it could be so that you can go out and enjoy some personal time, or so you can work and earn money, or so you can complete errands or attend meetings, or it could be for any other number of reasons.

So, why is your business life any different? If you pay someone to watch your children while you earn an income, why not pay someone to do things IN your business so you can earn more of an income?

I recently interviewed an entrepreneur, a business coach like myself, who did not outsource anything. I asked him how he spends his time and he broke it down for me in an email as follows:

• I work 10 hours per day: 9am to 7pm, Monday through Friday.
  • 1 hour in the morning for email.
  • 1 hour in the morning for blog posting and social bookmarking as well as Twitter, Facebook, etc.
  • I have two 45 minute sessions with clients in the morning.
  • Then I take a 30 minute-to-an-hour lunch break.
  • 1 hour more of email.
  • 1 hour of bill paying, bookkeeping, and mail sorting.
  • I have another 45 minute session in the afternoon.
  • About an hour of following up with sales leads or prospects via email and telephone.
  • Then about an hour doing miscellaneous things, such as booking flights, finding conferences, looking for speaking engagements, working on my website/blog, and thinking up ideas for products and services.
  • One last email check before I leave — about 30 minutes or so — and the I close the office door for the day.

Wow! In summary he does the following daily:

• 2.5 hours of email handling.1 hour of social media/blogging.
• 2.25 hours of billable coaching sessions.
• 1 hour of bill paying/bookkeeping/mail sorting.
• .5 hour lunch break.
• 1 hour of sales lead handling.
• 1 hour of miscellaneous tasks.

Sure enough, that totals up to 9.25 hours in a day (plus the missing 45 minutes extra time spent on lunch or bathroom breaks!).So only 22.5% of his time is billable… AND he works 10 hours a day!I asked him how much he charges and he said it depends on the service: He makes anywhere from $90 to $170 per session.

If we take a “middle ground” average then he makes about $130 per session. By selling only 3 sessions a day, he makes $1,950.00 a week. While that is not bad, let’s be honest: That is a $101K/year salary; and while perfectly respectable, you don’t want to be working 50 hours a week for the rest of your life (and take a hit if you work less).

Let’s assume he outsources or delegates utilizing the “Three Strikes, You’re Out” test.

Question 1: Is it something that you don’t personally have to do, that someone else can do or be trained to do for you?
Question 2: Does the alternate person that could do it for you have an hourly wage less than your billable wage?
Question 3: Could you use that spare time on revenue generating activities or to increase your quality of life?

To take this “Three Strikes You’re Out” test, look at a task and ask yourself those three questions.

If the answer is “Yes” to all three then “You’re OUT”.

That’s right, YOU ARE OUT… outsource it!

If the answer is “Yes” to two questions, it should be considered.

If the answer is “Yes” to only one, it can be delegated as a last resort.

Let’s apply this to the tasks of the coach I spoke about earlier:

2.5 hours of email handling:

“Can someone else do it?” This is iffy. I am sure he could have a gatekeeper to handle some, while some he would end up having to handle himself. But let’s say a gatekeeper could cut the time spent in half, so the answer to question 1 is “yes”. (Strike 1). “Is the alternate person that could do it cheaper?” YES! (Strike 2). “Could he use the spare time to generate more revenue?” Certainly! (Strike 3). So, it is out… Outsourced!

Social Media/blogging: This is a “yes” to all 3! It’s outta here!

Billable coaching sessions: “No”. He has to do those.

Bill paying/bookkeeping/mail sorting: This is a “yes” to all 3!

Lunch break: No.

Sales lead handling: This one is iffy, but let’s say for safety it is a “no” (because nobody knows your business like you know your business).

Miscellaneous tasks: Again an entrepreneur always has some things he or she has to do, so let’s assume this is a no to all three.

So what we have now is the following:

• Half of the email an assistant can handle.
• Social Media is something else the assistant can handle.
• Bookkeeping/Bill Paying. The assistant can handle that, too.

What he has just done has decreased 3.25 hours of his day in exchange for maybe $75 or so (averaging $20 – $25 per hour for an assistant).

He could take on 3 more sessions a day for an increase in revenue! Or he could only work 7 hours a day! Or he could spend those extra 3 hours multiplying his income stream by creating products, goods, books, etc.

So… my message to you: Delegate/outsource in 10 minutes a day by using the “Three Strikes, You’re Out” Test.

