Here’s a question I get asked all the time:
“I don’t know you how do it, Alicia…with two little ones to care for and so few hours in the day to actually focus on your work. Somehow you manage to write your weekly ezine, hold a bunch of teleseminars each month, run your group and private coaching programs, AND be creating and promoting new offers and new products all the time. I’m so impressed and inspired by you, but more than that, I want to know how you do it all!?”
To be honest, sometimes I wonder myself! Something I often say to other, especially new, mothers is, “despite what everyone tells you to do, do whatever works for YOU.” In a way, that’s how I started running my business after I had my daughter. I just did whatever worked. I still do.
When she got a bit older, it was easier to manage both being a fulltime mother along with running a successful business. Then enter baby #2 and it was back to square one. It’s not easy but it is possible. And here’s what’s really interesting (mompreneurs, take note): I started making about $3k more each month since having my son – and I’m working LESS.
A client once pointed out to me that it seems the biggest growths in my business have been when I’ve been having babies – and she’s right!
Over time, I’ve figured out how to get the most important things done while still being able to focus the majority of my time on my family (after all, that’s one of the reasons why I went into business for myself in the first place).
Here are just a few of them:
1. Setting my work hours
My typical work day looks like this: I get organized the night before for the next day. This jump-starts my day and makes sure that when I do get those tiny pockets of time to get something done, I know exactly what to do. This makes me feel like I’m accomplishing stuff in-between drop-off and pick-up from school, making crafts, playing trains, exploring the neighborhood or running errands.
When I started my business, I didn’t get any real work done until naptime. I work for about a total of an hour or so while the kids napped, five days a week. Then I put in some more time after they go to bed at night, whether I was leading a teleseminar or catching up on emails. My biggest block of focused time, usually reserved for writing and product creation, was on Saturdays, when I worked approximately 4 hours.
During a perfect week, that gave me about 12 hours of time dedicated to business. However, there’s never a perfect week (one or the other doesn’t nap, I have some pressing non-business-related task that I can only take care of when they’re sleeping, one of them is sick, etc.), so my best guess is that this gives me about 8-10 productive hours to work on my business each week.
Now that the kids are both in school, my dedicated work time is a couple of hours in the morning until I pick my son up at noon, a little at naptime, and sometimes in the evening (again if I’m hosting a teleseminar) or on a Saturday, if I have a launch going on.
So, although my hours have shifted, the amount of hours is still relatively the same – about 15 hours a week.
So how do I decide what to focus on that will move my business forward the fastest in that limited amount of time each week? I use what I call a Priority Card…
2. Using a Priority Card
A Priority Card will help you organize all your tasks in a way that will SHOW you every day what you should focus on. There are a lot of details that will threaten to take your mind off your priorities (this is where a virtual assistant can be of immense value), but those details are not necessarily what will move you forward in your business. To do that, you need to consistently focus on completing the projects that will move your business ahead big-time.
You can create a system for helping you focus on your priorities in a number of ways, but I’m going to give you mine. Like I said, I only work about 15 hours a week on my business, so adjust your own plan accordingly.
At the beginning of each week, I choose 3 to 5 projects with looming deadlines (self-imposed as they may be) from my master task list (which really is so massive that I write it on a 8.5 x 14 legal pad). For example, at the moment, I am working on my Online Business Breakthrough Workshop and my L.E.A.P.™ Gold program.
On a colored index card, I write down those projects and prop the card in a standing clip holder, right in front of my computer screen. When I start to feel that sense of overwhelm, or when I find myself getting distracted by new ideas or other tasks (all of which seem important), I remind myself to look at my Priority Card and focus only on what’s written there.
Once I started using my Priority Card, my own business growth leaped forward ten times faster than when I was doing a little of this and a little of that, working on a dozen things, but taking much too long to actually complete just one project.
3. Ignoring the phone
I’m serious when I say that I ignore the phone. Some of my clients get heart palpitations when I tell them that I NEVER jump when the phone rings and suggest they do the same. I don’t even have the ringer turned on on the business line. Does this mean I miss some important calls? Probably. But my virtual assistant checks my messages in a timely manner, takes care of what she can, and forwards the rest to me. I then call people back at a more convenient time for me.
4. Quick consults
When a prospective client wanted to speak with me about ‘just a few questions’, I used to gladly schedule a time to talk. But instead of a few questions, I’d be on the phone for at least a half hour, basically giving a free coaching/consulting session, and being frustrated with myself for not valuing my time more.
And until recently, when a potential client or customer requested to talk with me further about working with me or about one of my products, they could schedule a time to talk for a much smaller fee than my usual hourly rate, and if they decided to go forward with working with me, they could apply the fee they paid towards the program or product they were interested in. This was fair and valued both our time and investment in the process.
