Entrepreneurship Archives - Page 14 of 23

How to Beat the **** Out of Your Inbox!

It’s probably the number one time-drain for entrepreneurs all around the world. Yet, email is about as required today as having a fax machine was in the late 80’s and early 90’s. When it comes to communication, your Inbox is where the party’s at, lets face it…

However, email – and particularly your Inbox, doesn’t have to be the pain in the ass that it is for a lot of busy business owners and 9-5 escapee-wannabe’s! It’s simply about putting systems and processes in place to make sure you don’t get sucked into email doom on a daily basis.

When I was in the process of becoming a Virtual CEO last year, I had a lot of mini-goals that I incorporated into my one-year long goal of escaping my desk on a daily basis. These mini-goals were basically monthly goals and sometimes I’d have to hit several within a one-month period to stay on track.

Rewind to January 2010

In that first month, I set out to remove myself from as many email commitments as possible. The main reason behind this decision was that if I truly wanted to become that Virtual CEO, I had a lot of work and planning ahead of me. I simply wasn’t going to be able to achieve everything I needed to, if I was stuck in front of Outlook all day!

So, I took myself out of as many ‘copy me in’ threads as possible. Everything from my HR team (except management issues), my IT team (except emergencies) and my Operations team (except for a couple of key clients). It worked. I went from spending 4 hours a day on email to around 1-2 hours, depending on the day (Monday is usually a little heavier than most for me).

Moving Email to the Cloud

Nowadays I’m cloud based, and handle all my email via the Gmail platform. This was another move I made last year, around April, which enabled me to become more mobile as a business owner. The ability to check, reply and ‘file’ email from any device I own, or any other computer for that matter, just became golden, and I never see myself going back to a one-device email set-up, such as Outlook, or Mail for the Mac.

But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I am going to remain super-productive when it comes to battling my Inbox, does it? Of course not. So, I’ve had to put several guidelines and processes in place to make sure that happens.

My 6 Golden Email Rules

Now we get down to the focus of this post. The following guidelines; rules; processes, whatever you want to call them, are not, by any means final, nor irreplaceable, neither are they going to work for everyone out there. However, if you’re a new-age entrepreneur, traveling business owner or small online business boss, believe me – trying them out might just make your life a little easier – and productive.

One Click Rule

This is about as simple as it sounds. When an email lands in my Inbox, I open it and with one click do one of the following:

Reply
Delete
Archive

If you open the email and then go onto another email you’re only going to have to come back to the first one at some point. Why bother yourself? It takes time, it’s irritating and it simply doesn’t make sense to me.

Three Sentence Rule

For any of you who might have corresponded with me via email, you would have seen the following email signature when I’ve replied to you (if not, feel free to email me):

The link takes you to a page where you can find out why I answer all of my emails using no more than three sentences. The simple reason behind this is that it enables me to answer my emails properly, yet in a polite and productive manner.

I’m more of a talker than a typer anyway, and so my rule is that if I can’t give a reasonable answer to a question, or a piece of info someone needs within three sentences, then I pick up the phone. The only exception to this rule is business proposals, if need be.

Eliminate Yourself from Email Threads

This will affect some people more than others. But, if you have a lot of people working for/with you within your company set-up, then the chances are that you can probably get your number of daily emails down quite considerably, just like I did, by removing yourself from certain email threads.

Start Using a Project Management System

Using something like Basecamp to work with people on a daily basis, whether they are within your company structure, or not, enables you to cut your Inbox load down even further.

It does mean, obviously, that you’ll be handling messages, updates, etc., from another platform, so you’ll have to balance out things and see whether it will work for you. Bottom line – try it. If it works, great. If not, nothing ventured, nothing gained…

Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists

We are all guilty of this. We see a shiny eBook that we want, or a video course we want to check out. They are free – but, you need to opt-in. This sticks you on someone’s mailing list, however, which means you will get email from him or her regularly (some more than others, obviously).

My rule on this was to remove myself from all of the mailing lists I was on, except for my five favorite bloggers. It was a simple process to undertake. I simply waited for an email to arrive, figured out whether I still wanted to receive messages from the owner of the list, or not, and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link more often, than not.

Don’t Use Your Inbox as a To-Do List

A lot of people I know make this mistake. And I mean a LOT! This is mad. Think about it – if your Inbox is also your To-Do List, then, as a busy ‘idea a minute’ entrepreneur, you will never clear your Inbox. EVER.

Just the action of leaving the message in there, regardless of what color you flag it, or what nice label you give it, goes against you and your productivity levels. Get your ‘To-Do’ items out of your Inbox and put them somewhere else.

Some ideas of ways to manage your To-Do List could be as follows:

A notepad
An iPad (as I use now. App – ‘Things‘)
An iPhone (or other smart phone)
Post-It Notes (I used to use this)
Index cards
Excel Sheets

Starting Kicking the * Out of your Inbox, Now!**

As you can see, I attack my Inbox in a number of different ways. What matters the most here, more than anything else, is that it works for me. I mean, when you go from 4 hours a day stuck in an email-jam, to an average of an hour or so, that’s killer. That’s game-changing, for ANY entrepreneur.

