The Lawn Mower Story

I have an interesting story about my neighbor and his lawn mower. I feel this is a great analogy on personal effective and time management.

Our neighbor's lawn mower hasn't worked correctly for over a year. It sounds like it needs a tune up and constantly stalls. We have about the same size lawn that takes me less than an hour to mow. Because of the problems with his mower for the last year, he spends over 4 hours trying to finish his mowing.

He also spends additional time tinkering with the mower to get it to work. I joked with him, "It sounds like it's time to take the mower for service." He said, "Oh, it's old and I tried to fix it. We need a new mower."

My wife talked to his wife. We found that mowing the lawn and fixing the mower was a great accuse to get out of the performing more important activities around the house.

So how does this apply to our business and our lives?

• How many times to we waste extra time because of ineffective habits or poorly thought out business processes? This is a killer on time. I run my business through checklists and prepared presentations. Since I know exactly what needs to be accomplished and I can do it right away without hesitation, I save tremendous amounts of time. Also, Never let an easily fixed problem create extra work.
• What things are we wasting money on? My neighbor jumped to a conclusion that getting a new mower was the answer with finding out the extent of the problem. This mistake could have cost him an extra few hundred dollars. Get the mower properly tuned up by a professional is very inexpensive. If the professional tell you that you need a new mower then you know it's time.
• How many times do we pick unimportant activities over important activities? This is a killer in business. Most business owners experience the E-myth's "entrepreneur seizure" and work in the business instead of working on the business.
• How many times do we let poor motives undermine our success process? I find this is the number one reason that most people spin their wheels in life. They focus on wrong things. They let their self-limiting beliefs guide them. They defend their right to going nowhere and living poorly.

Don't let you life become like my neighbor and his lawn mower.

What do you do for a living?

What do you do for a living? This is a common question someone you just meet will pose to you. Most people will answer back with a job title or their business name, but this is a perfect opportunity for you marketing yourself or your business.

Every business and employee on the fast track to success should have answer to this question that serves three purposes. First, create a positive image in the person's mind. Second, describe our jobs or business's benefit to a potential client. Third, be specifically targeted towards your best customer. If you're a business owner, we could add a four point which is make an offer.

Here's an example of what I say to people in they asked me what I do for a living.

"Well, have you every met a child with that gleam of confidence in their eyes? You know, that child that seems to have it all together – they’re able to communicate well, they are disciplined and responsible enough to get things done without being told, other seem to follow them because they are natural leaders. Just looking at them, you know, they’re bound for great success in college and their future career. Do you know a child like that?

Well, I teach at Maximum Impact Karate and that’s the type of student that we create at our school. We teach the success skills through karate that you don’t learn in school. Would you like to hear more about it?"

This pitch needs to be practiced to the point that you say it naturally and automatically. So what's your pitch?

Biggest Marketing Mistakes in a Down Economy

Everybody has heard the news about the economy. It has struck fear in most people and business owners. In talking to most of my business owner friends, they are cutting expenses. Our business has been doing extremely well because we threw more money into our marketing efforts. During a down economy since most business owners are cutting marketing, your ads become more noticeable with less competition and cheaper as advertisers become more desperate for business.

Here's a list of three of the biggest marketing mistakes

1) Poorly Written Ads - Nothing is more expensive than a poorly written ad. A poorly written ad is a total waste of money. I squeeze four things into my ads to make them effective - Strong Headline, Body explaining how we can solve a specific problem, A call to action or offer, and testimonials

2) Lack of Consistency - Mistake number two is a lack of consistency. I've seen many business owners run an ad once and quit thinking that it doesn't work. Most prospects need to see advertisement 5 to 7 times before they take action.

3) Cutting Marketing Budget - In a poor economy, most businesses are tempted to cut their marketing budget. Cutting your marketing budget makes you almost invisible to your prospects, not a good thing in a poor economy. You should increase your marketing during a down economy to ensure that you are touching the people that are likely to buy.

