I like people to be in control of their own success and what I mean by that is do not allow others to take control; pretty obviously.
And that’s how I have been successful in my businesses, by knowing what goes on and by it all being down to me. I have only got myself to blame and I don’t like to be able to blame others.
It’s all down to me; it’s my business, my problems. Even if others do actually cause the problem, I put them in a position where they could do.
This is not in a control freaky way, because as you know, I have a self-managed business, I am not even there half the time. Even the Marketing for Owners one is very dependent on other people, such as Jennifer.
[player]
So, it’s not that, it’s just that you need to be the guide on your own. So here’s my three tips.
#1 You Must Have a To-Do or Goals List
So first of all, with your to do’s, you must have to do’s because you must have goals, you must be trying to progress forward at all points.
The only way to progress forward is to know where you are going, your goal; to set a deadline, when you want to get there and then to reverse engineer it into bite sized chunks that you can achieve.
And then that gets broken down into things that you have to do to get through each project to reach each goal, those are “to do’s” and they should be on a list.
Well, I think we will go into this on another podcast. I have covered it before but we will go into it on another one as to how to create a To Do list that is manageable.
But instead of when you arrive at work, and yes, if you work from home like I do, when you start work, instead of arriving to start work, wherever you are and then sitting down to decide what you should be doing, if you are ready to go, then it’s going to save a lot of time and it’s going to definitely procrastination.
And just trust me, this comes from my experience, and for those of you watching on video, look, gray hair.
This may actually surprise you hello, I don’t dye it just so I look old, no, this is real gray hair. I have been around; I have been in business for around thirty two and a half years call. Yes, I am old.
The important thing is you have to do is keep them short but make sure when you get to work you are ready to go, you already know what you are going to be doing, it is already decided.
You do not have the opportunity to be looking at a list of things that you could possibly be doing and pick the easiest; so do it the night before, or the end of the day before. That’s the first tip.. Believe me that really does make a difference.
#2 Don’t Look at Those Emails Just Yet
Number two, when you start work, do not look at emails. So I am not saying don’t answer emails, don’t take action; I am saying don’t even look at them.
Do not look at them until midday, set a time such as 12 o’clock. People will survive.
Just think, for those of you that can remember when there were no emails, all business operated, all the stuff still happened.
There were no mobile phones, there was no email, everything happened just as it would now if you shut it all down. So people will survive the extra few minutes waiting.
Don’t forget when you are away from the internet, away from your desktop or away from emails, you can’t answer them then, you actually physically can’t answer them. No one complains, do they? So, set this up for yourself.
And the reason we do that is because when you read emails there will some in there that you weren’t expecting that will ask you to take some kind of action, to do something.
It could be a complaint, it could be a supplier wants to organize a meet up or something like that, you will have to do something, you can’t just ignore them and leave them as unread, you have to do something.
If a supplier, for instance wants to meet up, you might have to quickly look at your calendar, when you look at your calendar you notice other things and then you have to get back to them and quickly reply.
But by then, you’ve gone off the boil and what happens with some messages, they will require you to take action that you could do tomorrow, you could do later, but you do it now.
And suddenly, other people are setting your agenda. So, do you see what I mean by when I say about you being in control of your success?
Because, if you’re going to be successful, you need to be the guide, not others, not others who don’t care about what you are doing or what you are trying to do; they are just interested in themselves and what they want.
They can wait; so please, promise me you will try it, you will try it for one week, just for five days. Don’t answer emails until 12 o’clock, and then don’t answer them again until four o’clock, Try it.
What are you thinking? I know what you are thinking; I just know you are going to come up with some excuse. Perhaps you have created a habit reading emails as soon as you wake up.
Nowadays, do you wake up in bed and grab your iPhone and look at emails? Do you really have to do that?
Have you made a habit of reading them when you eat your breakfast? Again do you really really really need to be doing that? I know what you are thinking. This is the hardest thing and the reason I am going on about it is because this is the hardest things that you are ever going to have to do.
So remember to do this the night before, prepare for the day and then don’t touch emails until you start work.
#3 Set Your Working Hours
Number three, this one is simple; set your working hours. Now, if you are an employee, you have working hours, but if you are a boss you don’t really, they are loose.
If you work from home, and again, obviously in my experience, you don’t, but in the day, you can decide what you want to do. And that leaves blurred edges so there’s no hurry there’s no anything
When you go on holiday on vacation, you have to hurry to get stuff done and you manage because you have a deadline, you have got to get this done by tonight.
Make everyday like that and suddenly you will find that you will stop wasting time, you will stop procrastinating, you will stop surfing the internet because you simply have nit go time, you have got stuff to do.
That’s it. Simple. Three. Do those, you will be getting on.
Monday Book Recommendation
Now it’s Monday, it is time for a book for the week. And it today I have actually got the book. By the way, I do actually have all the books I have recommended.
This is called The Boron Letters by Gary C Halbert. It’s actually sort of by Bond Halbert, his son.
Gary Halbert is a copywriter, but everything is writing, whether it’s building your website, your presence, doing anything. I am just going to read.
“Gary has more multimillion dollar winning campaigns in more industries than any other copywriter living or dead.”
Gary is no longer with us. He actually wrote these as letters to his youngest son, Bond, when he was in prison, in the Boron prison in California, I believe. I have never even heard of it.
In fact funny enough, I never read that book before but I have read this a couple of times. This is just made up of a collection of the letters he wrote to Bond to teach him.
It’s everything, as it says “The wisdom in this book covers everything from layout to offer development and list selection; how to create a winning game plan. And everything in this book will also help you create profitable website.”
These are moneymaking lessons, they were written in prison and he doesn’t mess about and they are just published as is. This is excellent. You can get it on Amazon; it is seriously brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
If you can’t find any ideas in there as to how to create a new page on your website, how to write an email to someone, how to write an offer, how to write a sales letter, then you need to read it again, it’s fantastic.
I’ll be back with more tomorrow.