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On Thursday’s live Q&A call virtual assistant Ninja Angela Myrtetus and I pulled out some Kung-Fu in the form of a few light bulb moments to help any business owner get unstuck and reclaim the calendar time needed to focus on winning marketing programs to build your business.

Seminar files…

1. Live Q&A mp3 download
   To download right mouse click on the link below and select flie > save as
   
   
2. Next action worksheet: view/download

Additional information

1. 5 Tips for hiring a virtual assistant
2. Twellow (Twitter Yellow Pages): http://www.twellow.com
3. O-Desk (Contractor Community):  http://www.odesk.com
4. International Virtual Assistants Association:  http://www.ivaa.org/

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It is survivors law that if you are in business you need customers to buy but how you go about making this happen is the difference between a business that soars or sinks. Anyone who knows me understands that I live by the rule “you get what you give” and until you have made a meaningful investment in helping your prospects, you haven’t won the right to introduce your products or services. Thanks Mr. Rogers for the lesson.

The other day I started following someone on Twitter who from his status updates (Tweets) seemed like an interesting enough person; that is until he started sending me pitches for a service he recently launched.  That’s right not even a hello or how are you doing?

The strategy of help…

Up front if you live to serve, to help; you will be rich in relationships, trust, authority and not to mention restful sleep knowing that you are not viewed as the newest con-man on the scene. From a monetary standpoint the strategy is equally effective as reciprocity kicks in and those you helped really work hard to return the favor by offering referrals, service trades, helpful resources and purchases.

On your website…

Replace a few of those “buy now”, “order this immediately” and related pitches with free information that can help your customers and clients. A free ebook, educational article or tips sheet will serve as the necessary handshake giving you the right to make the ask.

The next time you get frustrated after receiving a bad report from your accountant, find a charity and donate your services. Its the cure for what ails you and your business.

Who is the last person you helped?

Let’s face it we can be lazy at times even when it goes against our best interest. I know I should add the grocery items my wife requested to a written list but I don’t and to my detriment (slap upside the head, ouch!) I invariably forget something. Your customers and prospects are no different and by doing the hard, dirty work for them; your prospects will quickly turn into paying customers and raving fans who sing your praises on Twitter; become FaceBook fans and bring you more business.

Good News Your Competition is Lazy Too…

Its a fact that the majority of your top competitors are really good order takers who with McDonald’s-like precision deliver just what the customer asks for and nothing more. Below are some tips to separate yourself from the order taking crowd and own your niche by empowering prospects to change their lives.

1. Review complimentary products and services: If you sell real estate add reviews of local hardware stores or lawn maintenance services to your website.
2. Interview industry experts: If your store sells toys interview a product safety expert for safety tips related to a hot toy category and include the Q/A in your next newsletter.
3. Provide how-to’s: Fitness experts partner with a local video producer to create a video teaching your audience how to shop “healthy” at the local grocery. Teach them to read product labels, select fruit, etc. “Wow, I never knew that…” I can already hear them saying.
4. Book summaries: Read every good book in your space and write quick one page summaries trimming the fat and speeding the learning for your customers (Hint: get a Kindle ebook reader). Most people don’t read but you should!
5. Find opportunities: My friend Felicia does a great job here by connecting minority vendors to “real” project opportunities at firms looking for help. Everyone wins!

Feeling Inspired?

Stop selling stuff and start showing people how to improve their lives with your products. Expose them to resources they don’t know to seek or are otherwise too busy to look for.  This is game changing stuff, so fire up your site’s content management system or blog and get to doing the hard work (ha!). How do you help your customers hack life and make the days easier?

Because you are exceptional at what you do I am sure you have been asked to share your know-how with a local trade association, industry or community group. If not we have some work to do now don’t we?  Now enter Oprah Winfrey.

What is it that makes Oprah one of America’s most influential people; a mega-hub whose mere suggestion of a book or product, moves everyone to follow? Aside from her content, its her reach which has evolved from local to national distribution and like Oprah you too can expand your reach by producing and distributing video of your next seminar or business presentation through the web.

The Why…

All of those people in the audience wowed by the “Ah-Ha” moment you just delivered now see you as the go-to resource for your service (trust me here); afterall, the shop down the street was not asked to present to the audience, no you were.  Why limit this connection moment to the small audience in the room.  That’s right, by adding the taped session to your website, blog or partnering with a third party site your Wow moment can reach hundreds or thousands through web-connected networks. Some other things to note:

• It’s cheap: The client covers venue, audio and related costs
• No marketing:  Your client brings the live audience
• Instant reach:  Immediately broadcast from your client’s website

The How…

Now is not the time to go messin’ with your brand; so make sure you DON’T go the do it yourself route. To sweeten this deal partner with a local wedding videographer to shoot and edit the spot. These folks have the gear and skills to deliver to them what will be a simple shoot and I guarantee if you pitch the opportunity to plug the videographer’s services in the final spot the producer can be convinced to do it as a free-to-you service trade.

Bonus

Oh yes, there’s more payback here. No I am not an infomercial pitch man (geeze). In addition to the expanded audience, you can promptly turn your shiny new video into an information product to use as a lead generation giveaway, an incentive to join your email list, an inducement to register for your blog or even for resale.

I know you can’t contain yourself, so tell us how you plan on using this monster technique…

After the last two posts in the series, How Hard are You Willing to Work, we have a full appreciation for the value of hard work in growing our businesses and the ways we keep the motivation cup filled; but where do our loved ones fit in to this picture?  Our children, relationship partners, wives and husbands are on this journey with us; so how do we keep them up front and feeling valued as they talk to the backs of our heads as we work into the a wee hours?

