How To Network: 10 Steps To Becoming A Business Networking Superhero

Today we share the 10 Steps to Mastering The Art Of Networking.

Find out how to turn your “business connections” into sincere and beneficial relationships… no matter who you are or what niche you’re in!

Networking Secrets & Episode Highlights

  • How to become a networking rockstar
  • How to NOT be a networking dirtbag
  • How to easily find ways to help market leaders and strengthen your relationships with them
  • How to use online tools to easily keep in touch with your connections and turn your network into your biggest engine of growth
  • How to easily make conversation with anyone in the room when you attend conferences or events
  • Great templates for streamlining your networking!

Meet John Corcoran, Networking Super Hero

Continue reading How To Network: 10 Steps To Becoming A Business Networking Superhero

IIP078: Chris Brogan On How To Become The Owner Of Your Life

Episode Highlights:

  • Why you cannot (ever) be the owner of your business – before you are the owner of your life
  • How to get over your fears, doubts and excuses, and why failures are so crucial for our success
  • The one and only thing you need to focus on if you want to create a freedom in life through building a business around what you’re passionate about

Today’s Guest

Chris Brogan

Bravery had rewarded me a lot better than operating from fear.Chris Brogan

Do you have a driving passion, whether it’s podcasting, writing, blogging, teaching, Photoshop, graphics, miniature trains, or anything else – but can’t seem to turn that into a thriving business?

Is your 9-5 job putting food on the table, but you’re not enjoying it (to say the least…)? Are your friends telling you that, “that’s just the way things are”?

If you struggle with finding work-life balance that will allow you to become the owner of the business that you want, and you find yourself running from the 9-5 to your errands and obligations, feeling that you don’t even have full control over your own world…

…The implications are that you’re always working in the business and not on your business. That you’re not doing the work that you want to be doing.

What you need is a solid plan to drive growth, become the owner of your life, and to get to the next level…

And to create this plan,we are joined today by no other than Chris Brogan!

Chris runs a professional development company called Owner Media Group.

Through the past several years, he run a marketing consulting group and worked with a lot of really big companies (like Google, Microsoft and Coca-Cola). At the same time, he experienced working with people at different parts of their journey of choosing to own their life and put together a business that they wanted to run as a part of that.

And so, what he enjoyed most along the way was the opportunity to speak to people about what does or what doesn’t work in making business.

“So along the way, I’ve just been working on unearthing the right mix of principles and guidance to help people really own the game that they most want to win, which of course would be their own.”, he explains.

Here’s our interview. By the way, you can listen to it in audio format by scrolling to the top and clicking ‘Play’ 🙂

Owning Your Life VS. Owning Your Business

MB: Chris, on your website, you say you can’t own your business until you own your life. What does it mean to become the owner of your life, and how is it different from being the owner of your business?

own your life

CB: Well, let’s think about it for just a minute. I’ll back it up to why that could be a challenge. So imagine…

CB: I had a really interesting conversation with a woman who wanted some help with her fitness and health. She said, “Here I am, I’ve gone from a very large company to a very small company and I’ve gone from everyone taking my call to me really having to work to get a meeting with someone as head of sales of this very small company.”

CB: She said, “When they see me, they see an overweight woman; they see a very heavy woman.”

CB: She says, “I think that they are wondering how could I possibly keep my commitments to them if I can’t even keep my commitments to myself. So if I can’t honor myself, how could I possibly honor what I say I’m going to do for them and their business?”

CB: I never heard anything like this, but it makes great sense. So the idea of owning your life is really making and keeping commitments to yourself, staying disciplined.

CB: The word ‘discipline’ essentially means a daily honoring of those things you’re committed to and say that you value and that you wanna do. For instance, people would tell me, “Yeah, I’m trying to get healthy,” and then they’ll skip going to the gym for a week.

CB: Well, those two things can’t be true. One of those things is inaccurate. You either aren’t trying to get healthy or you would’ve found some way to get to the gym.

CB: So one part of owning your life is removing excuses from your life. That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to fail, but you’re never going to allow an excuse to be a reason for failure.