Related posts:

1. Reaching the Peak: When Delegation Shines
2. The Value of Outsourcing
3. Plan, Break Down and MASTER Your Day in 10 Minutes

Why Are You Scared To Be Outspoken? – The question isn’t why we’re so outspoken and willing to expose ourselves, it’s why you aren’t? When you have a chance to tell customers your story and shape their experiences, why would you ever run from that? Exposing your brand via social media is only scary when you’re trying to hide your flaws. Fix them and then tell the world about it.

Who Cares About Bing? – The days of ignoring Bing are just about over. There are some major changes rolling out now. Here’s what you need to know and what you need to do about it.

How to Open Your Heart in the Mist of Confrontation – Imagine what the world would look like if each one of us made the choice not to react in the face of conflict or confrontation, but instead to take in the experience, stay open-hearted and grow as a result. The choice is yours – react or breathe. React or relax. React or love. Choose well.

5 Free Ways to Never Miss a Twitter @Reply – These services will let you know via e-mail each time you are on the receiving end of a @mention, or get a @reply. Have a read through these picks to see which one might suit your needs.

Kickass Clients and Kicking Ass-  This post shares with you what makes clients “great clients”. Stop taking every ounce of business that comes to your door. You know the type of client you want (and frankly, your clients know they type of vendors they want as well).

Be sure the check out HeatherVilla StumbleUpon for a full list of my favorites.

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2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 4/2/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 6/4/10

• High maintenance clients who are focused on your rate. If you have clients who require a lot of hand-holding, who constantly ask for free services, and who call you back to go over invoices in detail, you’ve got a business-destroying problem on your hands. They may be the nicest people in the world but they can take away from other customers who cost less to manage and are therefore more profitable. If a clients gets too demanding (even if their demands are disguised as requests), revisit how much you do for them for free.

• Vendors with whom you are too closely tied for critical situations. As a business owner, you probably have vendors who provide you with any number of services. And it’s often nice to work with just a few people who know what they are doing rather than spread yourself too thin by trying to manage a whole bunch of people. But you need to watch your vendors carefully: If you are extremely reliant on them to come through (because they provide you with several critical services) make sure their own business is in good shape. You don’t want them dropping the ball for too long simply because they can’t keep their own house in order).

• Employees who just warm desks. The world somehow has balance: There are entrepreneurs who dream of living a life of unfettered freedom and there are employees who like the consistency of employment. We need each other in order to coexist in perfect harmony. But sometimes you get an employee who likes the consistency of employment without the hassle and sweat of actually doing work. They are a drain on your revenue without contributing to your business. Unfortunately, if you run a small office, it can be extremely difficult to do anything about them.

• Decision makers who have a different view than you. Decision makers could include majority shareholders, partners, COOs or CFOs (if you’re the CEO), or other key people on your management team. You need everyone moving in the same direction but if they feel that the business should go somewhere else, you’ve got a potentially bad situation if they start making decisions that run counter to how you feel the business needs to go.

Businesses frequently fail from these people because these business-destroyers are cloaked in good relationships. They get close to entrepreneurs and usually have the best intentions and positive feelings toward the business owner and the business. But, as you can see by reading descriptions of them; their views are just not aligned.

One of the most difficult things you’ll have to do as an entrepreneur is identify and remove these people from a position of influence in your business.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. How to Take Your Business to the Next Level
2. What Compels People to Hire You (Instead of Your Competitor)?
3. The Three Stages of Small Business

There is an invisible set of stairs that entrepreneurs perceive in the life of their business and every business owner has the desire to move their business up these stairs toward some (possibly unknown or unstated) level of success. They know that each level requires new efforts and techniques and ideas and comes with its own challenges and rewards.

But the problem is, what the heck are the levels? There’s no manual anywhere suggesting what the levels are. Yet, every entrepreneur knows that they are at one level and they want to get to a higher level. I have people asking me all the time to help them move to a higher level.

In case you’re reading this and wondering if I have somehow divined what the levels are, I haven’t. But I have discovered something else: Moving from one level to another is often preceded by dissatisfaction at the current level as well as an increasing amount of chaos and sometimes an unsettled feeling. I compare it to a child’s top that is spinning smoothly for a while and then starts to wobble. The business starts to wobble, unbalanced, just like that top. That “wobble” is often the time when a business owner wants to move to the next level. But here’s what I recommend first:

Instead of focusing on the next level (which is difficult to do anyway because it’s hard to know exactly what it is for each business), focus on making your current level perfect. Address that unsettled feeling and that chaos. Get it under control.