What are you doing to cut down email and become more productive? Let me know in the comments, below. And… ReTweet’s of this particular post are really appreciated! Thanks.

How to Embrace Skype to be a True-Blue, Mobile Entrepreneur!

This is a Guest Post from Phil Montero

Creating an effective virtual or mobile office is not as easy as choosing one service or “software” that makes your business mobile. It requires choosing different services to handle your needs and finding ways to integrate them into your workflow.

Phone, mail, fax, online document storage, sharing large files with co-workers or clients, – All of these are decisions that affect how virtual your business can be. When you find one tool that can address several of these and does them really well – that is a huge plus! Skype is just such a program and I can’t imagine running my anywhere office without it. If you’re a mobile worker, location independent professional, or run a virtual office – Skype should be at the top of your toolbox.

Why does Skype rock? If you think Skype is just an audio or video chat program – you’re wrong. Skype can handle the bulk of your communication and collaboration needs. I’m constantly amazed at how many ways Skype has improved my workflow and remote collaboration.

To use Skype to it’s fullest you will need a microphone and webcam – but amost any recently purchased laptop (as of the last few years) should already have these built-in. If your system doesn’t have these you can purchase a good USB mic/headset and a webcam for under $200. When you see how much money Skype can save you – that ‘s short money.

Oh Skype how I love thee – lets count the ways..!

Hi-Quality Audio Conferencing

Originally Skype’s key feature and still what it is best known for – it is an excellent VOIP service for hi-quality audio conferecing. Audio calls are Free if you are using Skype-to-Skype while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a low per minute fee using a debit-based user account system. The call quality of a Skype-to-Skype call is actually superior than a landline or mobile phone. The tone and call quality is much richer.

Because skype-to-skype calls are free you can talk internationally at no cost. Talk about a way to save your business money! You can also have Skype audio conferences with up to 25 people. No need for a conference call system (even though there are some good free ones available). This makes it easy for your communication to escalate naturally from a one-on-one text chat, to a voice call, to a conference call all without leaving your computer or touching the phone.

They also sell very affordable subscriptions for unlimited outgoing calling to phones as well as the ability fo your to get a Skype-In number which gives you a phone number you can use for peope with phones to call you on skype (then you can answer from your computer). You can even get features like call fwding (so your cell phone rings when you are away from your computer to take the call) and voicemail. Many people have started using Skype as their primary business line (I choose Gogle Voice but that is a story for another article).

Instant Messenger

A good instant messenger program is key to virtual work. It can serve as a water cooler, brainstorming platform, and your quick connection to co-workers, colleagues, and clients. IM is a great tool for having an impromptu meeting, sending along a URL, or quickly getting questions answered. You can easily escalate a text chat from one-on-one to a multi-person discussion/forum so it’s easy to have a virtual meeting.

Unlike email everyone sees the messages simultaneously that are typed and can respond so it allows for a more real time flow of conversation.

Also the ability to save entire discussions as text files or copy and paste them into a document to save the conversation can be invaluable.

Share Large Files

There are lots of great services available to let you share large files with others – but the ability to do it through an IM chat makes it seemless. Need to get that report to a client quickly? Need to send someone a large video file that would choke their email? You can easily do it through Skype. According to their site you can send files of any size.

Great One-to-One Video Chat

To me one of the most essential part of Skype is the ability to have one-to-one video chats. Thanks to Skype anyone with a computer and hi-speed internet connection can have desktop video conferencing with quality and features, e.g., full-screen and screen-in-screen modes, similar to those of mid-range videoconferencing systems.

I’ve tried just about every video chat system out there and tested video in all of the various IM systems (Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN, etc.) and Skype beats then all hands down. I can’t speak enough about how powerful it is to use video instead of just audio in your communication with remote colleagues. Video adds richness through body language, seeing someones surroundings, and the ability to literally hold something up for the other person to see on camera. It acts as virtual face time and adds so much to the conversation.

Thanks to Twitter I’ve met some amazing people from all over the world and when we take those conversations to the next level we almost always use a Skype video chat.

In fact it’s thanks to Skype video chat that I have become good friends with your fearless VBL Leader – Mr. Chris Ducker.

Shortly after we met on Twitter we started having video Skype chats. We joked about each others hair lines, shared our martial arts statues (he has an awesome Bruce Lee one, that his wife gave him and I have a great Shaolin Monk I got in China Town on a trip to New York). We saw each others families, and offices. In no time we felt like we had known each other for some times despite never having met face-to-face in person – although we plan to remedy that soon as we share a few beers and a blues jam!

[Note from Chris – Amen to that, brotha!]

