How To Create A Morning Routine To Double Your Productivity

I would like to talk to you about the one tweak that you can make to your morning routine to drastically increase your productivity.

 

Now, for many years, I considered myself to be a night owl, someone who will stay up really late and gets most of their work done late at night. Whereas the morning lark is someone that wakes up early and likes to get their work done early in the morning. For me, I would get up and I would drink my two or three (or four) cups of coffee. And then, of course, the espresso after that. And maybe a bottle of Coke. I basically lived on caffeine all day long to be able to maintain my energy levels so that I could stay up until 10 p.m., 11 p.m., midnight, or even 1a.m. to get all of the work done. And that worked for me for a very long time.

 

It worked all the way up until a few years ago when I started to have some health challenges. I actually injured myself and the result was a herniated disc in my neck. I saw my chiropractor. I went to physical therapy because I definitely didn’t want to have surgery on my neck. The chiropractor said that I needed to do some exercises every single day and, If I didn’t do these, I would be in pain pretty much all day, every day. These exercises would take at least an extra half hour each morning — and I absolutely had to do them. Otherwise, I really was in pain the entire day.

 

I quickly realized that I was going to have to start getting up earlier in the morning so that I would be able to have time to get those exercises done. And, as my morning routine changed and I needed to get more and more done, I noticed that, actually, my morning routine started in the evening. I needed to go to bed earlier because I couldn’t get up early in the morning if I didn’t.

 

So, right there’s your first lesson: Your morning routine actually starts the night before.

 

Before my injury and my need to exercise and stretch in the morning, I would hit a wall at 4 p.m. And, when it hit, I would need another cup of coffee or another shot of espresso. When this would happen, my mind started to shut down and, all of a sudden, I wasn’t able to produce as much. After 4 p.m., I had to reserve the afternoon hours for activities in my business that did not require peak mental capacity because, by that time, I was pretty sluggish and definitely not as effective as I normally was.

 

 

But, when I started to add my exercise routine to my mornings, I noticed that 4 p.m. would roll around and I actually didn’t need that extra cup of coffee, or that espresso. I was able to actually maintain a higher energy level throughout the day, all the way until 5 p.m., 6 p.m., or 7 p.m., when I would turn off my computer anyways so I could spend time with my family. Now, remember, this exercise wasn’t the type you would necessarily do at a gym. I wasn’t working up a sweat. But, just this low impact exercise in the morning almost immediately helped me to be more productive throughout the day. It’s work to do the exercises in the morning, but that one small tweak has made me so much more productive.

 

Another benefit of changing my morning routine is that my family started to notice a difference — and they actually wanted in, too. My daughter saw me getting up at 5 a.m. to exercise and asked me if she could exercise with me. Pretty soon it was me and seven kids all exercising at 5am in the morning – every single day!

 

And you know what? After the initial pain of having to wake up early and adjusting to a new rhythm, I realized that this really is working out — and for everyone. I am much more productive. And I know that you can be too if you give it a try.

 

I’ve enjoyed the switch so much that I’m now, in fact, getting myself up at 4 a.m. There are moments, of course, the night before where I’m thinking to myself, “Okay. I’m not going to like tomorrow.” But, your body gets used to the new routine and, soon, the alarm going off at 5 a.m. or 4 a.m. no longer seems like a big deal. In fact, sometimes I just wake up on my own, right at 4 a.m. without an alarm clock because now my body is in the habit of getting up at that time.

 

Even night owls, it turns out, can change. You can retrain yourself and, when you do, that extra time you have in the morning helps you feel refreshed and relaxed. It helps you to get and stay focused because you have time to plan your day before everything gets busy.

 

But, before you start setting your alarm for 4 a.m. every day, I do want to say one thing. ..

 

Yes, I have seven kids. Right now, the youngest is ten years old and the oldest one is about to be twenty. I don’t have babies at home or even super young kids. If you do, however, this changes everything. Trying to establish a super consistent morning routine when your kids are below the ages of five, at least, will put too much pressure on yourself and your children. When you have little kids in the house, just go with the flow. You know they’ll be keeping you up at night, or waking you up in the morning, or both. You know you’re going to be exhausted. At these times in your life, you really do just have to fill your work into the times you have available. Enjoy those babies! Relax! And get up when you feel like it.

 

Your kids will get older and, when they do, you can come back to this chapter and rethink your morning routine. And, if you’re ready to be more productive and your morning routine has the flexibility to be changed, then I seriously suggest adding a little exercise and movement to your mornings. It’s a game changer!

Prioritization – Should You Be Working On This Task In The First Place?

A few years ago, I was working with one of my client’s technology teams. I was in charge of managing the technology team for my client and had a team of five or six people that were web developers and graphic designers and automation experts and email builders.