Keeping Others in the Picture

How I Stay Grounded

This is the place I want you to smell the roses and remember the purpose for all of this hard work. I find it helps if I schedule time on my calendar (formally) for my wife and children.  I keep this time sacred and my business demands are not dealt with during periods. This “our” time has become a custom of sorts that I look forward to and it keeps my powder dry. I have friends who manage this challenge in different ways.

A Call From the Third Tribe

Some of my fellow Third Tribers weighed in on a thread I started in the Third Tribe Marketing community forums.  Here’s what some had to say,

Dustin Riechmann
Web:  Engaged Marriage
Twitter: @EngagedMarriage
“As someone who writes about marriage improvement on my blog, I find this topic really intriguing. I have personally struggled with keeping my family time a priority…even though I may be writing about that very same topic!

Some things that have helped me are to have “no computer time” between the time I get home from work and when the kids go to bed and also to have specific time each evening to spend entirely with my wife. It’s usually just talking, undistracted, for 15 minutes but that’s actually quite powerful.”

Justin Brooke
Web:  Jabber Stream
Twitter:  @JustinBrooke
“all of a sudden I was stuck to my computer for 14 - 16 hours a day 7 days a week… Ever since then I have been working hard to treat what I do like a normal business where I start at 9am and finish by 5pm… Things are much better now and my family knows that I care about them”

Shayna Walker
Web: Wedding Lady
Twitter: @weddlady
“I am intentional about spending time with my family. I chose my business pursuits (my planning business and the blogging component) specifically to be available to my kids when I’m needed.”

Where Do You Find Your Zen?

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Motivational Business Quote: “What comes easy for you but comes rather hard for others is where opportunity lies.” - Peter Drucker

In part 1 of the series, How Hard are You Willing to Work we explored the reality that business success requires more hard work than most could imagine but it is this hard work that ultimately separates us from the competitive pack.  In this, the second part of the series, YOU and I will explore tapping vital sources of motivation necessary to carry us through.

Get Motivated!

When the idea to start a business comes to us, like a child with a new toy we get excited but as the daily realities of marketing, promotion, paying the bills and not to mention daily life set in; we find ourselves needing the cup refilled.

Refilling My Cup: Some Things I Do…

1. Talk to my wife: My wife Jilda is the most spiritually guided person I know and the one who pushed me to start my business in the first place, so she is a natural energy source for me.
2. Read a good blog:  I follow many creative bloggers (Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Joan Stewart ) and there is always a motivating new idea above the fold within their communities.
3. Tap the Third Tribe:  I am a member of Third Tribe Marketing an online community founded by several new media influencers and built around the idea of bringing smart online marketers together who live by the philosophy, “you get what you give” and they are a great support group and idea bank.
4. Exercise:  Yes, nothing like a little sweat and that euphoric runner’s high to wipe the slate clean. My elliptical trainer is also one of my favorite places to  blog.
5. Call my cousin:  My cousin ran a wildly successful real estate development firm in our home town of Chicago that (like so many) closed its doors due to the weakened economy but he did not skip a beat in starting another venture that has begun to bare fruit (Turbo Athletics - Chicago Speed and Agility Training).  He is nothing short of a one man power station and is sure to turn my mood.

Man, I feel recharged already!

Where do you turn when your enthusiasm dwindles?

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Hard Work Quote: “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (thanks Chris Brogan)

Adding your first employee, securing financing, researching/editing blog posts, vetting vendors, rethinking your website…I can almost hear your cry,  “can I at least have one day off!” Shoot, entrepreneurship is tough work. We work hard for the money!

In this first in a three part series YOU and I will explore the work, the motivation and ways to keep relationships in tact along the way to creating a booming business. Now let’s dive in, but first a word from a worker…

How Hard are You Willing to Work?

No, I am not going to tell you here to cut back, slow down or smell the roses. Entrepreneurial glory requires selling a great product or service, working in a market that demands your wares and a whole bunch of work that you better be dedicated to doing. In fact the amount and consistency of your efforts (your hard work) is your single greatest competitive advantage. 99.9% of the people who do or want to do what you do are not willing to put in the hours day in and day out.

By showing up with vigor, consistently you will beat most of your competition. My tennis teacher told me that if you simply hit the ball back most of the time, the other guy will eventually beat himself (thanks coach Kofi).  No marketing gimmick on the planet holds such a claim.

My wife, family and friends have no idea why or how I can stay up for two days with less than 3 hours sleep (my answer in a later post - grin). Bill Gates regularly slept in his office, Rodney Dangerfield wrote jokes each night for 12 years while selling aluminum siding by day. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers says it takes 10,000 hours invested (not raw talent) before you can consider yourself exceptional.

Now ask yourself this, are you one of the .1% willing to grind it out or are you among the 99.9% just looking for a better job and under the false illusion that “being your own boss” is the answer (see: Avoiding the Broke Zone)?  Seriously, I am asking you…comment and share your story.

Hard Work Series Installments

1. How Hard are You Willing to Work?
2. What Inspires You?
3. What About Me?

Search the web, browse a magazine stand or watch any television these days and it is clear that Green is the new Black. Even cooler than being green is finding creative ways to show off your greenness; is that a word?

If your company is truly committed to the cause, producing a video that shows your organization’s approach to environmental friendliness can go a long way toward influencing customers and prospects. You might have voiced narration detailing your eco-friendly strategy with shots and images of your office’s recyclable materials or screen grabs of your paper and silicon software disc-free virtual office. You might even consider including testimony from a local environmental protection expert commenting on the ways offices can be green with overlaid visuals of your office’s implementation.

Once your video is complete, be just as creative in seeking distribution opportunities. Streaming from your website is the obvious tactic but events present a great opportunity as well. If your company sponsors or hosts an event, have the organizers play your eco-spot on the big screens. Trust me, this will be a huge hit.

Do you have a green video? Tell us how you use it.