What Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Never Do – About Time Management

Most people, including myself earlier in my career make a big mistake: they keep an action list without setting priorities. It typically contains entries from top to bottom about calling people, filing documents, sending faxes, setting appointments. And at the end of the day, most of the actions have been done and people feel good about it. Nothing wrong with keeping track of activities and progress but if this is done outside the scope of your personal goals, you will not be able to achieve the successes over time.

What’s wrong here?

Any action list without proper priorities or categories may give you a temporary ‘kick’ when crossing off items, but it will not help you to reach your goals effectively. The ‘mixed-bag’ of activities very quickly leads to a behavior pattern that either focuses on the easy tasks or on tasks that are just urgent but not necessarily important.

Lifestyle Entrepreneurs are very careful about their time. They know that consistently working on their goals is the most important task to do, even if it means postponing a visit to a friend. They will never allow urgent tasks to take control over their day. Instead, they manage the amount of urgent tasks popping up by proper advance planning.

Read on for a very practical approach to get back on track.

Four Activity Levels Explained

Structure your activities into 4 different categories, I call them zones.

A – The Planning Zone

Everything that is very important but not so urgent.

These are the things that if you do them will contribute in the longer run to reaching your objectives.

For example, working regularly on your long term strategy will help you generate future income. Meditation and visualization of goals are also activities that belong here.

Successful people spend most of their time here, some people even more than 80%.

B – The Production Zone

Everything that is very important and very urgent.

Typically, these are the activities you are doing to generate income with your business.

Example: getting back to a prospect who has responded positively to your website or ad.

Make sure that part of your daily activities should always be in this area as this is usually the place where the money is generated.

If you are already fully set up and trained up, spend at least 40-60% of your time here.

C – The Waste Zone

Everything that is not important and not urgent.

Mainly the fun stuff and the social chatter.

Let’s be honest: watching the news on the Internet is not helping your business in any way unless you are somehow related to it. A party is nice but the impact on your business results is fairly minimal.

Interestingly enough, this is where most people who are not getting any results spend most of their time… Their action lists are full of activities in this area.

So be careful and spend only time here if you really can afford it. I suggest maximum 10% of your time.

D – The Losing Zone

Everything that is not important but very urgent.

Crisis stuff causing stress and discomfort.

Your tax lawyer calls you because you have neglected administration for a while. Nothing to do with your business but extremely urgent right now, you have to sacrifice time for this.

Not many people know this but you can greatly minimize the waste here if you spend proper time in A – the planning zone.

Ideally you should spend 0% of your time here.

How To Handle Boring Stuff?

From now on, time-box it! I used to be the worst person in the world taking care of expenses claims, administration, taxes and so on. I always felt that it sort of distracted me from my main goals.

Too bad. We all have to do the boring stuff.

This works fantastic for me right now: Block out a limited time, let’s say 1 hour per day during which you only execute the boring stuff that you have to do anyway. After that, treat yourself, relax with your favorite drink and feel accomplished because you deserve it.

This way, you avoid the ‘negative vibes’ of boring tasks and are ready to move ahead with the more exciting things again.

– Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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Internet Marketing for Lifestyle Entrepreneurs – Case Study

 

This is a small case study with input from leading professionals in this industry. Take advantage of the information, I did a lot of the grunt-work myself and will be happy if I can help you avoid it.

What Happened?

Last year was great. I had a couple of very simply marketing pages and the only thing I worried about was keyword marketing using Google’s pay per click system. On a daily basis, I got over 400 clicks on my pages, good for between 8-10 qualified leads per day. Keywords included ‘home business’, ‘money’, ‘million’ etcetera.

Life was good!

Until November… Because it was then that I learned that the cost per click had skyrocketed from about $0.10 per click to $5.00, $10.00 and in some cases even $25.00 per click… Given the fact that about 30 clicks generate one lead, I was looking at a cost per lead going from 3.00 to anywhere between USD 150 to USD 750 PER LEAD!

I was dead.

I needed some serious time to rethink my options and strategy. Not willing to give up my business, I was forced to think outside the box again and restart my marketing efforts.

The ‘Be-Do-Have Principle’ in Action

If you have read my previous articles about Lifestyle Entrepreneurship, you probably know that I am a great believer in the Be-Do-Have principle.