 

 

 

I was responsible for making sure that their team got projects done on time and on budget. And one day we went in for our daily meeting, which is our daily stand up meeting of about 15 minutes, which I held every day with the team. In our daily stand up meeting I would always ask them the three basic questions:

 

1. What did you get done yesterday?

2. What do you plan on doing today?

3. Do you have anything that’s blocking you from moving forward?

 

Well, as I asked this question to the very first person on the call I said, “So, what did you get done yesterday?” And they said, “Well, I didn’t get the projects that you assigned us completed because last night the CEO contacted me and I jumped on a Skype phone call with him. He went on to explain to me that there is this customer that has come into our email system and they had this experience, and he wanted me to build a fix for that.”

 

“So, I stopped working on all of the other projects that you’ve assigned me and I have actually started to build out a solution for this. And not only did I do that, I pulled in the other team members to help as well, so nobody in the last 24 hours has gotten anything done because we’ve all been working on this new project the CEO has told us to do.”

 

I said to myself, “Okay, great. This is going to be a great learning opportunity for everybody on this call. And later on, I’m going to have to go talk to the CEO about interrupting the process and the systems that we have set up.”

 

The big lesson I really wanted to teach this team is that, if you give a problem to a smart person, they will immediately set about trying to figure out how to solve that problem, never stopping to consider if this problem should be solved in the first place. CEOs and business owners in particular see a problem, something that’s broken, and their immediate response is to try to fix it — and as quickly as possible. They want to have this amazing experience for their customers, but they don’t always realize that this one “simple fix” will have ripple effects throughout their entire business. If a CEO knew that all of his revenue generating projects were going to be delayed by a week, and that this was going to cost thousands of dollars, then he might have rethought the urgency of needing to fix a small problem.

 

This is why it’s so critical for the right people to be working on the right tasks — and for these lanes to not get crossed in business.

 

Before jumping in and starting a new project, ask yourself these questions:

 

● What problem am I trying to solve? In other words, is there really a problem to start with? Or is this just a “want” or an “idea”.

 

● How much impact does this have on revenue? If we do nothing, how much revenue are we losing? If we implement a solution, how much more revenue will we gain?

 

● How much impact does it have on the

customer? Is this having a big impact on the customer? Or is it a minor irritation? How many customers does it impact? All of them? Only a few? How often does it impact customers? Every day? Every week? Every month?

 

● How much impact does it have on my staff? How many customer service hours are being used to solve this problem? How many hours per month?

 

● What is the cost to implement a solution? What is the cost to the business if I do nothing? How many man hours is it going

to take to create a solution? Will I get an ROI from this effort? Does it make sense to invest the money to create the solution or are we better off just letting things be as they are?

 

 

As I asked these questions to the team, we discovered that in this case, the problem was something that customer service could easily handle in less than an hour a month, but the solution would require the entire team to stop working on other important projects and spend the next 3 months working on a solution full time. And to top it off, it had no positive impact on revenue.

 

So before jumping in, always ask yourself, “Should this problem be solved in the first place?” And, if the answer is no, then definitely don’t waste your time, or your team’s time, trying to solve it.

How I Went From $47,000 Per Month To $6,000 Per Month … Overnight!

Failure is part of success today.

 

I’d like to do something different today.

 

I’d like to share with you, not about my biggest successes in business, but about my biggest failure. That’s right. I’d like to share with you about that time in my business where I went from $47,000 per month to $6,000 per month, practically overnight.

 

I know, that’s pretty amazing, right? Here’s the story.

 

 

Back in 2012, I was running my search engine optimization company that helped my clients get top rankings in the search engines for their websites. It was actually very easy because I had built up a network of over 80 different websites, and I had a large team of content producers and link builders who worked overseas. We would mass produce content around specific keywords, publish this content on my privately owned network of websites, and, anyone that came on as a client, we were able to get them rankings on demand.

 

But in June of 2012, Google got a little smarter. Google figured out how easy it was to get SEO rankings, and they changed the algorithm. The “algorithm”, for those of you who don’t know, is what Google uses to decide if a site should rank high in the search engines or not. Up until this point, my company had survived many different algorithm changes. But this time, when they changed it in June of 2012, it was a larger change. And then it changed again and again, almost immediately one change after another. When this happened, we saw all of our clients’ rankings, rankings that were previously #1 for all of their keywords, rankings that were getting them hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month, completely disappeared.

 

Now I’d like to say here that all of my clients knew exactly what I was doing to get their sites ranked high in the search engines. And they knew exactly the risks of Google changing their algorithm. Most of my clients were also very good friends of mine, people that I had known for years and been working with for years. So, when this started to happen, when all of a sudden Google changed the algorithm and rankings started dropping, my phone would ring. And, inevitably, it would be one of my dear clients informing me that they had to fire me because they had just basically lost their entire business. No rankings, no sales. They simply couldn’t afford to pay me for our services because their business was no longer making any money.

 

They would tell me that, as soon as we could figure out the new algorithm so that we could get rankings again, maybe in the next three to six months, they’d be back. They had loved working with me. But, right now, they had to leave — and take their money with them.

 

This continued to happen again and again, clients leaving left and right. And then, while in the middle of a church event conference in California, I suddenly realized that our income had now dropped from $47,000 a month to $6,000 a month. It had all happened within a span of just two weeks. And it was devastating.