MB: So, for instance, if I decide to lose weight and I don’t go outside running because there is a terrible heatwave and it’s too hot to run … if I was being the owner of my own life I would be fixing it by finding something to do inside, instead of just saying, “Well, it was a super hot day. Gonna try again tomorrow”?

CB: Exactly. You would do something in your flat; you would adjust your calories for the day so that at least you weren’t eating as much as you normally would, so that you can have some deficit of calories there.

CB: And I would like to say that I think it does relate to entrepreneurship because all the tools and drills and skills that we learn in balancing our lives out — in a making our lives work — is what we need as an entrepreneur.

CB: Entrepreneurs make and fill the gap between needs and what we are capable of doing. So, if you can increase your capabilities and you become able to fulfill the gaps in your own life, that’s gonna translate into confidence in your capability to fulfill gaps for other people as well.

CB: I’ve been able to bring many of the lessons that I’ve learned in reclaiming my health to bear on what’s going on in business experiences as well. I learned how to sell better by learning how to work better at the gym.

CB: Things even as simple as getting enough rest; a lot of entrepreneurs think that it’s very cool or it’s part of the lifestyle to not sleep. But I find that well-rested makes me smarter than most of the other people at the table, who find themselves clever.

The War For Ownership – Overcoming Fear

struggles and fears

MB: What are some of the battles you feel you lost in this war to claim ownership?

CB: That’s a very good question. First off, I think that entrepreneurs (or people who aspire to be entrepreneurs) have this belief, that once you attain some level of success, then you never ever get below that level again — and it’s just not true.

CB: All life is in flux all the time. Your financial wealth and your health can go up and down quite a lot; the market that you’re working in maybe can change dramatically, especially when I’m involved in (sort of) technology and business-type markets where fluctuations are part of the game.

CB: Some of the battles I’ve lost are…

CB: I’m not a big fan of doing research. I’m a big fan of trusting that the community that I’ve surrounded myself with and that I have the honor to serve is indicating what they say they need.

CB: Sometimes, I followed the lead into something where I’ve made the offering that I felt that they asked for and they didn’t want it. And so, I spent a lot of money chasing a lot of mistakes early on.

CB: I think the other thing I did wrong is following one of my legend/hero-types, Sir Richard Branson. He has four hundred companies, and in my mind, I thought I can run more than a few companies. But what he also has is thousands and thousands of staff, so that he can really lay out a vision and then know that everyone else will run with it.

CB: I have a very small staff, and my hands are on most everything that I do. So I found that like a lot of people, I felt like I could multitask even in the kinds of businesses I ran, which caused a lot of failure as well.

CB: So I would say that if there’s any kind of big theme to all the different things that I’ve tried, any time that I worked out of fear — let’s say fear of losing money or fear of not making enough revenue for instance — everything collapsed in a bad way.

CB: Every time I operate out of courage, even if I’m still afraid, but I just put more of my energy towards courage, then everything kind of works a lot better. Bravery has rewarded me a lot better than operating from fear.

Creating A New Plan

MB: One of the first books that people go to, to learn how to create not only a great business, but the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the 4-Hour Workweek.

MB: On your interview with my good friend, Jared Easley on Starve The Doubts, you mentioned that the 4-Hour Workweek is a bigger fairytale than Cinderella. What do you think was left out?

work system

CB: I would say that what Tim Ferris wrote is accurate and appropriate. I would say that what we pick up from that book becomes the base-line of the fairytale; People read the wrong lessons and run with the wrong parts of the book, and don’t really sink all the way through the ideas that are required to understand how to make the system happen.

CB: What we most need to do is: when we think we’re going to run our own business, we misunderstand and think that busy equals good. We think that hustle, just random hustle, equals good. We somehow think that throwing away all our systems is a good plan.

CB: Maybe we need to remove some systems, but we need some basic systems in place; Let’s say I’m in Boston and I wanna visit, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Well, I have to figure out a few things:

CB: I would have to figure out an airplane ride or two, or where I’m going to stay. Do I need some money? What’s the currency there? I probably need to know some customs. So, there’s a lot of things that have to go in place.