Now, however, prospects can talk with my virtual assistant should they need more information about any of my programs or products. If someone is interested in working with me one-on-one, they need to apply for a private coaching spot and if I feel it’s a good fit, we set up an interview to discuss moving forward.
BONUS: Make and use lists
I’d be lost without my lists! I’d never remember to do anything if I didn’t write it down. I keep a bunch of reporter’s notebooks around the house and anytime I think of something I need to do, I write it down in whatever room I’m in – whether it’s business or personal. Then I periodically gather the lists and separate them into three main lists; personal, business, and other (which includes the “someday I’d like to…” stuff; things that aren’t a priority but that I want to remember to do at some point), and check things off in priority order from there.
If you start applying some of these steps now, I guarantee the number of productive hours you spend on your business will increase. And you’ll also feel less overwhelmed and lessed stressed about trying to get it all done!
Leverage Your Time to Make More Money Online
One of the most critical lessons I’ve learned over the past few years is that in order to double my income (or more) I have to do HALF of what I’m doing now. I’ll teach you which HALF of your to-do list are the right things to get done, and how to get them done faster.
I want you to learn how to work LESS while creating more wealth, time and freedom for you and your family. You’ll be amazed at what happens when you quiet the multi-tasker in you!
Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY
I’d love to hear which of these tips you’re willing to embrace today. Feel free to share with me below.
Want to increase your sales BEFORE you launch your product or service? The following are some of the most effective ways to do just that:
1. Use Social Proof
What is “social proof”? Simply put, we are all conditioned to watch what others are doing and follow along (think teenagers). Using social proof in your marketing helps you to influence your customers to purchase your products/services, get new prospects to sign-up for your list, and get people talking about you and your offering – and that’s just the start.
So, how do you use this psychological trigger in your marketing?
One way is to use results-based testimonials. Ask your current customers or clients to give you results-based testimonials. They literally say, “I used this product and these are the results I got.” Having celebrities give these to you is great, but make sure you have testimonials from REAL people. Those are the ones that are really going to cement the idea in your potential buyer’s mind that they can do it, too.
2. Answer your prospects #1 objection
To take “social proof” to a deeper lever, anyone who is buying anything almost always has this #1 objection: “Sure, you can do it, but can I do it?”
In addition to using yourself as an example (if appropriate) as evidence that what you are offering does what you say it will, it’s also important to make sure you get “social proof” from people in your client/customer’s peer group. Then your potential buyer sees people like themselves and understands that “Hey, it worked for them, it can work for me, too.”
3. Use a time limit
Creating a sense of urgency around your product or service will make it that much more enticing to potential buyers. For example, offer special pricing for one week only and tell your buyers that after that week, the price will go up. You don’t even have to say by how much (but DO raise it if you say you will). Just knowing that there’s only have one week to buy at a lower price creates that sense of urgency.
4. Use a limited quantity
If you are selling a physical product and you are only having 100 produced, then use that information to create the same sense of urgency you would with a time limit. Use a countdown on your website to further create the feeling that if your potential buyers don’t buy now, they may miss out.
5. Use a time or quantity limit on bonuses
Additionally, you could offer bonuses for a certain length of time (first week only) or for a certain number of products sold. For example, the first 30 buyers would get an additional special report (valued at $XX).
The last three strategies also help your buyers feel like they are part of your “club” when they join by purchasing your product or service.
Obviously, you can use these tactics unscrupulously, and I’m sure you’ve seen it or experienced it yourself. But if you want your business to truly be successful, in all the ways that are important and meaningful to you, then you must only use these strategies with integrity and honesty.
If you really are only going to print 100 copies of a physical product, then only print 100 copies. That doesn’t mean that you can’t do another print run. It just means that you tell your market that you’re only going to print 100 now, and if you do decide to do another run, then they will have to wait before they can get their copy.
If you really are going to raise your price after a certain date, or after a certain number of items are sold, then you must follow through. You can give your current base a chance to buy at the “original” price before you raise it, but you still must raise your price if you say you will.
Your integrity using these strategies will create more sales for you than ever before. Choose one to try and enjoy your results!
Are you ready to learn how to “Launch Your Products, Programs, and Services to Instant Success”?
In my brand-new L.E.A.P.™ GOLD* program, Once your product or program or service is complete and you’re ready to offer it to your market, if you don’t know how to effectively launch it, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. There is a science to it and I’m going to teach you the precise steps to take, pre-launch, during the launch, and post-launch to guarantee you get the biggest return on your investment in your time, energy and money.
Most entrepreneurs simply don’t know how to offer their products, programs and services to make the most of them in sales and clients. It’s a simple process that you’ll learn from me (the first launch I did using this formula converted 40% of my list from potential buyers to paying customers (many of whom turned into clients as well) – that’s unheard of in the industry).