 

I had a large team at the time, which meant I had to start letting people go. We had a lot of recurring services to support our network of domains. We had a lot of different software tools that we were using. A lot of them had 12 month contracts, and so just because we lost the revenue doesn’t mean we lost our expenses. So, we still had the same amount of out of pocket expenses, but we no longer had the revenue to be able to pay for all of those different tools, network of domains, and staff that we had.

 

And it was a very, very, very low point because at that time I was very plugged into the search engine optimization industry, and pretty much all of the people that knew how to get top rankings were my good friends. They were in my circle. And when that algorithm change happened in Google, nobody knew what to do, unlike all of the previous changes we managed to survive. Normally we were able to spend a week or two figuring it out. But, in June 2012, it didn’t just take a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months, to figure out how to get our clients ranking in the search engines again.

That experience was devastating because all of a sudden I went from being able to provide value and be helpful to my clients, to feeling like I was the cause of them losing their businesses. And even though I was able to help them make hundreds of thousands of dollars for years, I couldn’t help but feel like a failure in that moment.

 

How could I ever recover from this?

 

I was used to charging large amounts of money on a monthly basis. Now what will I do? How can I even charge $20 an hour? For what? What can I offer now?

 

It was because of this complete devastation, however, that I managed to make a big pivot in my business. I knew that I no longer wanted to offer search engine optimization services — and I never have again. I never again wanted the service I was providing to be the reason a client loses their business. So, I never again took back that roll of offering search engine optimization services. We ended up pivoting so that we started to offer funnel building services and marketing consulting. This eventually led to becoming a certified partner with Infusionsoft and us building out marking automation funnels.

 

But, of course, there was a transition time when that was happening. And I tell you this today, because since then, my business has recovered. Since then, I’ve been able to launch multiple six figure

 

businesses. Since then, I’ve had clients that have paid me over six figures to help them with their marketing. One client alone, paid over $250,000 a year for almost three years for me to consult with them on their business. But, at the time when I was going from $47,000 a month to $6,000 a month, I felt like a complete failure and I wondered how I was ever going to recover from this.

 

 

And so my message for you is that you can recover. In fact, when something like this happens to your business, you have to recover. It may take a while, but failure is part of success. If you’re not trying in your business, if you’re not putting yourself out there, if you’re not taking risks, then you’re not going to fail. And failure is absolutely part of success — it needs to happen in order for you to move forward.

 

Today, I am very protective of my business. My clients think of me as the one that keeps their company safe. And that’s the job I want. I want to protect my customers’ businesses, and that is a result of the experience that I had back in 2012. Without that experience, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.

 

My life right now has changed significantly because of the experience that I had when my business went from $47,000 a month all the way down to $6,000 a month. And I’m so grateful for it. If you’re in a situation where you are failing right now, remember that you don’t have to stay there. You can always pivot.

Ask yourself: How can I turn this around? How can I learn more or different things? How can I invest in myself so that I can provide even greater value?

 

And above all remember, failure is a part of success!

Simple Is Scalable

I’d like to talk to you about the idea of keeping things simple so that you can scale

.

Are you currently working with clients? There’s a good chance a lot of you are. Personally, I find that a lot of times my clients come to me with ideas about a funnel that they want to build so they start a conversation. They’ll start talking about a webinar they just saw or a course they just bought or a workshop they just took and, from there, they’ll dive into some extremely complicated marketing strategy. When this happens, most of my clients are actually in the process of scaling. They have a successful course or program and, now that they do, they’re thinking about how they can take their business to the next level. They want to go from $500,000 a year in revenue to seven figures. And, in the process, they start making things complex.

 

 

 

They hear all of these people talking about the need to do split tests and to have a funnel that will automatically open and close; how you need to be able to segment your marketing so that you can send different people different emails based upon their interests. All of these things are, of course, complicated. And, for the most part, I’ve realized that these advanced strategies aren’t necessary. Even my clients that are doing eight figures a year can keep their launches simple and super successful. In fact, one of the reasons they are successful is because the campaigns they use are easy to implement and duplicate. With just an email sequence, designs for the landing pages, and copy for the thank you pages, we’re up and running. That’s it. It’s very straightforward.

 

When we use these simple strategies, we actually become more effective and more profitable because we can launch something in less time and with less energy. It’s false to believe that the more complicated something is the more success it will have. My eight figure clients who continue to use simple strategies for their launches know this.

 

The problem, of course, is that people assume that making money with a successful launch, for example, can’t be this easy. It can’t be this simple! Believing that you can just build a funnel and then send out emails in order to sell a product goes against what so many entrepreneurs believe — that it needs to be super complicated, and way more difficult, than this.

 

But here’s what’s going to help you: If you want to scale and grow your business, then you have to simplify everything.

 

Why? Because simple is scalable.

 

Simple means that, when you have an idea, you can get it to launch in two weeks. And, when that’s possible, then you can get from A to Z faster, and more times, than you ever thought possible — and that’s when you can build a seven or even an eight-figure business.

How I Saved My Client 12+ Hours Per Week With A Quick 30-Minute Fix

I would like to share with you how I was able to save one of my clients 12+ hours every single week just by automating one small area of her business.