CB: A lot of times, for some reason, when people get entrepreneurial, they go no further than buying the website, setting up WordPress, and saying “I’m a business!” I find that’s exactly backwards.

CB: Entrepreneurs don’t build something and try to drag people over to it. Entrepreneurs fill a need that already exists, and make sure that the people that have that need can find this solution.

CB: So I think that probably the biggest first step is: knowing where you want to go, and starting immediately on what systems am I going to need to make that work.

The Only 1st Step An Entrepreneur Needs

MB: So what’s the first destination aspiring entrepreneurs need to figure how to get to, and how will they get started with creating a plan to get there?

highway

CB: They need to answer a very, very simple question: How does my passion serve somebody else?

CB: So what separates the artist who lives in his parents’ basement and maybe has to work a grocery store job to make any cash, from the artist who thrives and serves the community is that one of them thinks with the community in mind. This goes opposite of how many creative people think.

CB: They think, “I shall be creative and everyone will love my work.” And to an extent, that’s true. You do have to bring something to it.

CB: People have to see themselves or see something that resonates with themselves in your work or the work is of no value to them. That’s where a lot of creative and entrepreneurial people get something wrong.

CB: So the very first question after one decides that they’re going to go their own way, is how does this serve somebody else?

CB: For instance, when Jared Easley does Starve The Doubts, he says, “I think that there are other ways to make a job and make a business.” So one of the things he did was launch with some friends the Podcast Movement.

CB: He figured, “If I make up a gathering, which would get other like-minded people who want to understand how podcasting can improve their business together, then that’s a good way to make it work.”

CB: I find that there are other ways to make money. But one of the ways that we can make money in a way that keeps our passion alive is to find the people that we can serve with this passion.

CB: For instance, if someone wants to be a professional sports-player, it’s a little difficult because, you have to find a team. There’s a set of rules. It’s a job not unlike any other job to do that kind of work.

CB: It’s just the same as working at Best Buy, only you wear different clothes or something. But, when we truly want to get out of basic system jobs, then we have to actually redefine a marketplace first and foremost.

CB: If there’s no marketplace, there’s no market. If there’s no community around that marketplace, then there’s no way to get the word out.

CB: So we really need to understand that. Then, perhaps from there, we can create content that drives some awareness into the community and invite some small amount of them to participate in that marketplace.

Kicking Fear In The Face

MB: If someone is thinking, “I previously attempted with entrepreneurship and I failed. I’m not sure I can do this.” What do you say to them?

facing failure

CB: Ah, my goodness. I mean, you failed at other things in your life. Why did you not stop then? You are walking, and you probably failed many times as a baby, and yet I see people walking everywhere. I don’t see everyone laying on the ground –– so we must have succeeded after many attempts.

CB: Lots of people fail, and I think that you have to fall in love with failure. You have to embrace failure because on the other side of every failure is the right way to do it and you’ll succeed.

Putting A Plan Into Action With Help From Chris Brogan

MB: If people want to learn more about it, and get more step-by-step guidance and support from you, Chris, where can they find it?

CB: Probably the easiest is to go to chrisbrogan.com and maybe start with my newsletter, which is different than most people’s. It comes out every Sunday. Not only do you get some kind of advice or idea that’s fresh and not only exist on the newsletter — I don’t re-purpose my blog or anything, but you can hit reply and talk directly to me.

CB: You have direct access to me, which gives me the opportunity to serve people better.

Action Steps

If you could tweet Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) and just thank him for spending twenty minutes with us today, that will be absolutely superb. You can do that real quick by clicking here

After that, go ahead to chrisbrogan.com, check out his blog and newsletter.

You are amazing, and I will see you next Thursday.
Meron

Mentioned Resources

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

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IIP076: These 3 Steps Created A 6 Figure Business In 9 Months!

