People ask me all the time how I’ve managed to create a 6-figure+ business while only working about 15 hours a week. First, I had to build a solid foundation and set up systems that would support the business as it grew, systems that were either automated or delegated or easily repeatable.

Once I had the foundation and the beginning systems in place, I was constantly looking for ways to leverage my time and talent, and I still do. I could write a book on the many ways we do this in my business (and maybe I will someday) but in this 4-part series, I’m going to share with you some of the most effective ones that you can apply to your business today.

1. Use Google Alerts

Part of using leverage in your business to by being aware of what’s going on out there that has to do with you. Lucky us, we have Google to keep us informed.

Simply set up a Google Alert for your name and the name of your business. You can also set up alerts for specific keywords in your business and for your colleagues. And you should set up alerts for your clients as well. You want to know what your clients are doing. If you see them doing something great you can say, “Yay.” You can also say, “You might want to try something else.”

Letting Google keep you informed of what’s going on in your online world is a great way to leverage your time.

2. Leverage your content

I teach a whole 12-part content leverage system, but you want to at least be leveraging any piece of content you write for your ezine or your blog.

So, if you’re writing an article for your ezine, make sure it goes on your blog. If you’re writing a blog post make sure at least part of it goes in your e-zine. People will read your content in different ways. They’ll read it in your e-zine in their inbox, or on your blog site – or via an RSS feed from your blog to your inbox.

Those are just two ways. Other ways are to turn that content into a podcast, a video, and social media posts, and promote them via those media.

3. Create an email campaign from your sales page

When you’ve created the sales page for your offer, you’ll need to create an e-mail campaign to promote it and your offer.

You’ve done the hard part of writing the sales page itself, even if it’s a short sales page. To leverage that hard work, take pieces of that sales page and repurpose them into your email campaign.

I know we sometimes think we have to do everything fresh and new from scratch. You do not have to do that. Take pieces from what you’ve already written and plug that into your e- mail promotions. Take something from the top. Take a piece of your story. Take the benefit bullets. Tweak them a bit and put them into your emails.

4. Do your ezine differently

If you’re writing an ezine and it’s in HTML and you find that it feels heavy, you’re not getting it done, it takes too much effort, it feels too complicated or you don’t have someone helping you do it then change to text.

Make it easy for yourself. If you struggle with HTML then creating an e-zine that way only translates into lost time and wasted energy.

If you need to do text until you’re ready to hire someone to help you do something prettier then just do text. I promise it won’t hurt you.

Also, if the ezine is just too long, you can make them short.
You don’t need to have seven moving parts. It’s more important that you’re consistent with sending it out on a weekly or twice a month. You can send them once a month if that’s correct for your market. That is more important than having them long.

Do text. Keep it short. Be more consistent about sending it out.

5. Repeat what works

I talk about this a lot. Sometimes it seems obvious. People often don’t do this. We’re too close to it. We can’t see it. That’s why you need other eyes. We get excited about new ideas and keeping things fresh. There’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t forget to review what you’ve done before that worked really well and repeat it.

(Watch for Part 3 in this series next week…)