The video below deals with the inevitable electronic archive that survives us… This is an interesting perspective that makes you think beyond the here and now without being morbid.
Archive for the 'Exponential Mindset' Category
One of the ways I gauge entrepreneurs or business executives’ effectiveness and efficiency is how they respond to their emails. Without requiring ‘instant responses’, within one week of correspondence I can identify the ‘top 10%’ from the bottom ‘90%’.
This is 2012. We are in the 21st century with email at the nucleus of our communication paradigm. Business people who struggle with technology and especially emails are ‘dinosaurs’.
Now that’s a bold statement to make, but it really is THAT important.
Allow me to contrast the top 10% versus the bottom 90%.
The top 10% respond within a reasonable time frame. It can be within the hour, the day, but rarely ever more than 48 hours (unless they are on leave or otherwise occupied with a project/event). One thing is for sure – you’re never wondering if they got or lost the email.
The bottom 90%…
- Claim to ‘lose’ or not receive emails
- Ask for emails to be re-sent because they accidentally deleted them
- Actually do have problems receiving emails because of their spam folder settings that are too strict
- Are challenged with their spam and junk mail folders – reviewing them only ‘every once in a while’ even though many important emails end up there
- Have hundreds or thousands of emails in their inbox
- Respond to emails erratically sometimes immediately and then are ‘offline’ for days with no communication
- Don’t use meaningful subject lines
- Don’t maintain message threads that are important – creating new emails with each new response
- Use TXT acronyms trying to be “hip or groovy” instead of clear in their explanations – creating the need for additional threads to find out what they meant to say
- Subscribe to every free email list available fearful that they will miss something.
- Don’t read their emails – instead skimming and overlooking the most important and time sensitive information
- Have multiple emails that they don’t monitor appropriately
- Share emails with others so everyone gets the email and multiple people responding with conflicting suggestions
- Don’t have folders for their emails – so can’t quickly locate what they need when they need it. Even though emails are now indexed, not having folders is like not having a filing cabinet for your physical documents.
Poor email management is one of my strongest pet peeves, but the reason I mention it here is because it’s also symptomatic of poor business management.
Without needing to become a Productivity Powerhouse – lack of effective email management skills (and tools) can be an important obstacle to your overall business success.
Anecdotally, over the past 10 to 15 years, I have noticed that the top business people don’t just manage their emails – the MASTER and CONTROL them with an adeptness that is remarkable.
If you’re struggling to grow your business – just look at your inbox and the list above. It’s a quick and easy problem to solve.
If it isn’t – you now have the SOURCE of the real problem!
This is 2011. Forget the Information Age, we’re in the Information Overload Age. I see it every day. People just can’t keep up with it all (even though many waste more than an hour a day on Facebook, but that’s a rant for another day).
As a business person, you need you to read the emails that are important – you are losing a lot more than you know by not reading them.
The problem or challenge is that you have too much junk or spam in your inbox. This is 2011 – DEAL WITH IT.
But let’s face it, it’s not really spam is it?
You’re on everyone’s opt-in list and you don’t want to miss anything that’s FREE…
Well guess what?
It’s not FREE – it’s costing you, dearly.
Each time you or someone who needs to reach you has to re-send an email, it DOUBLES the communication effort. It’s not trivial – with many people sending/receiving more than 100 emails/day, that’s a lot of wasted time and effort ON BOTH SIDES.
In some cases, I stopped dealing with people who can’t respond fast enough. In one supplier’s case it was worth more than $1,000. Gone. Not to mention additional on-going sales or referrals…
You need to find the SOURCE of the problem and get rid of it (excess emails).
For the emails you do need to receive -
Are you skimming them?
Are you distracted when you read them?
In this day and age, I can tell you (anecdotally) that I can gauge someone’s success (or lack thereof) by the efficiency of their email communication.
Simple as that – I know what a ‘reasonable amount of time is to respond’ and when that extends beyond the ‘acceptable’ I know it’s symptomatic.
Symptomatic of a lack of discipline.
A lack of organisation.
A lack of responsiveness.
Lack, lack, lack.
As a business coach, mentor and Exponential Growth Strategist, I figure if you can’t deal with emails you’re not anywhere close to being ready to grow your business.