Skype recently added a feature I’ve been waiting for multi-person video chat. It’s a paid feature and supports up to 6 people. I only tried it once so far but I wasn’t impressed. I was on a 3 person video chat recently – performance was poor and it seemed glitchy. To be completely fair it was only one test and I’ll try it a few more times before passing my final judgment.

Share Your Screen

This amazing feature of Skype is probably it’s least known benefit but another one I use all the time. With a few clicks you can share your whole screen or a specific window with the other person on the call. You can screen share a presentation over a call, show friends and family photos without having to send them – even demo an application.

Being a tech guy I get asked a lot of “how-to” questions. I often find myself switching to screen share during a call to show someone how to do something. So much quicker and easier! If a picture is worth a thousand words – what’s a screen share worth?

Mobile Apps for Smartphones

With apps that run on the 3 main smartphone platforms (Blackberry, Android, and iPhone) all the advantages of skype audio/text chat are mobile! You can actually make FREE calls to other skype users using your cellphone that won’t count toward your mobile minutes or incure extra charges if you’re talking internationally. You can also continue text chats while on the go.

If you have an iPhone – there is a bigger bonus, you also get video! I recently got an iPhone 4 on Verizon and was really excited to test the built in FaceTime application from Apple. It works great but it’s downside is that it only works on WiFi (not 3G) and only allows you to video chat with other FaceTime users. That leaves me with a rather small pool of friends or colleagues with iPhones or Macs.

Skype for the iPhone recently added video chat and I was amazed when I found it worked on both 3G and WiFi. That means I can now video chat from my phone to any of Skypes over 560 million users. That means if I’m travelling away from my family I can easily video chat with my wife and son to say howdy or good night no matter where I am right from my phone. The Jetsons don’t have nothin’ on me (well except the flying car)!

With a laptop or smartphone all of the communication and collaboration potential Skype offers is completely mobile. Truly amazing! In an era where it takes a lot of different programs to mobilize your work – one tool that can do so much is extreme valuable.

Of all the free and low-cost tools tool I recommend for people to run their businesses online and be more mobile Skype is always near the top of the list.

Phil is about as rock solid as it gets when it comes to technology on the move. Check out his awesome blog, and follow him on Twitter to be ‘in the know’!

How are you utilizing Skype in your business? Any cool stories? And, what other virtual tools are you utilizing to make yourself more mobile..?

5 Steps Toward Making Your Goals Inevitable!

This is Guest Post by Jacob Sokol.

“If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you’re going to turn out in life.” -Warren Buffet

I’ve been interested in what my future will look like for a mighty long time. From fulfilling relationships to personal finances, the spectrums of potential circumstances that interest me are most definitely diversified. I want to be healthy, happy, handsomely wealthy and having fun while contributing to the world in a massively meaningful way. I knew that actualizing those intentions were possible, but i didn’t always have a clear blueprint for bringing me closer to those goals.

To be crystal clear, let me just put this out there: I’m not a psychic, not a gypsy, not a healer, not a channeler, not a medium, not a fortune-teller, not a spirit-speaker, not a witch-crafter, and i am definitely not a devil-worshiper. I do however believe in the power to predict our future, and even positively influence it as well.

Let me ask you this: How could you make it so an outcome that you want to achieve is inevitable?

Enter “Inevitability Thinking.” Inevitability Thinking is all about conditions and setting up the right set of circumstances so that what you want to happen will “automatically” do so.

Don’t Buy Ice Cream!

Here’s an example. If you wanted to stop eating Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream at night, one way to make that inevitable is not to buy it when you go grocery shopping. We’re going to use Inevitability Thinking to create the right set of influences in your life – ones that will bring you closer to who you want to become and where you want to go.

Before we go any further into the future though, let’s play a bit in the present moment. I want you to take this time to identify some information about yourself. First we need to look at who the five people that you spend the most time with are. That could include, but isn’t limited to:

Colleagues
Lovers
Friends
Family
Roommates
Hobbyists
Social-networkers
Etc…

Take the time to write down who those five people are. Really do it – you’re already reading this article, you might as well get the benefit from it. Now ask yourself some questions about those five people and answer honestly:

How motivated are they?
How healthy are they?
How much money do they make?
What are their habits?
How happy are they?
How productive are they?
What are their goals?
What are their relationships like?
What are their eating habits like?
Are they optimistic?

Think about the answers to those questions. Here comes the shocker…

If i didn’t know anything about you, except for whom the five people that you spent the most time with were, and what the characteristics of those five people are, I would have a pretty good idea of who YOU are – even if I’ve never met you!

Jim Rohn may have simply said it best here: “You are an average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with”. Wild stuff but the freak-show hasn’t completely closed yet. Check this out…

If I was to analyze that data, i could pretty accurately predict where you’ll be in the future based on these answers in the now. Wow! Let’s take a look at how we can put this knowledge into optimal action and create a set of circumstances conducive to making what you want inevitable.