Note: click here to download “3 Foundational Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business” PDF Now

Episode Highlights: Creating A 6 Figures Business

  • The three most important steps in breaking free from corporate and the 9-5 and creating your freedom business
  • The number one thing to remember when starting to monetize your business
  • Networking events that don’t suck
  • Why you’ll never be an overnight success (just like nobody else ever was!)
  • The most important trait you could develop to become a successful entrepreneur
  • The 3 foundational steps every successful entrepreneur takes, and every failing entrepreneurs misses

Today’s Guest

Erin Smith

Erin Smith, founder of ‘The Starters Club’, knows a thing or two about starting successful businesses from scratch; In her early twenties, just getting started in corporate America, she realized that the only way to create true wealth and freedom is through being the owner – and not the employee.

She didn’t feel she was ready to own a business yet, so she decided to focus on becoming an owner in the realm of real estate. She did quite well, and bought her first home when she was only 22. After a few years, she decided to give business a shot – and started a pet-sitting company.

With no background (besides the background that Google could offer her), she got started. Within just a few years it grew to a 6-figure income, 12 employees business. BOOM!

A bit later, after burning out, she sold that business.

Her next business reached 6 figures within its first 9 months, and right there Erin found her passion and talent for starting successful businesses.

When people kept telling Erin how amazing her success is, she replied, “You can do it too,”. When enough people answered, “I wouldn’t know where to start.” – she saw the need, and decided to provide the one thing she never had when she got started in business — mentorship, directions, and guidance.

‘The Starters Club’ was born, and today it offers various resources that teach the steps, tools and strategies entrepreneurs need to follow in order to create a successful business – quicker and easier, and without figuring things out alone.

In today’s show, she lays out the 3 pillars, or foundational steps, that have been the secret sauce behind her meteoric success.

3 Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business

Before I give you the 3 major steps that Erin outlined in the interview, I have a few caveats:

It Isn’t Going To Be Easy

While there has never been a time in history where it was easier and cheaper to start a business, it doesn’t make it easy. You need to put in the hours and you need to do the work. No one, and no system, will ever replace doing the right things, and doing them NOW.

Erin worked incredibly hard to create her businesses. Whether it was working into the night, early in the mornings, or during what her friends and family might have considered “free time,” – she did it all, and her dedication and determination is behind her success.

No One Is An Over Night Success

success arrow up

No success story has ever been a true overnight success. The greatest entrepreneurs that we are inspired by, and sometimes awed by, didn’t just “come out of nowhere” and start making 5 and 6-figure incomes a month.

Think about it. Nobody has heard about Pat Flynn, Chris Ducker or Rand Fishkin when they just got started and were side-hustling and making ends meet. They became famous when their beard fruit.

Any exponential growth success story has a background of slow, step-by-step and frustrating linear growth, which brings me to the next point…

You Got To Start Somewhere

You got to start somewhere, and there will never be a better place to start than where you are right now.

Sir Richard Branson started somewhere. Bill Gates started somewhere. Steve Jobs started somewhere. They were all nobodies when they got started.

If you have no aspirations to create the greatest tech company in the world, become the richest man on the planet, or launch the biggest software company — you’re in luck! Your job will be much easier than theirs! 🙂

“Every master was once a disaster” says my good friend John Dumas in every chance he has. Dumas has a very good reason; Only 2 years ago, nobody knew who he was. Today he’s the face of podcasting, and runs a $2M business.

Bottom line, wherever you are right now in life — you are perfectly positioned to start. Stop waiting for the perfect moment and make it happen!

With this out of the way, let’s get started with Erin’s steps.

To make it super easy for you to consume today’s episode, I created a free PDF that summarizes everything we talked about. You can download it by clicking on the icon right here:

Click here to download the “3 Foundational Steps For Creating A 6 Figure Business” PDF

Once you download the PDF, scroll to the top of the post and listen to today’s episode. You won’t regret it – Erin has an amazing story and many,many fantastic lessons, tips and tactics to share.