To make it even easier for you to follow this process, I’m including the same checklist we use in my business every time we launch something new.
Interested? Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY
I’d love to hear which of these tactics you’re going to try and what your results are. Feel free to share with me below.
Do you get discouraged or stuck in building your business because you think there’s too many others to compete against in your niche?
A lot of entrepreneurs feel this way, especially when they’re first starting out. I don’t want you to give up before you really get started, so I’d like you to consider thinking about your competition in a different way.
1. There’s an abundance of clients and customers for everyone.
2. Your competitors are potential collaborators and strategic alliances for you.
3. The better you come to know your competitors, the more you will become aware of the uniqueness of your own message and your own offerings.
If you embrace this perspective, you’ll find that those feelings of discouragement and “what’s the point – I can’t compete” will melt away.
1. If you come from the mindset of abundance, you won’t feel discouraged by the competition.
There are more than enough clients and customers for everyone. And if you are building your business online, there is essentially an unlimited audience for your work.
Think about your market for a moment. How many of them do you need to serve to reach whatever your definition of success is? Then think about how many people there are around the globe who are your potential clients or customers. Could you really reach them all, even if you wanted to? 🙂 Of course not.
2. There are several ways that you can collaborate and develop strategic alliances with others in your market.
You could hold a webinar or workshop together. This is particularly helpful if you are new in business and can hook up with someone more seasoned, who already has a ready audience built (an email list). Doing this will also help you gain experience and confidence to hold them on your own.
Or you could offer a free product (a mini e-book, for example) to your strategic alliance’s membership, which is an added benefit to them, while it helps to build your email list.
3. Think about those whom you consider your competitors.
Are you offering similar products and/or services that they are, but to a different target market? Or turn that around: If the market is the same, are you offering different information? Of course you are, because your message, your offerings – and the way you write or speak them – is as unique as you are.
There is a certain segment of the population who can only hear your message from you.
Remember that when you start feeling frustrated, defeated or just plain stuck.
Once you make this shift, you can start seeing your competitors as potential collaborators. You can work together to develop programs, products, or services that will help grow both your businesses. It will also provide added benefits to both your audiences, so it’s a win-win-win!
Do you want to learn how to collaborate and not compete?
If you’ve been around me for awhile, you know that I don’t believe in competition, and since this seems to be a bit of a mind-stretch for many entrepreneurs (and a barrier to reaching the next level in income in their business), I felt it was very important to cover the topic of collaborating with your colleagues – and how to do it with integrity and authenticity – in my brand-new Lively Biz Mastery program.
I can tell you that a major factor in the dramatic increase in my revenues over the years has come from collaborations that I’ve done with people I admire and trust who also serve my market.
Learn how to approach a potential joint venture partner, what to say, how to discuss who does what, how to split the money – every critical factor you need to know in order to come across as a professional and be invited to do more lucrative ventures in the future.
Interested? Get on the VIP waitlist here to find out more
I’d love to hear about successful collaborations you’ve done already, and/or your comments or thoughts about teaming up with other like-minded colleagues. Feel free to share them here.
If you’re reading this ezine, it’s likely that you’ve participated in a teleseminar, whether it be mine or one of my colleagues. You’ve probably been on some that have been very good, where you got tons of really valuable information. And you may have found yourself on a few that were nothing but pitch-fests for the host’s latest product.
But I want to share something with you. Hosting content-rich teleseminars for my target market is some of the quickest and easiest mo^ney I’ve generated in my business.
Holding F.R.E.E. introductory teleseminars are a great way to promote your business, increase your email subscriber list, make more sales on your products, and enable your potential clients another way to connect with you. By being on the phone with you, they get to know you through your voice, adding the human touch that can be so hard to cultivate online.
When I first started building my business, I offered a f.r.e.e. monthly teleseminar that gave people an introduction to what I teach. From each of these calls, I got more ezine subscribers, more members for my group coaching membership, and more sales of my products.
Holding PAID teleseminars helps to promote your business and generate revenues as well. I do 2-4 paid teleseminars a month, each on a different marketing or success topic, and each of these revenue streams generating thousands of dollars.
Another way to offer teleseminars is to do “intensive” or “bootcamp” series of multi-week teleseminars. I’ve offered 8, 10- and 4-week ‘”workgroups” on the topics of listbuilding, creating a successful business online from scratch, and search engine marketing that have been very profitable.
Hosting teleseminars is easy and here’s 4 simple things you need to get started:
1. The Right Target Market and the Right Topic
Here’s the secret for producing and profiting from a teleseminar: It must be designed for a target market AND it must solve a problem that that target market is struggling with. If you have those two keys in place, you’ll be sure to attract enough sign-ups and make money from your topic.