During my recent Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event tour in Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney, participants heard a preview of my rant on Privacy Pirates which I’ve been proselytising about for quite some time. Karen Bonanno, a 2011 Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Winner, sent me the infographic below that I just had to share with you.
I will expand on this in an upcoming Do It Yourself Google Sales Lead Generation For Small Business series of workshops… But in the meantime have a good read of this infographic. You’ll start to get a sense of where I’m coming from and how I am guiding my clients to avoid being victims of the Privacy Pirates.
The Grand Rapids LipDub Video (below) was filmed May 22nd, with 5,000 people and involved a major shutdown of downtown Grand Rapids, which was filled with marching bands, parades, weddings, motorcades, bridges on fire, and helicopter take offs. It is the largest and longest LipDub video, to date.
This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” They of course disagreed strongly and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy they feel is growing exponentially, in this great city.
Rob Bliss, Director & Executive Producer explains that they chose Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song about death but was in the end, triumphant and filled to the brim with life and hope.”
This $40,000 production was entirely financed by the generosity of local sponsors that are listed below.
This is yet another example of Exponential Mindset Thinking™ in action, leveraging the power and persuasive influence of the Internet. Enjoy this WORLD RECORD SETTING* video!
Earlier this week, I blogged about how Vaseline and radioactivity are related to make a point – well actually, to illustrate how William Tucker has been able to reduce the fear mongering propaganda of the mass media to simple, easy-to-understand metaphors and analogies that any 5th grader can understand.
Mt Tucker recently added another article to his on-going explanation regarding Infant formula made from Tokyo tap water.
His brilliance is simplifying the otherwise complex into something easy for the layperson to grasp.
One of the key strategies that I will be teaching our elite VIP and Platinum Members this weekend is how to do this systematically.
How to leverage tools like the one below that Mr Tucker shared with us in one of his recent articles.
Every business has hidden assets like this – the key is to know how to use them effectively within an automated approach.
We’ll miss you this weekend.
Japanese Earthquake - Radiation Dose Chart
Psst! If you’d like to give your business results a non-radioactive boost, contact us to discuss our business coaching options and we’ll have a chat about how we can GUARANTEE RESULTS in writing…
Did you know you can fart proof your dog? If you’ve ever had a dog with flatulence, you know how valuable this can be.
The Internet Marketing Lesson is that I explained how to leverage this fact to two clients: One leveraged it and the other didn’t.
Which one do you think has doubled sales and tripled profits?
Enough said.
The point is that you have to capture people’s attention – especially on the Internet where people’s attention is measured in seconds.
The proof is in the pudding – I bet you you can’t bear NOT knowing how you can fart proof your dog – EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A DOG!
This is how powerful Killer Kopywriting™ can be. The difference between struggling to get people to your website and having an avalanche of qualified prospects…
Let me state my bias right up front – I am not into texting or tweeting. I think Twitter is mostly a massive waste of time. Yes – I have a Twitter page and joined Twitter 2 years before it became mainstream.
However there are always exceptions to the rule, like this article in The Economist that explains how people Text for jobs – Very creative and entrepreneurial!
As you’ve come to expect from me and my blogs, I come at things from a different perspective and paradigm. My goal for my blogs is to be the catalyst for ideas that can help you grow your business. The Internet is an exponential tool that can help in countless ways. Today’s post is another example – using tools like Linked In Polls to gather valuable information.
It’s pretty self-explanatory and that’s OK.
Exponential Internet Marketing is not rocket science. It’s all about “doing stuff” that works and having the discipline to follow up and follow through.
I just blogged about Internet use on vacation on my Professional Mastery Blog – you should go there now and check it out. It’s something to consider, but it’s not what you think.
Well, this is the last day of the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp… What an exciting 2 days it’s been – hundreds of ideas (most of them free) to get more online traffic that converts to sales. Here’s the last thing I want to say about this last edition of this version of the Bootcamp.
With like-minded people in the room, there is a magical experience that gets created – it’s called The Exponential MasterMind Experience. It’s special because it works like magic. We’re actually ‘doing it’ live at the Marriott Hotel in Melbourne… You’re unfortunately not there – your fallback is to get the audio program and determine if an Exponential Mindset™ is for you.
Click here -> to get the Exponential Mastermind Program.
You’ve been left behind, this will help you get back on track to catch up – IF you want to produce results that baffle your competitors and impress your friends and colleagues.
You have to believe it works, otherwise, you’re right – it won’t work for you.