Through successful marketing, you will continue to attract a wave of new customers. Also, making sure that you track the success of each source. We use separate trackable phone numbers for each ad source.

Reducing the Business Clutter

Recently, I noticed that after 5 years at our dojo that we collected some extra clutter. My shelves on the mat had equipment that don’t use anymore. Our closed was stacked full with old inventory like kickboxing glove for a kickboxing class we canceled over a year ago. We pulled all this stuff out and sold it in our dojo at yard sale prices. For me, it was quite liberating.

It seems this clutter sort of creeps up on you – so slowly you don’t notice until one day “Bam”, you open your eyes and can believe all the stuff you collected.

I also noticed that I have alot of business clutter that I've been clearing out. I had many services that we don't use and coaching that was not helping me. I've been canceling any and all unnecessary services. It's unbelievable once you look at it closing enough how much money, I saved by clearing this clutter.

This is everyone's call to action to do some spring cleaning.

$1000 Worth of Business Coaching for Free

Over the last few years, I have paid monthly for over $1000 in business coaching. Just recently, I dropped all of my coaching.

Why?
Well, at the beginning, I thought it was very valuable and made huge gains in my business. As I advanced and constantly improved my business, I found that most of the coaching was becoming re-runs of systems that I already implemented. It was like taking a 101 course in college over and over again.

Then, last year, I accepted a higher level of coaching that was business specific. They promoted the coaching as a masterminding session for like-minded individuals with a strict application process. I thought the idea was great, but the reality was different. I found that these business owners had the same problems as the lower level coaching, but were willing to pay more for the prestige of being a member of the group and them promoting your school as highly successful (even through, most of the schools were struggling). So there I was, listening to the 101 level stuff again but this time, I had a bunch of members asking me questions all the time.

Here's some observations that you can get the $1000 worth of business coaching for free...
1) Lower Level Memberships give the most value - It seems that the lower level memberships provide the most value, but business owners don't act on it. By implementing at least one idea a week, you will rocket your business to the top of the pack. I went from $1000 a month to less than $200 and receive the same value.
2) Participate in forums - There are many business forums out there. Start to participate in them with productive advise. If you find one with good business owners participating, you will receive tons of free advice to draw from.
3) Listen in on free business teleconference calls - Many of these are free because the facilitator is trying to gain business for paid memberships. I found that the information given on these teleconference calls is just as good as the paid memberships.
4) Watch the coaching advertising - Since getting high paying clients is difficult, most coaching programs have excellent marketing. If you are on their list, carefully study their marketing. Watch for the methods of contact and how each piece of marketing that makes you feel ~especially the piece that make you want to join. By replicating their marketing in your business, you will stimulate more business for free and receive valuable coaching on marketing.
5) Read Business Related Books - Since the goal of an book author is to sell books, they produce better content than any other source. My experienced showed that most coaching is attempting to sell you a higher level membership so the message and coaching is interlace with this purpose. Instead of getting your business rockin', they constantly promote the next thing stating that this system will make you rich.

Business Time Saver: Answering Service

Ring, Ring! Does the sound of the phone strike fear about who’s answering the phone. Is training and developing high skilled phone staff taking all your time? Getting the phone answered is one of the most important functions in most businesses. Over the last year, I’ve been outsourcing many functions to save time and keep my staff to a minimum. I found that using an answering service has become my biggest time and money savers without sacrificing quality.

If your business is an appointment driven business like mine, finding a good answering service is one of the most cost effective and time effective services. My answering service provides 24/7 call answering and appointment scheduling for only about $150 per month. Before you wave off an answering service as something that your business can’t use or feel that you can do it better internally, read on.