Once you’re done – please consider leaving a comment below and let us know how we did 🙂

Other Mentioned Resources:

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

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IIP075: Austrian Conversion Optimization Prodigy Shares His Secrets

Note: Click here to download your free copy of The Human Conversions Guide

Episode Highlights: Conversion Optimization, List Building, and Audience Engagement

  • The difference between making money and being successful
  • Why focusing on your conversion rate is often the wrong decision
  • Good conversions vs. bad conversions
  • How building a small list that is worth more than gold is much more valuable than building a huge list that doesn’t care about you
  • Design 101: Design DO’s and DON’Ts that apply to any website and will help you make sure your readers will be more engaged and take more favorable actions rather than stare at their screen confused!
  • How your homepage would look like
  • The 3 most important pages that you need to patch up on your website — today!

Today’s Guest

Jakob Schweighofer

Jakob Schweighofer is an Austrian entrepreneur. In just a couple of years, he went from installing WordPress themes to becoming a sought-after expert in optimization of websites and conversions. He’s been involved in several projects that made incredible amounts of money in a very short period of time.

As it often happens in business, early stage partnerships don’t hold forever. Not long ago Jakob’s partnerships disassembled and now he’s turning the page and starting afresh.

“I heavily changed my definition [of success] in the last few months, from I-get-a-lot-of-money-out-of-it [to] success is doing the things I like with people I enjoy doing it and be able to live from it.”

I met Jakob at Tropical Think Tank 2014 in the Philippines and was blown away by his knowledge. Since then, I’ve been talking to him at least twice a month about my business and branding and I’m excited to starting to apply all of his ideas.

When it came to conversions, following his ideas has often tripled conversion rates for both Julie and me in our businesses. But more than that, I look forward to follow his advice on creating a strong online personal brand — something he was incredibly successful in creating for himself in the German and Austrian market.

Today’s talk about website optimization is unique, because unlike other experts – Jakob isn’t as excited as about finding that one little tweak, changing the color of a button in just one shade, moving a button by 10 pixels, or making a title a lot more shocking.

Jakob has grown tired of such internet marketing manipulations, and now he focuses on converting the right people the right way in order to build true and lasting brands and businesses for ourselves.

Is It Truly A Good Idea To Improve Your Website Conversions?

This might seem like a funny question. I mean — how could improving your website conversion be a bad idea?

All things being equal, of course you want the highest conversion rate possible.

But things are not equal, and here are some questions to consider:

  • How are you going to improve your conversion rate?
  • What kind of audience will you be attracting due to that change?
  • How engaged is that audience going to be, compared to your existing one?

All these questions affect the effectiveness of the work you’re about to put in improving your conversions.

Conversion Optimization VS Your Core Values

If improving your conversions means installing pop-ups that your audience will not like, e-mail gates that they will not appreciate, or changing the way you write in a way that doesn’t represent you and your core values — Jakob’s verdict is: It’s not worth it.

Think about it: If you could have a list of a hundred people that are absolutely rabid about what you do and buy every product you put out there, compared to a list of 10,000 people that opted-in for all sorts of lead magnets that don’t really represent what you are about and don’t give a rat’s ass about your e-mails and offerings after they got their opt-in magnet. Which one would you take?

Suddenly, the obviousness (let’s pretend that’s a word) of the equation “more conversions = GOOD” is put to doubt.

So what should you be doing to get more bang for your buck? How can you get more engagement and build your e-mail list without filling it with the wrong people? Read below to find out.

Website Design: Do’s & Don’ts

In today’s episode, Jakob covered his Human Conversions Guide Manifesto – how websites should be built in this day and age to create effective and engaging personal brands.

The information below is a quick summary of everything we discussed, but for more information, make sure you listen to the interview as well as download Jakob’s free PDF: The Human Conversions Guide.

Do: Stop Worrying About Conversions

If you read through this post up to this point, you must have seen this first commandment coming.

In order to create a personal brand that’s human, relatable and engage-able you need to put aside the internet-marketing-conversion-optimizing mindset, and think of your website as your meeting place with other human beings that might be interested in you and your services.

The less internet marketing tricks that you play on your audience, hell — the better!

Don’t: Write To An Audience

Following up on the previous commandment, this one distills the way of communication even further: Don’t write to an audience; write to a single person.