2. A Bridge Line
There are several good no-cost bridge lines available for you to use, but the one I’m currently recommending is NoCostConference.com because you can record the teleseminar for free as well. This is a nice benefit to offer your participants and to anyone who had to miss your teleseminar for any reason. I use it as a back-up recording for all my calls.
3. Recording Service
You’ll need a way to record your teleseminars so you can provide the audio for people to listen to later and for you to make CDs from if you decide to package your teleseminar into a physical product later. I use AudioAcrobat to record all my teleseminars, with NoCostConference.com as a back-up.
4. Automatic Registration
You’ll want to be able to have people sign up for your teleseminar without you having to do a lot of work. I use Aweber for all my teleseminar registrations, but you can also use your shopping cart’s autoresponder service if you have one.
I’d like to invite you to start offering f.r.e.e. teleseminars to promote your business, and once you get more comfortable with both the format and the technology, start offering paid teleseminars. Even if you only have a handful of people on your first call, it’s great practice. And I guarantee your numbers will increase as you continue to build your email list, and you’ll be profiting from teleseminars in no time.
Do you want to Master the Art of Teleseminars to Make Thousands of Dollars?
In my brand-new L.E.A.P.™ GOLD program, we’re going to go well beyond these basics with this topic, including delving into cutting-edge methods and new technologies to ensure your teleseminars are the ones your target market clamors for!
Although there are fancier ways to teach ‘virtually’, teleseminars are still HOT, simple to do, have stood the test of time and, with the methods you’ll learn from me, are proven to make more sales. You can be creative with them, making them more fun for you to host as well as for your attendees, and you can make A LOT of money from just a single hour of work that you can do in your pajamas from your office, back deck, front porch, dock or sailboat (I speak from experience here)… 🙂
We’ll cover both free and paid teleseminars, which to offer and why, what technology to use, pricing, what to do if something goes wrong (it happens to all of us at one time or another), and much, much more. I’m even going to share all my templates and other how-to pieces to model to host your own successful teleseminars.
Interested? Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY
I’d love to know your thoughts on hosting teleseminars – please feel free to share your comments below.
A question I often ask my target market is, “what’s your biggest challenge with building your business online?” And one answer I get frequently is this:
How do I make my website earn money?
If you’ve got a business online, then it’s likely you have some sort of web presence. Perhaps it’s a one-page ‘sign up for my list’ kind of site, or a full-blown brochure site with a menu of choices, or maybe your site is in the form of a blog. Regardless of what kind of site (or sites) you have, if they’re not doing what you want them to – and since we’re in business, ultimately that means making some sort of a profit – then it’s time to make some changes.
But how do you REALLY know whether your site is working or not? Here are four strategies to test and track your pages to know what needs fixing:
1. Let the numbers speak
I’m sure if the sky was the limit, you’d hire the most expensive web designer with the fanciest tools to create the most spectacular site imaginable for your business – and someday you just may do that.
For now, though, even an ugly site can make money. My own original site is a perfect example of this, and one reason why I keep it live as an example for my clients. And I can think of at least two sites right now that I personally think are not that pleasing to the eye, yet I know they are raking in the bucks each and every month, year after year.
So don’t get caught up in having the most polished and professionally looking site. Focus more on having the pieces in place that will bring you the cash, too.
2. Give your site only one job
Think of each page of your website as a separate entity with one main purpose. It may be to sell something, or to sign up for your list, or to get people to call you for an appointment. Whatever it is, make it clear that that one thing is the action your visitor should take from being on that page.
3. Track your numbers
Most web hosts offer statistics that you can use to watch your numbers, or there are other web stat programs that you could use as well (such as Google Analytics). However you are keeping an eye on your numbers, you should be looking for two things: how many people visit your site and how many people take the action you want them to take.
From those two numbers, you can figure out your conversion rate, which tells you how many of those visitors took the action you wanted them to – like sign up for your list. If you make small changes to your page AND watch these numbers at the same time, you’ll be able to tweak things to increase your conversion rate. See #4 for more on this…
4. Make one change at a time
This is a very effective way to increase the conversion rates on sales pages and sign-up pages. Change just one thing – for example, the headline – and watch your numbers. Compare those statistics to your previous ones and decide whether or not to keep the change. (You can also do this via a split-test in your shopping cart, where the software does the number crunching for you.)
I see so many sites that try to be all things to all people by offering everything under the sun in too small a space – a website – and all that does is confuse people and encourage them to click away. Remember, ‘a confused mind clicks away’, so always go back to the main questions when considering making changes to your website: What’s the purpose of this page? What is the one thing I want my visitor to do here? And then design your copy around the answer. Keep it simple and you’ll get better results every time.
I love to know your thoughts on these tips. Please share below…
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