5 Steps Toward Making Your Goals Inevitable

1. Ask yourself. “What does my ideal life look like?” It may help to think in terms of these categories:

Physical
Mental
Emotional
Spiritual
Social
Financial
Creative

Once done, I suggest that you write down your answers and put them up somewhere that you’ll see daily (but not just yet.)

Helpful hint: I suggest dreaming BIG. Far-out! Unrealistic. Whatever … Pretend that it was impossible for you to fail. Then articulate those answers. Doing this plants a seed in your mind that has the potential to sprout through small steps and time.

2. Score Yourself. Now take out the list that you wrote down earlier identifying the five people that you currently spend the most time with. See if the people on your list have the same qualities that your ideal life has.

In other words: are the five people that you spend the most time with bringing you closer to your ideal life, or are they pulling you further away? Identify if they’re averaging you up, or dragging you down.

3. Survey Your Environment. Think thoroughly and make a list of five people that you currently know that will bring you closer to living the life you want. These are people who have the qualities that it takes to get where you want to go. You can look through your:

Contacts
Emails
Job
Gym
Mind
And every other possible place to identify these people.

Helpful hint: If you don’t have five extraordinary people in your life to list, start by writing down what the characteristics of those people would be. Be on the lookout for when the opportunity to connect with people of such caliber presents itself, and then, take action!

4. Set The Example. It’s time to adjust accordingly. I know this is a sensitive subject and we don’t want to just go throwing out our closest friends. A good friendship is a sacred and honored bond to be cherished (and made fun of too.) With that in mind, we can still choose to scale back the amount of time that we spend with people who are not in alignment with where we want our lives to be.

Do what you have to do to become the person that you know you can be. Be virtuous and act with wisdom, courage, truth, justice, temperance and love! Then when it does come time to hang out with old friends and family, you are the living exemplification of the change that you want to see.

5. Be The Answer. Ask yourself this quality question: who do I need to become to attract the type of people into my life that will average me up? Answer that question honestly. Then take baby steps towards becoming that person. If you do, before you know it, not only will those people be in your life, but you’ll be averaging yourself up also.

This sequence of steps was an example of adjusting who you spend your time with based on Inevitability Thinking. Equally as important as whom you’re spending your time with is what you’re spending your time doing. All of your activities either average you up toward being the type of person that achieves your goals, or they can take you further away from them as well.

Personally, if i wanted to average myself down, I would do this:

Watch TV, especially the news.
Listen to the radio, especially public.
More Facebook, with lesser quality friends.
Gossip and talk about other people’s business in my conversations.
Hang out with people who have no interest in living an optimal life.

Currently, to “average myself up,” I do this:

Listen to interviews with people that inspire me.
Read books on subjects that I’m passionate about.
Meditate and spend some time with the universe daily.
Watch funny movies and documentaries on interesting ideas.
Make sure the people who I’m communicating with online are awesome.
Purposely pick what music i listen to depending on what mood i want to be in.

I also invite you to play with the idea of watching how you spend your time.

Ask Yourself This…

Ask yourself if what you’re doing, and who you’re doing it with, is bringing you closer to or further from the person that you know you can be. If it’s bringing you closer, that’s amazing. If it’s not, what are the circumstances that you need to put in place to make it inevitable that what you want to happen will?

Read more from Jacob about creating An Extraordinary Life at his blog, Sensophy.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.

How to Create Physical Products Without Breaking Your Freedom!

This is a guest post by Greg Rollett.

We have grown accustomed to all things digital, just take notice at the “everything iPad” world we are marketed to everyday. Even Amazon has recently jumped into “cloud overdrive” with their new promotion to give away 20Gig of cloud storage if you buy a music album (great deal btw).

But for every bad Windows commercial that proclaims “to the cloud” there are millions of people all over the world who still love going into a store and trading their hard earned money to rip off the plastic packaging and hold their newfound love in their hands.

For the majority of Chris’s audience, you have been conditioned towards creating digital goods and services.

Membership sites
eBooks
Videos and video courses
Podcasts and audio series
Mobile Applications
Blogs
and so on

And while I wholeheartedly agree with this business model, a recent project has taken control of my product creation creativity and spawned…GASP…a physical product!

Many things come to mind when building and releasing a physical product. From

Product creation
Manufacturing
Duplication
Scaling
Shipping
Returns
Customer Service
And on and on we go

Over the next few paragraphs I am going to do my best to share some physical product creation tips to help ease your mind and get you thinking physical and the value that will bring to your marketplace.

Product Creation

This phase many of you are familiar with. Take your ideas, skills and talents and bundle them up into a consumable format. Nothing new here. Where you really need to start thinking and planning in the creation of a physical product is the time constraints.

Check with your manufacturer (more on this in a few) to see the maximum amounts of storage available on certain mediums. With our recent DVD we were limited to 2 hours of footage and a certain amount of storage for those 2Gigs.