The way I achieve that, by the way, is by not writing at all:
I only outline the text I want to write, and then I go on a walk and record it, pretending I’m speaking to one of my readers. Then, my VA transcribes it and turns it into text format, but in case you don’t have your own VA — you can have someone from Elance do that for you for pennies. Or you can even transcribe it yourself!

The point here is not the process as much as the hack that I found to work for me to get out of the “I need to write a post for my site” state of mind and into a “Hey man, here’s some cool stuff I learned from my latest episode”.

See the difference? Your audience (sorry, people) will see it too.

Do: Avoid Complexity

The next thing Jakob tackles is complexity. As you might recall from my interview with Kary Oberbrunner “clarity attracts, complexity detracts”.

Here are just a few ways people are getting clarity wrong:

  1. Every single page on your site needs to have one single job.
    People (myself included) almost always get this one wrong.
    Whenever you write a blog post, ask yourself: what’s the one thing I want this page to do? Build my list? Educate? Entertain? Inspire? Encourage to join my list? Sell my product? Sell my event? It can only be one.

  2. Your homepage is one of the first pages people see.
    Traditionally, it was THE FIRST page that everybody saw, but with today’s social media, many people reach a specific post in your site. Guess what they do then? They go and check out your homepage.
    Here’s the job your homepage was hired to do: Quickly, effectively and clearly communicate who are you, what’s this website about, and what will I (the reader) find here (what’s in it for me?).
    Do that and you help every single visitor who gets to your site understand if you are a good match, and what’s the next action they should take.

  3. Stop giving people so many options.
    I get it, you want people to opt-in to your list. Who wouldn’t?
    So like many others, you think to yourself, “let’s put 5 lead magnets on the sidebar and then at least one of them would apply to every visitor.”
    While that might sound like a good idea, research shows that having too many options actually leads to anxiety, paralysis, confusion, and worst of all, to postponing the moment of decision. Unfortunately for you, that is postponing the moment of deciding to join your e-mail list… until they leave your site and forget about you altogether.

Bottom line:

  • Keep it clear
  • Remove as many elements as possible
  • Don’t bombard people with too many options
  • Make a clear path for visitors to walk through your site

(I really need to apply these for me site, too!)

Don’t: Ask For Stuff You Wouldn’t Do Yourself

Last but not least is the real deal breaker: Whenever you consider putting a new pop-up lead magnet ad, a new welcome gate, or replace your homepage with the only option to get past is for me to give you my e-mail address, ask yourself this:

“How would I feel about this? Would I be willing to take the action I’m being asked to take? How will taking that action make me feel? Do I trust this guy with my email at this stage?”

It’s easy to develop a blind spot and rationalize to yourself stuff people are willing to do – when in fact it might make them uncomfortable.

I’ve done that mistake with my Sign-up process to my membership site back in March 2014.

The solution to this blind spot was incredibly easy: Send it to someone else and ask them: What do they think? Would they opt-in? Would they take the action that is requested on that page?

Final Words

As I said, in the interview Jakob went into much more detail than this summary. For the full story and more information listen to today’s interview (there’s a player at top of the page) and download Jakob’s free PDF: The Human Conversions Guide.

I hope this has been useful for you. If you have any questions to Jakob or me, or if you think we got it wrong, leave your comments and thoughts below.

Mentioned Resources:

Click here to download your free copy of The Human Conversions Guide

I Need Your Help!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below. It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Affiliate Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Don’t Miss an Episode! Subscribe Below:

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IIP074: How To Manage Your Time Like An Entrepreneur Super Hero!

Episode Highlights: Time Management And Becoming An Effective Entrepreneur

  • Why time management won’t solve your time management problems
  • Why being productive or efficient doesn’t necessarily make you effective
  • Why the biggest difference between you and the most successful entrepreneurs is effectiveness — and how can you become an effective entrepreneur by spending 10 minutes a day (the right way)
  • The 10-Minute Get Clarity And Take Control Over Your Time Exercise — the only time management system you’ll ever need
  • Why doesn’t time management work and how time hacking solves it

Why Time Management Is An Entrepreneur’s Biggest Problem

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur, a side hustler, or even only an aspiring entrepreneur, there are two resources that determine your chances of success. Running out of any of the two would mean the failure of your entrepreneurial business.