But when you believe, the results are well… E-X-P-O-N-E-N-T-I-A-L.
Ka-Ching!
This blog is about introducing you to the latest and greatest stuff that’s out there, believe you me, this is “out there”. Watch and enjoy! Of course if you come across anything like this, please forward it on to me by leaving a comment on this blog.
As a business coach to entrepreneurs and business people who want to increase sales and expand their businesses, I advocate the 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine. It’s a concept that is covered on Day 3 of my Bootcamp events when we cover the concepts of Pathways To Profits™ and determining your Next Best Step™. With Internet strategies there are so many things to do, the most important question is “what should I focus on?”
That is the “million dollar question”.
At my upcoming Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp, I will, for the last time, reveal how to do this for non-Platinum Program Members. The process takes a few hours to learn, but once mastered, you will always do the right thing, at the right time for the right reason/outcome.
It’s a simple, easy-to-learn methodology that I’ve developed to re-create success for over 2,000 businesses across 200 industries over the past 20 years. In fact, the strategies are so effective that I now GUARANTEE RESULTS when you attend the Bootcamp as a VIP Ticket holder.
As a business coach I don’t just reveal strategies, techniques and tactics that work, I advise and mentor my clients to learn to do it themselves. That is why I am The Exponential Growth Strategist and not “just a business coach“.
The saying “teach a man how to fish and he’ll feed himself for a lifetime” is true with business coaching, but most coaches don’t have the competency to teach, they consult and create a dependency with their clients to ensure they need them so their personal income is “secured”. I don’t do that. I make sure I teach people how to think exponentially leveraging a MasterMind Group of the most ambitious entrepreneurs around.
Why is this important? Because success on the Internet is about doing what works. Finding that out is a process. If you want to know how my clients do it, contact us and we’ll reveal the secrets to you, but you should know that this upcoming Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp is the last one I’m doing. That means in 2011, you’ll have to be a Platinum Program Member to learn these strategies.
I’m going ‘upmarket’ with my most valuable information and strategies. I will still have introductory seminars and workshops, but the most powerful will be reserved exclusively for those willing to pay for it. Their reward will be that I GUARANTEE RESULTS. I would think you’d agree that’s not just fair, that makes good business sense.
That’s the whole point, it’s win-win.. Ka-Ching!
Google Page 2 ‘Almost’ As Good As Page 1? Google recently reported that 38 to 45% of people searching on Google immediately click to page 2 because too many people are manipulating keywords to be on Page 1. That means you now need to be both on Page 1 and Page 2…
“The Internet is the easiest thing that is hard to do.”
As a business coach, advisor and mentor, I teach my clients little known facts like these to make sure they are always one step ahead of the competition. There’s a joke that explains this metaphorically:
There are two guys in the forest and they come across a bear. One says to the other “Oh SH_ _! We have to out-run the bear!” when the other says “No mate, all I have to do is out-run you!”
That’s the reality of Google rankings. If you want to make sure you’re always one step ahead of your competition, contact us. Most of our programs now come with a RESULTS-BASED GUARANTEE.
That says it all don’t you think?
There is a great article on CNN’s website that summarises Nicholas Carr’s new book called “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains“. It reflects what I see in business people and entrepreneurs every day. People struggling to cope with more and more information, lacking the cognitive and reasoning skills to handle it. In this day and age, deep knowledge is increasingly important when technology and Internet allows us to be intellectually lazy and superficial. This is exacerbated with social networking where people spend countless hours with like-minded people, further narrowing their breadth of exposure to (the lack of) differing viewpoints and perspectives.
This is one of the foundational principles I teach my clients as a business coach, advisor and mentor. I challenge people to think, evaluate and analyse problems and situations differently. My process, methodology and framework will be presented at my upcoming event “Etch-A-Sketch Thinking In The iPad Age“. If you want to learn how to learn, think and reason in this quickly changing world, attend the event. The strategies are so good, I actually back them up with a $5,000 results-based guarantee.
This blog does a great job introducing you to ideas and concepts, but it’s superficial, just an overview. That’s the problem today. People wrongly consider information as intelligence and knowledge. Information is just bits and bytes of data. Intellect and knowledge is the ability to do something with that information.
It’s what engineers do when they problem solve.
It’s what lawyers do when they interpret the law.