Many CD’s if you are doing an audio program can hold around 72 minutes. This needs to be included in your planning stage as we had to cut out a few chapters and even an upsell video in order for our information to be put onto the product.

Manufacturing

There are multiple options to choose from when you are looking for a company to produce your physical products. We have looked into a multitude of options working with musicians, entrepreneurs and with our own products and here are some items and tips that might be quite valuable to you.

If you have the means, think outside of the CD or DVD. There are other media options. Custom MP3 players with your branding and logo are a big hit and you can often find 1 Gig iPod Nano look alikes with your branding and material pre-loaded for less than $5/ea. These products have a high perceived value and can be sold in your store for $20-100 or over greater depending on the material.

The Chinese still have great prices and great turnaround, but be prepared to buy in bulk. (This is not an option for our company as we want low to no inventory and I’ll share some more of how we do this below.) For some musicians we have been able to source CD cases that look like Nintendo Cartridges, giant Hulk hands with custom download links on them and even recording devices that act as magnets we have used for show promotion.

Always get samples. Yes, this delays the timing of your launch, but by scheduling demos and samples you ensure that your CUSTOMERS, the most important part of this equation, gets the highest quality product that you can offer.

All of these options are great, but my favorite model of them all is the…

Print And Ship Model

The print on demand industry has been around for some time now with t-shirt companies like Zazzle and others that will print your picture on a coffee mug to send to your mom on Mother’s Day. But only recently has the industry become reliable in the same fashion as a fulfillment center, and at a cost where us online entrepreneurs can still turn a nice profit.

If you are looking to produce CD’s or an audio series (like a “best of your Podcast” physical product) I would recommend looking into a California start-up called Audiolife. They are one of my favorite companies with great customer support, above high-quality printing and timely shipping of the products.

Even better for you is that they can act as your storefront via a widget or custom code, collect your money via PayPal, redirect their portion and then send you your profits. All of that happens while they print your product and ship it out. Meaning you never have to touch it, see it or package it. That is truly collecting money on autopilot if there is such a thing.

My other big source is what we are currently using for our new DVD, and that is Kunaki. This has been an Internet Marketing trade secret for some time now as they can print and ship a DVD for about $5. Yes, you read that right, printing and shipping for $5. And for you cool kids getting a few orders a day, you can just import your order list into Kunaki, pay for the DVD’s and they will print and ship them right to your customers.

Thus solving the issues of spending time with inventory and shipping and still covering your margins to run a highly successful virtual business.

Boo-yah!

Will You Go Physical?

There are hundreds and thousands of other ways to source and build physical products, but these are some of the best we have found and the ones that have been working for us. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are and if you have any tips or resources for people looking to create physical products and not create inventory or stress into the freedom of our business.

Share your thoughts below.

Greg Rollett comes to us from over at Radically Ambitious, an Internet Marketing and Lifestyle Creation Company. Want to learn more about physical products or just chat, find Greg on Twitter as well.

How to Get Your Virtual Entrepreneur Juices Flowing More Than Ever Before!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTBFf-hhFDw

Today we have the beginning of a 4-part video series with fellow virtual entrepreneur and business owner, Dan Andrews. You might already be familiar with Dan, as he also contributes pretty regularly to this blog, too. As someone that produced over $800,000 in revenue – virtually – for his businesses last year, he has a few things to stand up and take notice of.

Dan is a full-blown virtual entrepreneur, lives in the Philippines for the majority of the year and we’ve hooked up on various occasions. What usually ensues is a fantastic entrepreneurial breeding ground of ideas, lessons, tips and tricks – and this video series is no different, I can tell you.

Be sure to watch right the way through to the end of the video for some out-takes, including our Soprano impressions – they are worth the price of admission alone!

In this first video we discuss being a virtual entrepreneur and business owner, subject points such as:

Building your online brand.
Launching a product / service to a small and large audience.
The differences between old school and ‘new school’ entrepreneurship.
Why you need to really care about your ‘business world’.
How your processes need to be put in place ASAP.
Why ‘lifestyle design’ has become so much more than just a ‘search term’.
Tons more stuff…!

Dan does something to me, personally. When I’m talking with Dan my own virtual entrepreneur juices get flowing very, very quickly. To be able to get on the same level with someone like that does great things for your thought process. We also seem to have a LOT of fun, too.

The second part of this series will go live next Monday, so be sure to subscribe NOW, via either RSS, or by downloading my free eBook, to make sure you don’t miss out on any of the goodies that are coming up!

Until then, if you have any comment, or questions in regards to virtual entrepreneurship, feel free to drop them to us below. And if you’re feeling ‘sweet’, then please Retweet, too! 🙂

Reality Check: Are You Achieving Your Goals…?!!

Every month I set myself a goal. Sometimes its ‘bigger’ than others…

Sign a new client with a minimum 10-employee requirement, create a new policy to promote and encourage more reading in the workplace, gain another 200 RSS subscribers, listen to more inspiring podcasts, spend more time developing business ideas, take the family to a resort for 3-days of relaxation… you get it.