Can you guess the resources I’m talking about?

If you guessed time and money, you are correct.

Since money is what puts food on the table, it’s kind of obvious why running out of it would spell “game over” to your business. Time, on the other hand — is a pretty interesting resource.

The thing about time, especially for entrepreneurs, is that we always seem to be running out of it. No matter how much time we have it never seems to be enough to fit all the projects, tasks, errands, and obligations that we have.

Running out of time means we don’t get our projects done when they should be done, we don’t get them done to the quality want, we miss out on business opportunities, and then — when we finally have time for them — it’s too late.

Running out of time means we don’t sleep enough, we don’t function as well as we could, we can’t afford spending time with our loved ones and doing the things that actually matter to us the most.

While business acumen, marketing strategies, sales page theory, and social media marketing are indeed important for a business to succeed, when a business is run as successfully as possible in all of the above except time, the owner has no way to actually enjoy it.

This is why today, we tackle the biggest question entrepreneurs have been struggling throughout entire history: How do I make it happen with the time that I have?

From Time Management To Time Hacking

Time management is generally the title of all the systems, processes, and methods that aim at shaping the way you run your business, your calendar, your projects, and your tasks into a rigid structure that will supposedly would fix all of your problems, reduce stress, eliminate confusion, give you focus, and make you a master of your own time.

The only problem with that concept is that we are all adults. Whether you are 25, 35 or 55, it’s probably too late for you to change your habits and their triggers to fall into place with someone else’s system.

Let’s face it — most time management strategies were born because someone was doing something that worked for him, and when asked how they do that, they try to teach others to replicate the same.

Srini Rao and I discussed this on IIP023: Confessions Of A Corporate Misfit — the problem with spreading best practices starts when people follow them blindly instead of learning from them and customizing.

This is where time management comes into play. Instead of reshaping the way you manage everything in your life, time hacking is all about getting clarity, about what needs to be done, and then reshaping time to fit your goals, aspirations, and lifestyle.

At its very core, time hacking is inherently customizable. In fact, time hacking is more of an ideology or a framework rather than a method. And from New York Times bestseller to some of the internet leading entrepreneurs, it’s making huge waves right now.

Today’s Guest

Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast
Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast

Today we are joined by Julie Sheranosher; entrepreneur, author, ex-captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, and the creator of time hacking.

For full disclosure and in order to make sure I don’t annoy my friends in the Federal Trading Committee, I will also mention that she’s my personal time coach as well as my girlfriend for the last five years.

When Julie and I started dating, she was a captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, in-charge of systems that are crucial to the nation’s safety. She had a good dozen of subordinates that sought her guidance not only in their professional lives in the army, but also in everything else. As you could guess, she was quite busy.

The “I’m Busy” Syndrome

work desk

In fact, she was suffering from a severe case of the “I’m Busy” Syndrome.

We’ve all been there; we have so much work to do, whether it’s for our full-time business, our side hustle, or our corporate job — that we run around like headless chickens.

We don’t have time to answer e-mails, we don’t have time to spend with our families and friends, we don’t have time to take care of ourselves, to do sports, to eat right or to unwind. But the worse part of it is that we take great pride at being so busy (at least I did).

Being busy makes us feel important. In the western world, being busy makes us feel fulfilled. It’s not surprising that the being busy syndrome is the number one enemy of time hacking. As I mentioned above, in time hacking, there’s an emphasis between productivity, being efficient and being effective:

  • Productivity: The art of scratching things off of your to-do list, with no specific regard to their importance or urgency. Often the most practised skill of time management/time hacking as it simply makes us feel great.
  • Being efficient: Being efficient takes productivity to the next level, and basically means that not only we are crossing things off our to-do list, but we are actually doing it as quickly as possible while completing each task within the best context to get it done (for instance, using our commute time to answer e-mails, make calls, etc.).
  • Being effective: Being effective is the holy grail of time hacking and the one thing truly missing out of most “time management” systems.
    Being effective means you’re not only crossing stuff out of your to-do list, and doing that in the best context possible and in the shortest amount of time, but you are also doing only the right things (something James Schramko mentioned as one of the three key things to becoming a successful entrepreneur and running a successful business).

