Getting More Work DONE In Your Online Business

By Willie Crawford

 

If you're anything like me, there never seems to be enough time

to get all of the things done that you'd like to do.  If your

income goals are as high as mine (seven-figures,) then you also

realize that you'll have a very hard time reaching them if you're

trading time for money. I realized this second point when I first

noticed all of the doctors and lawyers leaving those practices to

start their own businesses. When I asked them why, they explained

that they only got paid when they worked, and that the fact that

they could only work so many hours per day was what limited their

incomes the most.

 

Assuming you're not simply trading your time for money... working

for a salary or at an hourly wage, how do you simply get more

done?

 

First of all, you need to make sure that you're only trying to

do the things that you should be doing.  For most entrepreneurs

that means doing things to grow and market your business. Most

other work should be farmed out... subcontracted or outsourced

to technicians.  If you can easily hire someone to do it cheaper

than you can do it, then YOU shouldn't be doing it.

 

Trying to do everything yourself is one of the biggest reasons

I see most netrepreneurs failing.  You simply can't be an expert

at everything, or do everything yourself.  You need to identify

those things that will offer you the highest return on your most

limited asset (your time), and then you need to focus on doing

just those things.

 

Yes, you may need to understand how to do some basic things

yourself at first. For example, when putting up your first

website, it may make sense to learn some basic html or at-least

how to use a WYSIWYG (what You See Is What You Get) HTML

editor.  If you can afford to hire a webmaster and programmers to

do  everything for you though, even learning those things may not

be the best and highest use of your time.

 

My personal experience, like that of many of my contemporaries,

is that I learned to use DreamWeaver to do my own webpages. I

simply didn't want to be trapped waiting for my webmaster to

make minor changes (that I knew would dramatically improve my

bottom line) to a webpage .  Good webmasters and programmers are

often in high demand and very busy.

 

After I learned to do the basics, I also often fell into the

trap that I want YOU to avoid. I want you to do two things.

First, learn to say "NO" and secondly, learn to prioritize.

 

Learning to say "no" can be hard.  It's human nature to want to

do favors for others. We want to be liked. We believe that if

we say "no" to requests for assistance, we will be liked less.

Until you learn to say "no" when you have a full plate, others

will control your time and decide what you do... when.  You

can't afford to put that much control over your time, your

business, and your LIFE into the hands of others. So, it's

critical to master the skill of saying "no" sometimes.  You can

do it politely :-)

 

Learning to prioritize is the second essential that you must

master.  Otherwise, you'll simply find yourself doing the easy,

enjoyable things that produce little long-term benefit, while

you ignore the very things that you should be doing.

 

There are a lot of systems for prioritizing, and you have to

choose the one that works best for you. For me, it involves

making a list of the things that I must get done and then doing

the most important ones first. This takes firmness and being

honest with yourself.  You have to do the most important things

first because, then, if something doesn't get done, it will be

the less important things that you simply can't fit in.

 

In prioritizing, you do need to seek balance though.  Things

you probably don't want to compromise are your health and

your relationships with your family. Make those a higher

priority than business.

 

A common trap too many netrepreneurs fall into... one that

I've fallen into, is offering to do too many things for others.

In a phone conversation, or perhaps a discussion board thread,

someone needs help doing something that is very simple to you.

You try to explain to them how to do it, and they just don't

seem to "get it."  So you offer to do it for them. Before you

know it, you find yourself doing the very things that you

normally get someone else to do for you so that you can focus

on better uses of your time.

 

Here's how I got out of the trap I just described... I often

had clients who needed to get minor things done before we

could get other goals accomplished. They needed to know how

to do minor things like FTP’ing a file, making minor edits

to webpages, or perhaps changing out a graphic. In the

interest of expediency, I often offered to do these minor

chores... until I saw how often they mushroomed into major

projects. My solution.... I found, or created, video tutorials

explaining how to do these simple task. I reasoned that it

made more sense to just do the task once, and record it so

that I would have it handy if needed again.

 

If you visit my site at: http://WillieCrawford.com/how.html

you'll find links to a few of these videos I did in Camtasia.

These are flash videos on how to:

1) Copy and paste

2) FTP a file

3) Make minor webpage edits

etc.

 

I actually have dozens of these but just share these few with

you for illustrative purposes.  Setting up something like this

may be a great time-saver.

 

Very similar to the concept above, if you find yourself

getting asked the same questions over and over again, perhaps

you should set up a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section

on your website. This will stop hundreds of emails or phone

calls. Just make the link to it prominent on your website.

 

If you find yourself answering the same email questions, or

requests, over and over again, set up email templates in your

email program so that you have those answers handy. Then, often

all you will need to do is pull up the template and change the

name to respond quickly via email.  You could also use programs

that scan an email looking for keywords and then automatically

send a response based upon the context of the email. That's a

little advanced for this article, so I won't explain it here.

 

Similar to the Camtasia videos, if you find you’re explaining

the same thing over and over again, you could also post an MP3

tele-class recording online for your clients. You could also

just set up a phone line with the recorded messages,

instructions, or other information, and provide your clients

with the phone number for listening  to the recording.  Many

sales organizations use this idea for weekly training meetings,

etc.

 

There are many other common sense things you can do to get more

done. A couple of quick ones that I use are:

 

1)  Just working smarter... i.e., I don't stand in line at the

post office. My staff and I have arranged to just walk up to the

counter and leave  the containers full of mail on the counter.

The clerk simply gives us more mail "buckets," and we buy postage

in bulk or over the Internet.  If we do need to actually talk to

a clerk, we visit the post office during the least busy times of

the day...  NOT during lunchtime when everyone visits the post

office.

 

2)  Avoid time wasters such as spending too much time at online

discussion forums. These can be great places to network,

brainstorm, or do research, but make sure you're not just 

avoiding getting started on an urgent project.

 

3) Identify when you are most productive and use that time to do

your most challenging work.  Set aside times when you are least

productive (based upon your natural body cycles) to answer email

or return phone calls.

 

4) Stop procrastinating! Often we procrastinate because a task

seems so large. Simply break it down into bit-sized steps and

it will seem less ominous.  Then choose a step and do it. Mark

that step off your schedule to reinforce the fact that you are

making progress :-)

 

5)  Automate where possible using things like autoresponders

and interactive web forms to dispense commonly requested

documents.  You can even use software to automatically update

or change the content on your webpages. One such piece of

software that I use and love is called "Traffic On Steroids." 

You can check it out at:

http://WillieCrawford.com/traffic-on-steroids.html

 

These are just a few of the ways that you can get more focused

and get more done.  It's really just a matter of prioritizing

and then doing it.  Adopt just a few of these ideas and you'll

be surprised at how much more you do actually get DONE!  Without

implementing a few of these suggestions you can't be successful

simply because you'll never finish all of the tasks that you

need to do.

 

 

Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author,

seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host,

retired military officer, karate black belt, master network

marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He shows

people how to actually generate substantial income on-line

using very simple, easily modeled systems. An example of

such a system that you can study and duplicate is at:

http://HowToBeReallyHealthy.com