I’ve said it before many, many times. Goals are the cornerstone of entrepreneurial success. If you are spending time on any project, any idea, any business model, without putting goals in place first – then, you are literally walking through the jungle at night without a flashlight. You’re going to get nowhere!

Are You Being Realistic ..?

Here’s the thing… No matter what goal I set for myself, I always, ALWAYS make sure of two very simple things. They are as follows:

ONE: That it’s achievable. Setting a goal that is so outlandish that I’ll never hit it, is simply pointless. As well as being extremely time consuming.
TWO: I achieve it.

Sometimes I feel the benefits of hitting my goals immediately. Sometimes its something that will ‘hit home’ later on. But, I always make sure that I hit my goals. It’s what keeps me going as a business owner, husband and father.

How Are You Doing…?

What goals did you set in place for yourself this month? We’re now half way through the current month. Have you looked at where you are with that goal? Anything more you can do RIGHT NOW to be sure you hit the goal by the end, or before the end of the month..?

Let us all know below in the comments section how you’ve been doing. Give details – the juicer, the better! What was your goal this month – and how you’re doing with it..!

How to Setup a Super-Mobile Infrastructure!

This is a Guest Post by Tony Ruiz.

What is mobility? By definition, mobility is the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. With the internet, mobility has allowed individuals to take their work anywhere. It’s ultimately what the virtual business lifestyle is all about, packing up within 4 hours notice and knowing you have access to your work as long as a secure wi-fi connection is nearby.

Becoming mobile is nothing to be intimated by, it’s actually fairly simple, especially with the technology we have access too. The sooner you can set yourself up for mobility the better. All it takes is having the right mindset and having the correct infrastructure in place. Most of the tools I’m going mention in this article have already been discussed within the VBL community but it’s one thing to know what tools to use and another thing to know how to actually implement them.

I’m going to show you some of the best tools online to use, why you should use them, and how to combined them together to work seamlessly. Sounds good? Great but first lets discuss…the mindset.

The Mobile Mindset

Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. -Jim Rohn

Lets start with this, to become a mobile entrepreneur you must change your mindset to think in a way certain way. All cloud based tools are now your best friend. Ask yourself this question whenever using an application, saving a file, or working on a project. “Can I access this from a library computer?” In other words, can you access your work files from a computer you don’t own?

If not, you need to think about how you can. If you use thumb-drives to save and access documents use them only to backup documents now. You’ll discover in this post why you no longer need to depend on thumb-drives. I can’t count how many time I lost a thumb-drive that was attached to my keys. I learned the hard way and if I ever lost one now, it won’t be the end of the world.

Just remember, if it’s in the cloud (can be accessed online) it’s your friend. Everything else is used for back-up purposes.

The Tools (aka Weapons of Mobility)

Assuming you already own a laptop and perhaps a smartphone or tablet I’m going to be talking about web-bassed applications you’ll be able to use to help enhance your mobile lifestyle. Keep in mind, you can use any tools you come across – and please leave some of your favorite tools in the comments below if you don’t see them here. I’m simply going to show you the tools I would recommend to anyone making the switch to super-mobility. The idea is to understand how you can create your own super-mobile infrastructure by seeing how I setup mine. Feel free to plug and play, however the framework still applies.

The Browser

Lets start with your Internet browser. I prefer using the Firefox browser by default, however the Google Chrome browser is getting fairly popular now and some prefer the Safari browser. Use one of the three browsers mentioned above, you’ll make your like a whole lot easier. When it comes to using a browser you want to make sure you have one very important plugin installed – it’s called Delicious. Delicious is a popular social bookmarking tool that allows you to save your bookmarks in the cloud (online). Before installing the plugin make sure you have an account by signing up here.

To install the Delicious plugin for the Firefox browser click here. To install the Delicious plugin for the Safari browser click here. To install the Delicious plugin for the Chrome browser click here.

Every website I bookmark for future reference is bookmarked through delicious. Since it is a social bookmarking website all your bookmarks are available to the public by default. I just mark my bookmarks private since most my bookmarks are for my personal reference. I also export my delicious bookmarks time to time so I have a backup file.

Having your bookmarks on delicious (marked as private) acts just as if you would bookmark items on your browser. Instead now you can access bookmarked sites anywhere. It’s a wonderful thing!

Practice getting in the habit of bookmarking websites via delicious instead of your browsers bookmarking folders.

NOTE: Firefox just came out with the Firefox 4 update and the delicious plugin is not fully compatible with Firefox 4 yet. I’m personally not updating to Firefox 4 till the delicious becomes compatible.

Saving Files and Documents in the Cloud

It is no secret that Dropbox is Chris’s favorite web-based application. Dropbox is my personal favorite when it comes to saving files and documents online too. For those of you that don’t know what Dropbox is, it’s a website that syncs your files online and to any computer connected to your account (it’s free to get stated). To learn more watch the demo video here.

