Archive for the ‘Management’ Category

Internet Marketing Spring Cleaning – Week 1

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Bright and early today, Alice sent out the first week’s email and our first Internet Marketing Spring Cleaning assignment. I wasn’t as early as some of her students. One of them even turned their assignment in a mere few hours after Alice sent them out! Whoa! I can tell she’s going places. Don’t leave me behind! :)

This first week’s guide is short but also the most important. I can’t discuss in detail but can definitely tell you it’s all about taking inventory of your business. Argh! I don’t know about you, some people love making lists but me? Uh-uh. I hate lists! Even when I tried making lists, I never failed to lose them.

But, this is not about me. This is about my company. There’s a difference. So, if I want to pass the company on to my kids or build it to a point where it can continue to feed and clothe my family long after I’m gone, I have to do this.

I think this is the biggest misconception about running your own business and “being your own boss”. Being your own boss doesn’t mean you get to have everything you want the way you want and not do the stuff you don’t want to do. Sure, you get all that. But eventually, you’ll still need to do the things you don’t want or like. Sure, you can outsource some things eventually but not everything. Also, before outsourcing someone needs to set the frame work, the big picture – that’s us.

Anyhow, this is going to be interesting. More progress later.

Jimmy D. Brown’s Coaching

Friday, January 5th, 2007

Ah, the new year. Always the time when entrepreneurs review where they’ve been and where they want to go. And you know, that’s great! Every business needs to review their goals frequently. Last week, I received a friendly email from a blog reader, asking my opinion about Jimmy D. Brown’s 6 Figure Income coaching program which I took around the middle of 2006.

He’s not the first to ask. I jumped on last year after a glowing recommendation from Alice Seba. Yes, it’s partly because of her recommendation but mostly because I felt I don’t need another Internet Marketing course and what I needed most is a plan to effectively put to use what I learned and continue to learn in the future.

People say – put what you learn into action. It sounds so easy. But if you’ve been in Internet Marketing for any amount of time you’ll know it can sometimes get crazy. Everything is important. Building a list is important. Creating your own info product is important. SEO is important. Adding content is importing. Writing articles is important. Adsense is important and the list seems never to end. Every time you turn around it’s like everything has to be done today or we’ll be ‘losing out big time’. So what do
you do first? What do you concentrate on first, next and so on?

Jimmy’s coaching helped me understand and truly prioritize. Honestly, prioritize doesn’t adequately explain the system. It’s simple yet so profound. I am of course bound by the rules when I signed up and can’t say too much about the program.

Since I applied just one part of his system which is a planner. I’ve been consistently churning out my own original content. I now have so many articles to publish my assistant works hard to keep up with the submissions and I’m not stopping. I’ve also been getting those reports out to affiliates more regularly than I ever had and now when I sit down to review my week, every work hour is truly maximized. It didn’t occur to me how much the system has affected my work day until last month.

For some reason – don’t ask – I quit using Jimmy’s system and I tried something new. My productivity fell through the floor and I worked much much harder. It’s only one week now I’m back into Jimmy’s system and guess what? I achieved more this week than all of December. And, what’s more interesting, every day, I had more extra hours free.

One thing I must say though, when Jimmy says work three hours a day, he’s not kidding. I’m a work-a-holic and try to pack in more hours than that. But when you do that, the system will ‘fail’ on you. After December, that point came clearly to me too. I feel there is a reason to limit the number of hours we work. Not because we’re lazy or unmotivated but without rest, your mind cannot be at it’s peak performance for tomorrow and it just spoils everything for the week. Hard lesson for a work-a-holic and I’m not
completely cured. But I struggle to keep my hours down and reasonable so I will always have a sharp mind tomorrow.

The bottom line, has it been worth it? Yes! Yes! Yes!

Nice Touch From Amazon

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

A day ago Amazon sent me a very serious looking email talking about recall. I’d purchased a PowerBook from them in December. Apple is recalling PowerBook and iBook batteries and I’d just been too busy to pay attention to news alerts lately.

Amazon sent me a the link to check out if I was eligible for an exchange and I sure was. Both of my batteries. The bottom line in that whole scenario, it made me appreciate Amazon for notifying me. They could’ve pasted the information up on the site and leave it up to me to find it on my next visit.

I think they made good use of the customer database. Makes the think now. Is there something I can do to help out my customers.