In short: it requires that you concentrate on who you really are in business and let the actions (Do) and the results (Have) follow logically. This eliminates a constant feeling of ‘lacking’ that tends to blocks positive action. It also eliminates endless analysis and procrastination, which is another sure cause of failure.

BE – My Target Situation

I asked myself 2 questions:

1- Imagine that I am already in the top-10 of Google for all my keywords, then who are the other 9 leaders here?

2- Imagine that I am one of these 9 leaders. What should I be doing that I haven’t been doing up till now?

Very quickly I learned that the top rankers all have the following things in common:

- they seem to operate in some kind of ‘keyword niche’ they occupy and keep

- they have a lot of reciprocal links but not excessive

- they do have good textual content that is very much in accordance with the keywords

DO – Action Plan

By constantly reminding me of my purpose: I am in the top-10, I started to carry out the following actions:

Step 1 – Define Niche

I chose ‘balanced lifestyle entrepreneur’ as this is something I could identify myself with and it is still a niche area that I can defend.

A keyword niche is hard to find nowadays. Try ‘Home Based Business’ or ‘Money’ for example and there are over 700 million pages awaiting your attention…  But if you try ‘Vip Entrepreneur’, you are looking at about 650 thousand pages. This is a number you can work with.

Step 2 – Relevant Content

I did a lot of reading, educated myself and discussed topics with other leaders.

Balanced content on a site is something search engines like. Everything on the page has to be in accordance with the keywords so the reader gets what he was looking for is the underlying concept apparently.

Step 3 – Links

Here’s what I did. I created links with the sites similarly to whatever the other 9 people in the top-10 created. Using a free tool from the Internet, it was easy to figure out who is linking to whom.

It’s a well known fact by now that you need to have links to your site from relevant other sites. Not too many too quickly as it makes the search engines suspicious, resulting in a lower ranking.

Step 4 – Clean up

Finally, I cleaned up my sites, restructured the content and the code.

Search engines tend to look beyond the surface as well so make sure your page is ‘clean’ and optimized somehow, it loads quickly and all links are working. Use code validators (W3C.org offers a free service) and use your keywords in different phrases. Again, don’t exaggerate.

Intermediate Results

After about 4 weeks, entries of mine started to appear in the top-20 of Google, one week later I was in the top-10 of Google. These were mostly blogs and articles I wrote with links to my sites. After that, one of my own sites started to appear in the top-10 which was really exciting. Another thing happened as a nice surprise: one of my sites suddenly got a PR of 3. A huge improvement from the PR=0 that it had up till now.

A 3-Month Objective

My three month objective is to start generating all my leads ‘organically’ again rather than from banners. These leads really are the best leads you can get as they represent people looking exactly for what you are offering.

 

I will simply keep doing what I am doing now and get better at it.

Key Lessons

I want to conclude this short case study with some of the things you may find useful as well:

1. Define what exactly you want your niche to be. If up till now you used keywords like ‘make money’ as your main theme, get creative and use something else for example ‘happy money maker’.

2. Design your theme around this topic using stories, content related to this. Get educated again if necessary.

3. Figure out who else in the top-10 is using your theme and figure out to whom they are linking. Create similar links as well.

4. Start writing blogs and articles. Make sure the content is again relevant to your main theme.

5. Keep it up. It is important to keep the effort going or you may experience a drop back again. Stay motivated and keep improving as you go.

For me, the Be-Do-Have principle works. Instead of time-consuming analysis and procrastination I started to work immediately and took actions in line with my goals.

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Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

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Resources at Business Focus Group

Home Business Entrepreneur – 9 Proven Criteria to Get Started

Selecting a home based business opportunity can be a challenge with so many people offering all kind of opportunities. Promising so many ways to get rich quickly… Keep your head cool and use our 9 criteria to position yourself correctly from the beginning.

 

After having interviewed literally hundreds of potential entrepreneurs I have found that there are three categories:

 

Wannabees

People who choose something more or less randomly with a very low financial investment not really committing themselves.

They typically buy a book they can resell, or they will start typing ads or surveys from home. Programs typically costing less than $50 to get them going. If it doesn’t work, they will try something else. It’s hard to believe they will become successful but at the other end, they didn’t risk anything.