I have my iMac, MacBook, and iPhone connected to my Dropbox account (Yes, you can also connect a PC to your Dropbox account).

When you signup for Dropbox they start you off with 2 GB of free space and they also give you the opportunity to earn more space without upgrading to their premium packages.

BONUS: You can earn additional space by clicking the “Get Started” tab in your dropbox account, referring college friends with an .edu email, referring friends through a referral link, and by connecting to your social media accounts. I have 5 GB+ just by using these methods. But if you want to get serious just upgrade to a premium package.

The whole purpose of using Dropbox is getting in the mindset of saving your files online. For example I wrote this article both on my iMac and MacBook because I have Dropbox folders connected to each of them, if I wanted too I could have accessed the file on a computer thats not connected with my Dropbox account by going to Dropbox.com, logging into my account, and clicking on my file through their simple to use interface.

All in all applications like Dropbox give you true mobility, so get in the habit of saving all you projects via Dropbox to give you full access of your work files.

Goodbye Notebook, Hello Evernote (Plus a Killer Outsourcing Tip)

Evernote is a fantastic web-based application that I use for taking notes. I take notes with Evernote on my iPhone and access my notes anywhere on my computer.

A great feature built into Evernote is “Clipping.” You can use clipping to take screenshots of an entire page or even screenshots of a specific part of a page, which is one of my favorite features. Say you stumble on a website that has a feature design you would like to implement for one of your projects one day. Just simply clip the specific image and use it for reference in the future. You can also send it to your designer or developer so they have a clear idea of what you want.

Use Evernote for most of your note taking, but try not to forget that a good old fashion pen and paper can still be used time to time.

Google Applications

Gmail: I think it’s safe to say that Gmail is email on steroids, I mean it’s an email client that has a chat function built into it. The great thing about gmail is it gives you the ability to handle multiple emails within one account (even non gmail accounts).

Google Calender: I like to keep my Google calender as my browser’s home screen. I literally set all my important events and deadlines on my Google calender to remind me what is due or when a deadline is approaching. Google calender even syncs with the iPhone and selected Smartphones which is great when you setup reminders.

Here’s a solid overview of the entire Infrastructure. Download PDF Version.

You’re Now Mobile

Congratulations! You have now set yourself up for super-mobility. It only get better from here. If you at least followed the framework you’ll notice new gears shifting in your head. Also, always be thinking about how you can access your business online by leveraging web-based applications. You never know when you’ll need to access your work on the go.

Tony Ruiz is the founder of VentureMixx, an exclusive newsletter focused on business development and personal growth strategies. You can learn more about him by visiting his site and subscribing.

Want Success…? Say ‘Thank You’ More! (Plus, a Public Message to My Wife!)

Today’s post is a short one. It’s about as simple of a message as you can get.

Say ‘thank you’ more often.

I’ve found that since I’ve been in business for myself, my success has become more and more apparent and I have been able to develop more and more meaningful relationships – both business and personal – by simply saying two little words more often than I have done in the past.

When you feel as if you should thank someone for a job well done, do it. When you believe someone needs a pat on the back, pat them on the back. The simple gratitude that the words ‘thank you’ bring to someones day is by far one of the most success-driving activities you can get involved with.

Here’s MY ‘Thank You’ for Today!

To my beautiful, loving wife, Ercille…

You have given me so much to strive for. Your ability to continuously encourage and support me and to help me always see things in a good light, no matter what, is something that I am thankful for every day. Your love and affection is something that I cherish.

And the way you love all three of our children, even though you personally only helped me make one of them, is nothing short of heroic! You are my hero. My best friend… I love you.

Thank you, darling…

Now, stop reading blog posts and go say ‘thank you’ to someone!

How to go from a ‘Working Class’ to an ‘Entrepreneurial Class’ Mindset!

I’m much more a podcaster than a blogger, so I thought I’d whip up a little audio segment that you can either listen to right here, by clicking the ‘play’ button below, or take on the road with you. I hope if you have any questions or feedback you’ll swing back to the blog and give me a shout in the comment section, below:

Dan Andrews – VBL Audio #1

I believe that becoming an entrepreneur is a gradual process. Without a doubt, the #1 thing that holds people back from being a success in business is poor personal financial mindset. It’s odd to me – most people are much better at business finances that personal ones (as an entrepreneur, of course, they’ll be the same thing). That’s probably because there is a huge element of self control involved.

In the included audio, I’ll point to three main mindset shifts you can make that will jump-start your journey into the entrepreneurial class, plus you’ll find out:

The thought experiment that inspired me to quit my job.
The only thing you need to know about personal finances (and why you shouldn’t take my advice)
Some of the key mindset traps that keep people in jobs.