 

I just started working with a new client, someone who was just on the brink of breaking seven figures. My work with her is geared around trying to get through that seven figure barrier together. So, during my second call with her, she started sharing that one of her biggest frustrations in her business was spending over 12 hours a week doing this one specific thing over and over again. She couldn’t figure out how to automate this one thing. Now, this client already knew how to leverage Infusionsoft; she had built most of her campaigns inside of it. Because of this system and her understanding of marketing, she was able to grow her company from six to almost seven figures in less than three years.

 

But, this one thing kept getting in her way.

 

What was happening is that her team of coaches needed to have access to new customers’ information. Every time a new customer came in and signed up for a coaching program, this new customer would need to get assigned to a coach and, then, their information needed to be shared. And, because she couldn’t figure out how to automate this, she needed to manually do this herself every single time somebody signed up.

 

And, as soon as she said it, I knew we could automate this with Infusionsoft. I told her not to worry and that I’d have a fix for her ASAP. Of course, she didn’t believe me. She really didn’t think it was possible.

 

 

So, that weekend I got together with my tech team and we made the fix in literally thirty minutes. This one small tweak made everything possible. As her fractional CEO, I was able to see the problem and, instead of viewing it from her “in the work” perspective, use my different angle to quickly find a solution — something that she was never able to see herself because she was convinced it wasn’t possible.

 

When you allow someone else to help you in your business, someone who isn’t as focused as you on every detail, then things get done and problems get solved.

Live By Your Calendar

I want to share with you one of the ways that I’m able to get so much done. A lot of people ask me, “How in the world do you do it all? You are a business owner. You are a mom of seven kids that are all still living at home. You are a pastor’s wife. You are a principal of a small Christian school. And, you go on speaking events. You travel with your husband and speak at ladies’ conferences. How in the world do you do it all?”

 

I’d like to share with you my number one tip for how I’m able to get so much done in a day — and it’s actually very simple: I live by my calendar.

 

I know you were hoping for something bigger and different. Maybe a big, red “easy” button that you could just push. But, I live by my calendar, literally live by my calendar.

I recently went back in my Google calendar and was reviewing how far back I started and I’ve been doing this since at least 2010. I found that, since 2010, I have consistently scheduled my time on my calendar in great detail, which is pretty cool, because now I can go back all the way to 2010 and know what I was doing on January 17 at 3 p.m., because it’s all right there on the Google calendar.

 

 

 

Here are a few tips on what “living by my calendar” actually looks like: 

 

Number One: The first thing I do with my Google calendar is block off all my church and family events. This includes any time driving to and from a location and time to get ready. For example, every Wednesday night we have church at 7 p.m. My calendar is blocked off from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. to drive to the church. This also makes sure that I don’t have any meetings either, because it’s very difficult to have a meeting at 5 p.m. and then leave exactly at 6 p.m. Church is blocked off from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Then, I also include time for the drive home from church.

 

In the mornings, I have blocked off every day Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. for the drive to school. And since for the last few years I’ve been the principal of our Christian school at our church, I have also blocked off time from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. to have a meeting with all the teachers. Then I teach English as a second language so I have blocked off from 8:15 a.m. till 9 a.m. every day. So, as you can see, all of these times are automatically locked up.

 

We drive home from school at 3:30 p.m. That means I have automatically blocked off from 3:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. And then we have lunch really late here in Mexico. So I’ve blocked off from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. for us to eat together and spend time together as a family.

 

While blocking off all of this time every single week might seem excessive, the problem is that if you don’t block these hours off, you might be tempted to think, “Oh, I can fit in this meeting. I can do this at exactly at 4 p.m.” But, then, you’re not going to be eating with your family.

And I actually have two calendars. One where all of my personal and church events are blocked out like I’ve mentioned above, and then one where I schedule all of the time that I’ve scheduled to work.

 

I like to schedule every single thing that I’m going to do. If I’m going to check my emails, if I’m going to shoot a video, if I’m going to write a blog post, if I’m going to map out a marketing strategy — every single thing is mapped out as to when I plan to work on those projects on the Google calendar.

 

One big problem I discovered when I started living by my calendar is that I wasn’t leaving any spots open for appointments. So, I created another calendar just for appointments. These two calendars are synced so that my activities can be overwritten by the appointment calendar.

 

So, number one, make sure you block off all of your time for your family events. So, for example, if you go to church for church events, consider the time it takes to drive to and from places. Get all that blocked off and then fit everything else in from there.

 

Number Two: Here you’re going to block off all new projects that come up during the week, scheduling exactly when you’re going to work on them.

 

Remember, several years ago I was extremely busy. I had a lot of phone calls. I was getting 20 or 30 leads every single week, and each of those resulted in a 30 to 45 minute consulting call. Plus, I had calls with clients. So, yes, I was very, very busy. If someone asked me to do something, I would always look on my calendar first. Sometimes I would have to say, “Well, I could do it in three months,” because there were literally no free spots on my calendar, and what they were asking me to do was a favor.