Scared

The sheer amount of possibilities and the enormous amounts of money apparently available in this market makes them scared. They give up before they even try because they believe everything is a scam anyway. They simply don’t want to make any changes to their current situation or life.

Committed Entrepreneurs

People who understand that there are indeed ultra smart ways of making a very good living online provided you do your homework and stay committed. Provided they are able to protect themselves from negative circles of influence, they are ready to investigate a serious opportunity as it presents itself. Existing home based entrepreneurs are happy to help these people as it will allow them to coach serious, next generation leaders building the foundation for a strong and dedicated community of entrepreneurs.

The information in this article is for the latter group of entrepreneurs.

New to Home Business?

If you plan to start a home based business for the first time, criteria 1-6 are most applicable to you. Your main concern is the level of support and training. Becoming your own boss for the next period in your life means that you have to start to think a little different about business. Be prepared to take personal responsibility for your actions and learn multiple tasks. Even some personal development might be required to become more effective and self-reliant.

Experienced in Home Business?

If you have been working out of your home once before but are in the process of changing, focus on criteria 7-9. You want to make sure that your efforts will pay off this time… You have a big advantage in terms of a much shorter learning curve and your developed sense for business working from home.

 

1-Company

Always select a company that really exists, with real people and that has been in business for at least 5 years:

- They have proven themselves in time and are likely to stay alive successfully.

- Most likely, they have been scrutinized and investigated by different bureaus and administrations and survived different levels of allegations. This is a natural filtering process that happens to any company with a certain size and functions like a filter. This filter always works and weeds out the illegitimate schemes and unsuccessful businesses. So use it to your advantage!

2-Products

These should be real and marketable. Pyramid schemes where only money is passed around are 100% illegal and cannot exist for a long time. Just be aware of them and avoid them. More over, make sure you are excited about the products yourself. Believe me it helps when talking to others and when overcoming obstacles…

Training

Step-by-step program works best with personal contact to your coach. This allows you to learn from the professionals and make corrections as you go. Make sure the business plan has been proven to work and is generating results for those following the steps. Ideally, the training system should help you to become a problem solver who can handle small obstacles with confidence.

4-Slightly Challenging

Important: if you select an extremely simple business like typing ads or filling questionnaires working from home, you cannot expect any great rewards. Anyone in the world can do this and most of it can be automated anyway at lowest cost. How motivated will you be after 3 weeks typing the same ads over and over again…

5-Longevity

You want to do something for a longer time, become a specialist and this way you make sure the opportunity remains challenging and motivating enough for you to stay involved and focused. There is nothing worse than having to restart your learning curve over and over again and not make any progress…

6-Team

You learn faster and stay motivated if you can interact with an enthusiastic team. Make sure the team works professionally and is ready to help. There is nothing worse than to work at home without any one to interact with for support.

7-Investment

Common question of many people: ‘how much should I invest’. Difficult to answer. Some of us invest in powerful computers and large desks while others use the kitchen table and a simple laptop. What is important here is the level of flexibility to be able to make your own business decisions. Being your own boss means that you make your own decisions.

8-MLM?

You decide! Multi-level marketing business has created successful companies and I do know people who have become extremely successful in this business. The fact is that for this type of business you need to be a very good sales guy. If, like myself, you are not, then keep your eyes open. Because there are opportunities out there that don’t require you to change somebody’s brains around…

9-Compensation

Last but not least, how do you get paid? In many cases there is a balance between profits on products sold and a rewards for building teams in the organization (creating some kind of leverage). Compensation plans can be very sophisticated. Bottom line: spend enough time to check it out and ensure that the compensation plan has been proven to work already over a period of at least 5 years. Also remember, these is no value in getting compensated solely for enrolling other people in a program. These plans cannot be sustained for a long time and they might be illegal as well in certain states.

Once you have chosen your business, congratulations! The groundwork is done. Treat your new venture as an aeroplane on the runway. Load it with fuel and go full throttle. Don’t hold back so you don’t crash at the end of the runway…

Enjoy your day!

  

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Marius is full-time Lifestyle Entrepreneur since 4 years. Coaching others to success. Prior successful as business development executive in IT industry. Already helped many people finding their path in life with concrete jobs, opportunities and contacts.

Sign up for FREE information at http://www.lifestyle-entrepreneur.net