Advantages of and answering service
Cost effective - For $150 per month, there’s no way you could staff your small business for answering the phones with that small of a budget.
24/7 answering – The great thing about an answering service is they answer your phone around the clock. My answering service has scheduled appointments for me as late as 10:00 at night. One of the most difficult things is getting a client back on the phone after they leave a message. This never becomes an issue because the phone is always answered.
No training required – Since answering services specialize in answering phones, they also provide you with trained phone staff therefore saving you the time of mentoring and training your own staff.
Better results – One of the major surprises of switching to answering service is that I experienced a better phone call to appointment conversion rate. Why? First off, the answering service is totally focused on scheduling appointments and strictly follow a script instead of your own staff providing two much information and kind of winging every phone call. Second, if the answering service does not immediately schedule an appointment, they get all of the prospects information for follow-up. This provides you a second chance for a follow up call.

Focus Internal Staff other more important activities – With the phones outsourced, my internal staff can concentrate on servicing student and working on upgrading memberships without being interrupted.

In my business, I answered most of the calls and inquiries. By going to answering service, I virtually saved eight additional hours of work per day. Almost overnight, I gained 40 additional hours to use on other high value activities. $150 is a small cost pay for so much more free time.

Wealth AhHa!

My wife and I were at her company’s Christmas Dinner for employees. At our table was the CFO of her company. Well, during the conversation, he talked about how poor he was. Ester and I looked at each other in amazement because this CFO made a salary of about $300,000 plus bonuses. How could he be poor?

Then, the wealth AhHa! came to me…

Regardless of yearly income, we all feel the money pinch – rich or poor.

I guess the question remains whether your money pinch is lifestyle or wealth related.

Most have a lifestyle related money pinch meaning that they spend most of their income on that new car, bigger houses, and more stuff. These peoples spending balloon to the size of their income and carry credit cards debts. The lifestyle money pinch comes with great risks. Because, if you lose a job, your lifestyle remains the same – car payments, home mortgage, credit card payments, etc. The more money you make the higher the risk because you are able to build a larger lifestyle.

The wealth building money pinch is a different story. These people feel the money pinch because they are constantly using earned money to build additional wealth by investing in the future. It could be investing in your 401K or purchasing a rental property or investing in your education.

I must admit that I have felt the money pinch for years. I always had to watch my spending. For the first 10 year of my career, I saved and invested between 10 to 25% of my income in a 401K, an IRA, and a regular investment account. Later, I felt the pinch because I was investing in growing my new karate business. Now, 5 years later, I am still feeling the money pinch because I am preparing to purchase some commercial real estate.

Truthfully, my money pinch gives me a great piece of mind. I don’t mind forgoing the big car payments and oversized house to generate more wealth.

So what’s your money pinch is it lifestyle or wealth building?

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Those Annoying Door to Door Sales People

It never fails. Everytime, I am at my business and rolling on the highly important items on my to-do list some sales person comes in to sell me another newspaper ad, coupon book, yellow pages, or mailing. It's not that I don't feel advertising is important, but it's the amount of time they waste and most of them create meager results for the cost.

It's best to just get good at saying "No". If you tell them you'll think about it, you open the door for them calling and following up with you, therefore wasting additional time. Saying "No" will thwart 95% of the salesman and send them out your door.

Okay, now for the other 5%. These are the more savvy salesman that won't leave on the initial "No". Sales training teaches these guys to find out what the objection is and they have a response to each objection. The idea is to elevate each objection so that you don't have a reason to buy their product or service. These salesman are great at wasting tremendous amounts of time.

How do you handle these savvy sales people?

It's as easy as not playing their objection game. When you say "You're not interested?" and they ask for the reason why. You can reserve the right to say "No". I tell them that "Sorry, but I don't need to justify my reason to say NO." This stumps them everytime.

If you do want the product or service, then say yes. If it's an advertisement, measure, measure, measure the results. I have separate phone numbers I use on ads to measure the results.

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We're Back!

Last year, I stopped writing on this blog to concentrate on my businesses blog.

We're Back!!

This year has been the best year for my business despite the economic and financial climate. I have so much to share.

Over the last year, I took on tons of coaching and finally got rid of it all because it didn't help me at all. Most coaching is like get rich schemes where they continue to sell you the next big thing but never actually give you much value.

But on the other hand, many of the ideas that I had, generated great gains. I found that one of my best coaches was writing.

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