 

For me, it’s so much easier to understand what my days actually look like when I see everything visually scheduled on the calendar. If I don’t work on those things, they get moved to the next day. That is not good, however, because you don’t want to form a bad habit of moving things over and over and over and over. They never actually get done. You need to do what’s on the calendar. This is very important.

 

Number Three: It doesn’t make any sense for you to be scheduling everything in a calendar if you’re not going to be living by your calendar. Your calendar is basically a secretary that is right behind you saying, “Hey, this is what you have to do today. This is what you have to work on. This is your reminder.” Your calendar is what you need to be accountable to because, if you don’t live by your calendar, then you’re just creating it. And, sorry, but just creating the calendar doesn’t work. Actually doing the work is the only way to get it done.

 

 

So, block off your family time schedule and when you’re going to work on things. Then, follow your calendar. That is absolute. There is no magic bullet. There’s no secret. There’s no “easy” button to push. It is literally that simple.

What about when you don’t know how long a task is going to take? Usually, everything takes longer than expected. So, if I account for that, I will block off more time. If I think it’s going to take 30 minutes, I’m going to block off 60 to 90 minutes. As a result, I might have some padding, which gives me the freedom to move on to the next task or move other things around. And, of course, sometimes things take longer and you absolutely can’t push other things around on your schedule. This gets tricky because, if your days are scheduled like mine, you really can’t move unfinished things from one day to the next — there’s just no wiggle room. So, for example, I have to get this done in 30 minutes.

 

There is a principle that says the time it takes to get something done always expands to the amount of time you have. So, if you only have 60 minutes to study for a test, then you do what you can with that

60 minutes. But, if you have all day, then you’ll usually find a way to spend all day working on studying. Why? Because your work will always expand to whatever amount of time that you give yourself to do it.

 

Learn to schedule your time and say, “I only have an hour to work on this, so I need to get us as much as I can done in this block of time.” This forces you to become more productive. If you say, “Okay, I have all day to work on this,” you’ll never get it done. If you say, “I have 30 minutes to work on this, because after that, I have this. And after that, I have this,” then you’re mentally telling yourself that you don’t have a lot of time. And when you do, the pressure’s on to actually get it done in the time you have.

 

What happens when someone asks you, “Can you do this for me?” There’s a good chance that, because you’re a kind person who likes to help, you don’t want to say no. So, when someone says, “Take this and do this for me,” you’re like, “Yes, of course.” And you think, “I’ll get my stuff done later.” But, if you look at your calendar, you can see, “Well, if I don’t get these 18 things done, then I’m going to have to do them the next day. And there’s no free time the next day, because that day’s already scheduled. And this is Friday, and I have this other activity.”

 

So, when you’re saying, “Yes, I am going to do this for someone,” then you have to figure out what you’re going to say “no” to. You’re going to say no to the work that you already have scheduled for the day. You’re going to say no to something, and, unfortunately, usually it’s the family that you end up saying no to.

 

This is why it’s so important to follow these steps:

1. Block off your family time first.

2. Schedule when you’re going to be working on things.

3. Once something is on your calendar, live by your calendar.

You Can Make More Money, But Not More Time

How many of you have ever started to create an online training course or an educational program and said, “I’m going to build this thing. It’s going to have 18 modules. It’s going to last three weeks long. It’s going to have 100 videos and have 19 different hand outs…”? (I’m, of course, exaggerating a little bit. Most courses are about six modules long and have about five or six videos each and each module has a few handouts.)

 

Usually I tell myself, first I am going to build the course, then I’m going to put together all of the marketing material, and then I am going to sell it. What happens, however, is that I end up building all or most of the course, but never get around to creating the marketing or sales material! The reason is because the demon of doubt always seems to show up when I am 80% done building the course. I start to think, “Who is going to buy this? This is not good enough. There are a lot of other courses out there better than mine.“ And then I stop with the project altogether.

 

 

Anybody else out there like that? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think I have sitting in my desktop at least three courses that I have started to build, but that I never finished building, and, therefore, I never sold.

I built one course a couple of years ago and it was beautiful — a 27-page, graphically designed PDF mapping out all of the nine different modules that were going to be included. I had every single one of the video titles prepared, even the website. And that website had a waitlist! I had created the first four modules of the nine modules for this program, but at some point, I got really busy with my business. I kept thinking I would build and launch this new membership site soon, but then I would get a good client and the launch would get delayed yet again.

 

This is always what happens, especially if you’re a service provider and you’re trying to transition into coaching. So, like so many of you, my course continued to be put on hold because it was potential future revenue, and the clients I was getting were always immediate revenue, and a lot of immediate revenue at that.

 

I had another course in the works once, a great, super in depth technical course all about the ins and outs of Infusionsoft. I had it up to 300 slides with six different modules. I even had a group of beta testers that went through the course live. This course, unlike my other ones, actually made it to the selling phase. Unfortunately, I realized that people don’t like to buy vegetables; they like desserts. People like the stuff that tastes good, and this course was the broccoli on the side of your child’s plate. Yes, people need it, especially if they use Infusionsoft, but nobody actually wants to buy it.

