How to be More Productive

Continuing the new year theme, I’ve been thinking about how you can be more productive this year. Through trial and error, I have come to discover that there are five key actions I took last year that made me more productive. I hope that they help you be more productive in 2012:

1. Unsubscribe from the email lists that you no longer read. If you find yourself deleting the majority of emails you receive from a list, go ahead and unsubscribe from that list. Even though each delete takes only a couple seconds, over the course of the year, it adds up. If you find that you are on the fence about unsubscribing, try setting up a new email account for your subscriptions. Visit that email only when you have completed all of your work.

2. Get an accountability partner. It can be a mastermind group or a friend, just as long as s/he can actually hold you accountable to complete tasks. For me, having outside accountability is crucial. I’m very disciplined but having someone else to remind me of my commitments really helps keep me on track. Last year I was a member of Business Success Teams and found the twice monthly meetings helped keep me productive.

3. Do not start your day with email. This one is difficult for me, but when I can stay Read More Here…

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New Year – New Online Marketing Plan?

Everybody seems to want to get things organized in the new year. One of the things that continues to crop up on solo professionals’ to do lists is marketing their practice. You too, right? It must be something in the air around this time of year….

Image via CrunchBase

Define Your Client Market

If you haven’t got an online marketing plan in writing, this is the time to make it. But before anything, you absolutely must know WHO your potential clients are and what problem they want solved. That is step one. Spend time on this step because if you don’t, nothing else you do with online marketing can succeed. The more you know about your tribe and their problem and they way they talk about their problem, the easier it is to become the go-to expert.

Use Keywords to Attract Your Client Market

Once you have your market clearly defined, you will be ready to move on to using online marketing tools like your website and blog and articles to attract more clients. That’s why you need a clearly Read More Here…

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Hitting Your “Ceiling of Control?”

When you first start your solo practice or business, you do everything yourself (hence the word “solo” . You work with the clients, create the marketing, answer all the emails, keep the books, and change the light bulbs. You are truly a “one person band” and for a while, you do pretty well at juggling all the aspects of your little business.

But at some point, if your business is growing, you realize you just can’t do everything yourself. And this almost always happens sooner than most business owners realize – usually when your reach about $75,000 to $100,000 in income. At that point, you cannot grow your business, increase your income, and still be an effective coach or consultant completely on your own.

This phenomenon, sometimes called the “Ceiling of Control,” is when the business owner is so essential to the daily logistics of the business that they become a bottleneck that stops things from getting done or moving forward quickly.

At that point, you simply must hire help in the form of a freelance Virtual Assistant, or some other part-time independent contractor.

Almost every solo business owner resists doing this at the start. They say, “But I can’t afford to pay someone to help me!” The catch 22, however, is that you really can’t afford not to. There are only so many hours in the day and each one of us has a finite amount of bandwidth and energy.

You may be able to keep all the plates spinning for a while, but once you Read More Here…

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What Do Dating and Building Your Practice Have in Common?

While cleaning up my files this week I ran across a report on “Conscious Dating.” As I flipped through it, it struck me that most of the ten principles for successful dating also apply to building your practice.

1. Know who you are and what you want. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and your values. Target the clients you enjoy working with. Choose a specialty that is aligned with your values and where you feel that you can make a contribution by building your practice

2. Learn how to get what you want Develop creative strategies and action plans. “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Be among the most successful 3% of businesses with a written plan.

3. Be the “chooser” Take initiative and responsibility for your Read More Here…

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