Mentioned in Today’s Audio: Dave Ramsey

Enjoy and leave your thoughts below 🙂

Becoming Highly Productive – Working in the Zone!

This is a Guest Post by Ian McConnell.

I’ve just had one of those days where everything just fell into place. I was completely in the zone. Task after task got completed effortlessly. Stuff was just falling into place, things were going right and everything just got done. I even completed 4 extra tasks that I hadn’t planned to do today. It’s a great feeling, but I have come to realize that some people struggle to find this zone and don’t enjoy as many of these highly productive days as they should.

It seems that it is more common to have days where small things go wrong and disrupt the day. The computer decides to do an update when it starts up, the browser is slow and unresponsive, the password program can’t find the password that was saved yesterday, etc. Most of these small problems are unavoidable 100% of the time. But, if you are trying to manage your time and tick off the items on a lengthy to-do list, these small problems will undoubtedly add frustration and stress to the mix.

So, how do you get in the zone more often?

I’ll tell you how I did it.

1) I threw out my to-do list.

2) I deleted my time management system which was my Google calendar

Yes, I deleted every repeating task in my Google calendar. These were repeating tasks like write an article on Monday at 9am to be finished and submitted to the article directories by 10.30am. Monday 10.45am to 12noon scan the warrior forum for people I could help out. 1pm to 4pm create new Insiders Club content and so on. I had booked up nearly every minute of my 8 hour working day, with a task for the rest of my life. That was thanks to the power of repeating tasks that never end in digital calendars. It felt good when I initially set up all these weekly tasks. I felt organized. But, after a few weeks of trying to stick to my time management plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work.

Are you sometimes in the right mindset when doing your tasks?

9am Monday would come around and my calendar said I should be writing an article. But, I just wasn’t in the right mindset or zone to write an article. I would force the issue, thinking I needed to be disciplined and get this article done. The article would then take 2 hours (or more) to write and I had scheduled an hour to write it and half an hour to submit it. I then had to adjust my schedule for the rest of the day and usually something didn’t get done at the end of the day, or it got rolled over to the next day. This then compounded the problem the next day.

Not all daily tasks could be accomplished as written on your to-do list.

However, I did notice that on some days at different times I was finding the article writing zone. It just seemed to flow and the article writing was so much easier. But, those times tended to vary. By moving that task to a different day or time slot would work one week but not the next. It seemed like just knowing that task had to be completed put me in the wrong mindset.

I needed a system that was much more flexible and took into account what I actually felt like doing. A system where I worked in the zone 80% of the time instead of 20% of the time. You may be thinking that’s just a lack of discipline. I should have got a timer out and forced myself to get the article done… I tried and it didn’t work. I would get the article done but days later would go and adjust it because the quality just wasn’t good enough.

I tried outsourcing the articles but ended up rewriting them because this material had to be in my voice. Outsourcing articles works great for my niche sites, but not for my personal blog. I had to do the writing so people experienced the real me. Then one day I heard Tony Robbins talk about chunking. Chunking is where you group tasks together which when completed will produce a specific result.

Get rid of to-do lists and go to chunk……

An example of a weekly chunk with a specific result is “Build a list of 1,000 subscribers”. There are no to-do lists or scheduled tasks. Just the chunk, that needs to be completed by the end of the week. I tried it and it worked very well for me.

Here is how I apply it:

I review my monthly goals on a Saturday afternoon and then I create 3 chunks. Saturday afternoon suits me because I’ve had a morning away from the business and I’m usually more relaxed. I create 3 result based chunks which must be completed by the end of the next week. I write these chunks on a post it note and attach it to my computer monitor. It’s a quick and easy system, but as I relax on Sunday it’s amazing how some great ideas pop into my head. On Monday morning I always start the day off, like most week days, with a 40 to 60 minute walk. On the walk is when I contemplate which chunk I’ll start with and what tasks I’ll complete that day.

After a shower and breakfast I’m ready to get to work. My mindset is in the right place, my body is energized and I usually start with the easy tasks, or the ones I know I can knock over quickly, because that builds momentum for the tasks that are not so exciting. I found that by removing the long to-do lists and strict time management it eliminated the overwhelm and has allowed me to be flexible with my days. I also don’t check emails until I have completed what I wanted to do for the day.

I don’t have a start and end time for work!

I start the day and if I’m in the zone I milk it for everything it’s got. If it’s one of those days where small things are going wrong and I struggle to get in the zone I’ll read a book, watch the latest launch video, grab a coffee and try again in an hour or two. As an entrepreneur I believe I have to be flexible. I’m a player in a game and have to be constantly looking for the 20% of my efforts that are working and work more on those. Sometimes a rigid time management system doesn’t work. You may feel like you are busy, but you are busy with the wrong things.

Ian McConnell is a regular VBL reader and supporter. He’s built a full time income online in the last 3 years. Check him out at https://inmyhomeoffice.com, where you’ll also find links to him on Twitter and Facebook!