 

So, now I have two courses sitting on my desk gathering virtual dust on my computer, one that never got finished because I got sidelined with other projects and another one that is just something that nobody really wants. (It’s a great bonus, however, and it’s something I’m going to add to my coaching program.)

 

What’s the point of both of these examples? Sell first, then build (again).

 

This isn’t always easy to practice, even if you can understand the theory behind it. If you’re a planner like me, selling first and then building goes against everything I want to do. But, no matter how difficult it is, sell first, then build it. If you have an idea for a course you want to sell, build out the first and second modules, and then stop. Build your sales page and then throw some Facebook ads at it and try to actually make some sales. If and when those sales come in, you can deliver your course live. You already have the first two modules done, which means you can deliver the next modules in the following weeks, giving yourself time to create them and your first customers time to go through the first modules.

 

The beauty of this is that you’re going to get immediate revenue for work you haven’t even done yet. This will let you know concretely if this course is something you should invest your time and energy into or not. Not to mention, the clients in the course can give you feedback so that you can make the remaining modules meet their needs and expectations.

 

When you follow this method of launching a course, you make money and save time. And, of course, if you don’t make money from your course, then you haven’t spent near as much time — so it’s a win-win.

Choose A Mentor That Has The Life You Want, Not Just The Business You Want

One of the best tips that I got about how to choose a mentor was to choose someone that has the life that you want and not just the business that you want.

 

A little while back my husband and I were attending a live event for entrepreneurs. At this event, there was a very well known speaker, someone who is admired by many and has written several, best-selling books. In fact, if I said his name, you would probably know him. This person has a coaching program where he teaches other entrepreneurs how to grow and scale their businesses

— and I was very excited to hear him speak. Although I’d never met him in person, I had read all of his books.

 

 

The morning of his talk, I got up really early and made sure that I sat near the front so that I would be able to hear him. But, as he began to speak, I got really discouraged. Almost immediately after he started speaking, every other word out of his mouth was a curse word. If you know me, I am very conservative. I prefer professionalism. I like things to be done in the right way and, in my opinion, littering a professional talk with curse words is far from appropriate.

 

So I’m here sitting in the third row thinking, “Oh my goodness. What am I going to do?” As soon as there was a break in the speaking, I made for the door. I didn’t want to stay there and be subjugated to cursing for another hour.

 

After the break, I was speaking to others who were there about what happened and what their opinions were about the speaker’s language. They agreed that it was unprofessional. It was surprising because this coach was a published author, a household name among entrepreneurs, and very successful. He has a coaching program and thousands of students. And, obviously, he had a problem with cursing. As I was talking, another person said, “And you know he’s on his fourth wife, too.” I was like, “Wait, what? He’s on his fourth wife?” I couldn’t believe it.

 

That’s when I began to understand that, when choosing a mentor or a coach, you don’t want to choose someone that is only successful in business.

 

 

There’s a popular word: hustle. You know where you need to be working, seven days a week and weekends. You don’t have time for a break. You should be working 18-hour days. If you really want to grow and scale your business, then you need to hustle. The truth is, you may at times need to hustle in your business. You may need to put in those extra hours. I’ve done it. But, it’s not a lifestyle that builds a successful life. Life is much more than being successful in business.

There are many people out there that have successful businesses. They’re wealthy, have big houses, and go on dream vacations. But, look at their life, the cost they’ve paid to have this. Look at their families and their children and the toll it took on them. They have paid dearly to be able to have success.

 

So, when you’re looking for a mentor or a coach, don’t only look for skill and results. Don’t only look at their business to measure if they are successful. Look at their life and ask yourself, “Does this person have the life that I want? Or, are they working 50, 60, or 70 hours a week? Are they always stressed? Do they yell at their team?” If so, they’re not good managers. They are focused on productivity and results and are not concerned about people – those they hurt on their path to success.

 

When looking for your mentor, find someone that has that life-work balance, who has figured out how to build a successful business. Successful may not mean seven figures or eight, but he has built a business that allows the freedom to spend time with his family.

Why did you get started with your business in the first place? The majority of us say, “Well, I got started because it means more time with my kids.” And yet, what do we do? We end up working at home, and the only thing our kids see is the back of our heads, staring at a computer. Mom is always too busy, and Dad is always too busy, because there’s always something. There’s always one more thing that has to be done.

 

When you have a traditional job, you get done at 5 or 6 p.m., go home, and that’s it. You don’t work while you’re home, usually. When you’re an entrepreneur, there’s always something new to be done. The list never ends. So, when you’re looking for a mentor, look for someone that is not only going to give you the advice you need for your business, but also, their life needs to align with where you want your life to be.

How I Went From Charging Fifty Cents An Hour Teaching English In A Third World Country To Charging $500 An Hour As A Marketing Consultant—In Only 5 Years!

I want to share with you a little bit about what my life was like before I started working in online marketing.