You can do this by:

• Creating or revising your business’ systems.
• Revisiting your business plan.
• Hiring someone to take care of your details (or extending the responsibilities of someone you’ve already hired).
• Taking a vacation to clear your head.
• Perfecting your current operation.
• Looking at your expenses and reducing them.
• Revisiting your business model to see if there are additional revenue opportunities.
• Strengthening your customer service.
• Increasing the consistency and quality of your marketing.
• Increasing the quality of your deliverables.

“But Heather,” you say, “I want to get to the next level. What you are telling me is how to make my current level better.”

Indeed that is exactly what I am doing. And the reason is: Your current business, which is probably running well enough (after all, you are looking at moving forward) needs to be tightened up a bit in order to more effectively move forward anyway. And, as you move forward, you want to maintain as much control as you can (and as much profit as you can) and cleaning house will help with that. You will also gain a fair amount of insight into how your business is running (and that could reveal for you exactly how you can move forward).

If your business is starting to feel like it’s becoming unbalanced and you’re wondering if you’re ready to move to the next level, make your first step a house-cleaning effort to strengthen your current business and that will help you get to the next level faster and more profitably.

On to the next level!

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
2. One Small Step for Business
3. How Entrepreneurs Can Get the Benefits of a Team (Without Selling Part of Their Business)

As someone who thinks about business productivity a lot, developing strategies and helping businesses take action are two key elements of what I do. Entrepreneurs often do a great job of creating strategies (after all, what entrepreneur doesn’t love to dream up new opportunities for their business!?!) but they struggle with turning those strategies into actions. If you have great ideas but you often feel like you’re plodding along doing the same old thing, you’re certainly not alone. Even some of the biggest companies in the world complain about this as a constant problem they face.

In this blog post I’m going to give you a step-by-step way to create actions from your strategies.

Step 1: Write out your strategies. (I’m assuming you can do this already; I think lots of entrepreneurs find strategic development to be the easy part!) Write down plans and ideas to take you to new levels of success.

Let’s use as an example the strategy: “Become a thought leader in my market.”

Step 2: Break it down. Most strategies are big, fuzzy ideas and not easily actionable. So you need to break down your strategy into smaller pieces. Some people call these objectives (but others consider objectives to be subsets of goals – whatever). I don’t care what you call them. Just list the elements that will make up your strategy; list the things that you feel will fully contribute to achieving your strategy.

In our example of thought leadership, the elements might be: “publish a book”, “develop a proprietary system”, “get a regular column in a periodical”, “speak regularly”, “get quoted in the media”… and there might be several more.

Step 3: Create actions for each of these objectives. Now it’s time to create step-by-step, easy-to-implement actions for each one. Get as basic and granular as you can so that all you need to do is sit down, do whatever it says, cross it off, and move on to the next step.

In our example, “Publish a book” might have actions like: “brainstorm, write chapter 1, write chapter 2, write chapter 3, write a proposal, query an agent… (etc.)”

You will have some actions that are dependent on other people and could influence the course of your plans. These are inevitable but you should try to reduce them as much as possible or put them as early as possible into your plan. That way, if other peoples’ decisions change your course, it will change your course earlier rather than later.

Step 4: Set dates. Beside each action, set a due date. This is an important step, even though it seems like a lot of work. Setting a date is not just setting a deadline, but it also helps you to get a realistic view of what your timeline to completing your strategy is going to be like. You might desire to achieve your strategy in six months until you count out all of your dates and realize that it will take two years to write and sign a deal on a book. And as you start implementing these actions, you might discover that new situations occur that speed up or slow down your timeline.

Step 6: Go! Now it’s time to start acting on these. Work toward the “due dates” on each one, but be willing to adjust all of the dates as you go. And, as circumstances and technology and opportunity changes, you might need to add or subtract objectives or actions; that’s okay.

This was a quick-and-dirty step-by-step way to turn strategies to actions and there are more subtle points to be made. But this is a good start and I’ll touch on some more ideas in the near future.

Related posts:

1. A Great Innovation Strategy
2. 8 Ideas for Twitter Lists
3. Get Way More Done in Just 10 Minutes a Day