Mission Impossible

So as I mentioned, when Julie and I started dating she was a very very busy person. Working for 16, sometimes 18, hours a day, she couldn’t imagine herself leading her life differently. For her, she was doing everything right. Being honest, I wasn’t much different: I was running my software development business and probably working the same hours as her if not more.

Until one Friday, the accumulated stress of being over-worked for so many years in the army, being in a sedentary job with no time to take care of herself, broke Julie. Literally.

She herniated a disc, and instead of going to her soldiers on Sunday, she had to go and see an orthopedic. Taking a look at her x-rays and CAT-scan, the doctor had a simple piece of advice for her: “You need to start working four hours a day.”

For Julie, and probably for you too, switching from a full-time job (or an over-time job like Julie had) to four hours per day is simply impossible. She thought the doctor used four hours as a figure of speech. “I thought he meant I need to work like all the normal people, like nine hours per day.”

And so Julie started working only nine hours a day and trying all the time management techniques she could find to try and fit her 18-hour workday into 9. It didn’t quite work.

Time Management Not Working

clock

Trying as hard as she could, it didn’t work. Julie started failing on deadlines, on projects, feeling she’s failing her subordinates and her commanders. For almost any workaholic that I know this is a terrible hit to the ego and to the self-confidence. Unfortunately, she would have to fall even lower before she’d find a solution.

Mission Impossible II

Three months after her first injury, Julie herniated two more discs. By then she needed help to get off the sofa and into the shower. She was in constant pain, unable to enjoy neither time at home and especially not at work.

Back at the doctor’s office, he told her: “You might have misunderstood me. When I told you you need to work four hours a day I meant no more than four hours a day. That is, unless you want to reach the age of thirty in a wheelchair.”

Working 4- hour shifts are completely unheard of in the Israeli Army, and probably in any major corporate around the world. Suddenly Julie became the ugly duckling, the one that people talk about behind their back, whispering and pitying. And she felt that she was failing more than ever. If she couldn’t get eighteen hours of work done in nine, how can she ever get them done in four?

Giving Up

Frustrated with failing and facing the impossible, Julie just gave up.

She gave up on her dream of becoming a great, acknowledged and respected commander. She gave up her dreams of promotion and prizes. She gave up everything she thought she had to offer.

Out of complete frustration, and trying not to lose herself, she decided to toss aside everything she knew about managing her time, her job, and her life, and focus on one simple thing:

Choose the one thing that has the biggest impact every day and do only that.

Understanding she’ll never get the job done, Julie put aside the to-do list and started living by this new mantra. She would get to the office, do the one thing that was most important for her that day, the one thing that she felt would put a dent in the universe, and only after that try to do anything else.

Suddenly things were changing: A few weeks later, she was sitting in front of a computer on a Tuesday morning, realizing that she completed all of the tasks that she planned for that week. For her that was the beginning of time hacking. For us this is the beginning of becoming an effective entrepreneur.

Finding Success Through Failure

Following the surprising finding, Julie started documenting everything she was doing: What kind of tasks was she completing, at what times were those tasks, working the best for her, what was her attention span, what stuff was she getting far time quicker in the morning rather than in the afternoon. Slowly but surely she figured out her personal time hacking framework.

This is why time hacking is nothing like any time management framework you’ve seen. It’s 100% customized to the time you actually have to the way you work and with what’s available to you. It builds upon your strengths rather than having you fighting yourself around your weaknesses.

In today’s episode Julie shared the first step you need to take to become a time hacker and your own master of time. It’s a 10-minute exercise that will help you get clarity and learn how to prioritize your goals, project, and obligations and make time work around them instead of you chasing after time.

Listen to today’s episode for the full story of how to make it happen, or simply check out Julie’s Daily Planning Toolkit on her website.

Mentioned Resources

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