 

As you may know, my husband and I are missionaries in Puebla, Mexico. We live here with our seven kids and our dog in our dream home. My husband is the pastor of our church and we also have a small Christian school where we teach kids the Bible, English, and entrepreneurship. On top of that, we also run a college that offers night classes for people who want to become pastors, go into the ministry, or become Christian school teachers in Mexico. And on top of that, we have an online Bible college. We also have a website for our church that has around 60,000 unique visitors every single month. Of course, it’s taken almost a decade to achieve all of this — it certainly wasn’t where we started!

 

My husband and I got married in 1999 and immediately moved to a small town in Guerrero, called, “Iguala, Guerrero”. It’s a very small town. Back then, the town didn’t even have a grocery store. The roads were all dirt and it would get very, very hot.

 

A lot of people had dirt floors in their homes, cement floors if they were lucky. It was a very poor town. And did I mention how hot it would get? It’s hard to believe, but my hair was so long it was past my knees. I used to always have to wear my hair up in a bun. I came from California where I always dressed nice and wore makeup. But, here, it was so hot that my makeup would literally melt off my face.

 

 

So there I was, my hair piled on top of my head, no makeup, and sweaty. We lived in a small apartment and we didn’t have any money at all. We’d gotten some money from our wedding and were able to buy a refrigerator and a small stove (we still have both in our church!) and a mattress that we had on the floor because we couldn’t afford a bed frame. Even though it was SO HOT, we did splurge on a new air conditioner.

 

Our income was just a couple hundred dollars a month. The rent for our apartment was $70 a month, and car insurance cost $25 a month, which meant there wasn’t a lot left after we paid our bills. It was hard for me because I was so used to working and being able to give to others, and all of a sudden I wasn’t able to do that.

 

If there was someone who had a need, I wasn’t able to help them. If someone was hungry, I wasn’t able to buy them a sandwich because we didn’t even have money for ourselves. I hated feeling helpless, and knew I needed to figure out a way to generate a little bit of revenue. But, back then there weren’t a lot of opportunities. So, I did the one thing that I was able to do, which was teaching English.

 

I started teaching at a small Christian school where they paid me $1.00 an hour, which meant I was making about $30 a week. I was teaching second graders which was fun for me because I was still learning Spanish. I would tell the kids, “Speak slowly and enunciate your words or your teacher will not understand you!”

 

The school didn’t have the money for proper school supplies, which made learning basic things, like handwriting and math, even more difficult for the kids. They came to school with holes in their shoes and pants, I wanted to be able to do more for them than I was able to.

 

But again, at the time we did not have any extra money; we were barely scraping by ourselves. So, I decided to offer English classes after school. I charged five pesos for a lesson, which back then was about fifty cents, and I would teach two to five students. That’s about $2.50 extra I was making each day after school. But if a student did not come and I only had four students, I only made $2.00. If only three students showed up, I’d make only $1.50. Every day after I finished teaching, I would take the little money I’d made and go to the little market store to buy our food for the day, we could only afford the very basics, eggs, tortillas, and, of course, coffee.

 

And even though I was only earning fifty cents an hour teaching English, it was the best time of my life. It was fun and exciting. I was working with kids and helping them and teaching them many different things.

 

So that is where I started from. Fast forward about a decade to 2009 and I was charging $500 an hour for a marketing consultation, helping people create a strategic marketing plan for their business.

 

What’s your origin story? Where did you start? I’m going to bet that you have more resources than I did back in 1999 in that tiny Mexican village.

 

Today, if you want to learn something you can pay to learn it faster. You can pay for a coach. You can pay for a mentor. You can pay a consultant, or you can just go on YouTube and learn it for free. There is enough free information out there to help you to grow and scale your business. Of course you have to sort through it to figure it out and put all the pieces together yourself, but you absolutely can do that. If you are wondering if you can make money online, I don’t think it’s going to take you ten years to scale like it did for me. Wherever you are today, you have something to offer others, whether that’s a product or a service.

 

 

If you can figure out how you can provide value to someone else, then you can start an online business and you can be successful. You can fulfill your dream, whether that means giving back to your family or your community — or both.

 

When I first started my business back in 2002, I wanted to achieve two things. I wanted to go to Starbucks every now and then for coffee, and I wanted a little extra money to buy a new dress every once in a while. I thought if I could make an extra $200 a month to contribute to my family and to treat myself every now and then, that would be absolutely amazing.

 

Maybe your desire is to pay your child’s (or children’s) tuition for a great private school. Maybe your goal is to pay your mortgage payments each month or to pay off your house completely. Maybe your goal is to save up money for that dream vacation. Or give your family a great Christmas.

 

Whatever your goal is, it is possible. And it makes no difference where you’re starting from today.

How I Went From $10,000 A Month And Working 50+ Hours A Week To $25,000 A Month And Working Only Part-Time

I would like to tell you a story about how I went from making $10,000 a month and working 50+ hours a week, to making over $25,000 a month and only working part-time. Does that sound good? Would you like to hear that story? I thought so.

 

So, this was back a few years after I had started my consulting agency. I found myself working 50 plus hours a week. We had a lot of clients. We had a large team. (At one point, we had over 60 staff members in the Philippines.) We had created an army of content creators and link builders, which basically allowed our clients to get rankings on demand. But, even though we had these teams, we still were not able to be very profitable as a business, which meant that I wasn’t taking home as much money as I should have been.