It’s what physicians do when they diagnose illness.
It takes time, skill and a PROCESS.
Otherwise you’re just “surfing the web” thinking you can build your own house, defend your own case and cure your disease.
That’s the problem in a nutshell.
The solution is right between your ears. The question is will you do anything about it?
I’ve been using Skype more and more, but as I do, some people just don’t get it. New technology means NEW ways of working. Not OLD wine in new bottles as one of my Ph.D. professors used to keep saying when academic research was just a re-hash of what we already knew…
Skype is powerful technology – but it can also KILL your productivity if you let it. BECAUSE it has IM chat capabilities, some people think they can just send me chat messages and EXPECT A RESPONSE….
Y’see that’s the same as taking all your phone or mobile calls directly – you end up being a receptionist.
Time value… I’ve discussed this so many times before, but it bears repeating…
What do you value your time at?
At the upcoming Exponential Extravaganza event, I’m going to go into this into more detail, but essentially it’s summarised that if you want to make $100,000/year, every hour you need to create $100 of value per hour. If you want to make $250,000/year, you need to create $250 of value per hour…
So how can you do that if you answer IM or TXT messages in real time?
Something to think about… Something someone with an Exponential Mindset™ considers VERY seriously…
INTERNET MARKETERS: If you’re FRUSTRATED spending rather than making money on the Internet, you’re not alone. The fact is only 5% of people on the Internet make money, in fact they make more than the other 95% combined. The top 5% have figured out how to do it with strategies that you can use, right now.
The Internet is the easiest thing that’s hard to do – Unless you know WHAT and HOW to do what works! Come learn the time-tested, proven techniques, tips, tactics, skills and strategies the top 5% use that you can customise and optimise on your website IMMEDIATELY. Be forewarned – these are NOT get rich quick in your underpants tactics – they work for plumbers, retailers and dentists.
You should attend the Exponential Extravaganza also IF…
- If you’re in a job you don’t really like, you’ll be shown easy-to-use strategies to determine whether or not you should quit your job and/or change your career.
- If you kind of like your job, but think you should get paid more, I will reveal 3 strategies you can use to get that raise or promotion you want.
- If you’re stressed out at work, I’ll show you 2 reasons why that happens with antidotes that you can take to relieve stress the next time it pops up!
- If you’re struggling financially, at the Exponential Extravaganza, I am going to reveal, for the first time in a FREE event (I share this with my top Platinum Members) how to start a business with no money down AND an $100,000 investment portfolio with less than $5,000.
The strategies to be revealed are NOT get rich quick schemes (MLM). They are based on what the super rich are doing right now to build and protect their wealth.
With all that said and done – go ahead and book into the Exponential Extravaganza. Bring your wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend with you. If you have ADULT children, bring them along as well as long as they’re adults – sorry, this event is not appropriate for children. If you have friendly colleagues you get along with, suggest they attend as well.
I hope you’ll attend this one-off event. It would be a real shame for you to miss out, after all it’s the ONLY time I am doing this for FREE.
Small Sounds, Big Deals: How Do Number Sounds Influence Consumers? This article was so interesting I just had to share it with you. Instead of interpreting it for you, go to the original article by clicking the hyperlink – it’s brief and exceptionally well written! You’re welcome. It’s who I am and what I do… Find stuff that you otherwise wouldn’t find yourself!
This blog’s main focus is Internet Mastery - anything that has to do with the Internet for business purposes. Today’s YouTube video is another example of the strides we’re making with Virtuality – doing things that were once impossible. Watch the video and I’ll get to why this is important for you and your business.
The reason this is important to you and your business is… Read More »»
We all know that saying thank you improves customer service… However doing it online sometimes is a little more difficult to do. Recently, Apple ‘thanked me for filling a customer service survey’…
I thought it was such a great way of saying thank you that I wanted to share it with you – to say thank you for reading this blog!
Thank You
This is one of my favourite types of strategies – the LITTLE THINGS that make a BIG DIFFERENCE. I am going to incorporate this with all my product thank you pages – if that increases customer service and repeat business by just 1 percent, it means thousands of dollars, but MORE IMPORTANTLY it means happier clients.
That is one of the fundamental principles of Exponential Marketing - ADDING VALUE every step of the way – EVEN after the transaction is complete.
After all a satisfied client can give you a referral and come back to buy something else…