One day I found myself talking on the phone with my mentor. And it was this phone call with my mentor that actually changed the direction of my business — and literally changed my life. I was speaking to my mentor, explaining to him how frustrated I was working so much, how I had all of these clients, and they were paying us anywhere between $500 and $1,500 a month. As I was explaining this to him, he asked me a simple question. He said, “Well, what is your long term goal?”

 

After a bit of a pause, I replied, “My long term goal is that I’d love to have five clients that each paid me about $5,000 a month.” If that happened, I thought, then I would be able to really focus only on these five clients, and I would be able to dedicate myself to making sure that I could get them really good results. I wouldn’t be pulled in 18 million directions. I wouldn’t have 20 or 30 different bosses in the form of small clients, each with different needs and different activities. I’d also be able to reduce my team because, with just five clients, I wouldn’t need so many different people doing different things for different clients. I wouldn’t have to continually build our team and build more clients, which was what my life felt like at that moment.

 

I was explaining this dream of being able to have a bigger impact on my clients, being able to provide more value, and being able to perform at a higher level. He interrupted me and asked me, “So, why is that your long term goal?” I didn’t know. I wondered, “Why is that my long term goal? Why do I think that I need to work another year, two years, or three years to be able to play at this level?” I didn’t know. He says, “Well, this is what I want you to do. I want you to call up your top five clients, and I want you to tell them what your new goal is. Introduce a new program, a very select program, and have them each make the $5,000 a month investment you’re looking for.”

 

And then my mentor told me, “And, after you say that, I want you to stop talking. Just be quiet. Don’t say anything else. Because,” he continued, “the first person to speak after you make an offer always loses.”

 

I promised my mentor that I would make this commitment and follow through. I wanted to win and I didn’t want to wait any longer. But, even though I managed to be confident on the phone with my mentor, inside I was dying. How in the world could I ever have a phone call with these clients, asking for $5,000 a month, when the most they ever pay me is $1,500? To say I was terrified to have these conversations is an understatement.

 

The thing was that I didn’t have any doubts about being able to provide value to them. I didn’t have any doubts that I was going to be able to perform for them at a higher level. I didn’t have any doubts that the service I was going to be able to provide was going to help their businesses make a lot more money.

 

There wasn’t a doubt that I could perform for them, but there was a lack of confidence on my part to ask for the sale, and to ask for what I knew would be good for me, even though I knew it would be good for them, too. I knew these clients were already in pain; it wasn’t just me not enjoying our relationship. I knew these clients were currently paying other vendors to do the same type of work that my team and I could do.

 

I started to think, “Well, why are they paying all those extra people? I can do a much better job than those people, and, if they cancel their services with these other people and they give it to me, then it’s all going to be under one house. We’re going to be able to work more cohesively together. We’re going to be more efficient. We’re going to be able to get results.”

 

Right then I realized that, yes, they had the money.

 

I knew they had the budget, and I knew that I could provide huge value to them. But, I was still terrified about getting on the phone and asking them for the sale. But, my mentor pushed me, and I had already made a decision a while ago that when you have a mentor, you’re paying them for their advice. You’re paying them to teach you what you need to learn to grow your business. The only thing that you need to do is just follow their instructions.

 

The next time I spoke with my mentor, he asked me when I was going to actually take action, when was I actually going to get on the phone with these clients and close the sale? As much as I wanted to say, “A month from now”, I forced myself to tell him tomorrow, I was going to get this done tomorrow.

 

Well, something happened. I didn’t do it the next day, which was a Thursday. I did it on the day after, which was Friday. And it was very scary. I got on the phone. I got on with the first client and I followed the script. I reminded this client of the results they had been getting with us. I reminded them that I would only be taking on five clients from now on — and that it would be $5,000 a month. Basically I was saying, “You’re either in or you’re out.”

 

Then, I stopped talking and you could just hear the fear in my clients.

 

They began to become fearful because they knew how much I was helping them with their business. They knew they didn’t want to lose me — or the rankings, or the traffic, or the sales, or… I could literally feel their fear of losing out on the business relationship and they began to think, “What can I do to make this happen?” And, after the conversation that followed, I made a deal with that client. And I made a deal with the next client, and the next client, and the next client. In fact, I became so confident as these calls continued that I actually had a client agree to $10,000 a month!

 

So, within just one day, and with only a few phone calls, my sales went from $10,000 a month to over $25,000 a month. And the best part was that it didn’t require expending more money to get those new sales. What it did require, however, was confidence. What it required was asking for what I knew I was worth, knowing that I could provide value to my customers, and knowing that they wanted a higher level of service and results, too.

 

So, first off, my advice to you would be to take a look at your existing clients. Are there any that could be paying you more? Could you put together an offer for them where you can say, “Look, I want to provide more value to you and here’s how I’m going to do it.” Have those challenging phone calls and get what you really want from your business by giving your clients what they really want!

That’s my challenge for you today: It’s time for you, especially if you’re in a service based business, to finally start charging what you’re worth. It’s time for you to ask for that next sale.