Being an entrepreneur for over 20 years, I have learned there are two thing I must focus on daily.
I keep these two things close at hand however, don’t get me wrong, as your read this article you will find there are other things you must do.
But, as a new entrepreneur or experienced—whether you’ve started an online business or offline business—one of your biggest hurdles is:
- Discipline
- Commitment
Discipline and Commitment is so important that I keep a sticky note on my computer to remind me to keep these two in mind.
Here’s the challenge:
When you first start to build a online marketing business, unless your have a entrepreneur mentally, You are not conditioned to manage yourself.
From the moment you go to school and then enter the workforce, you’ve always TOLD what to do.
You go to school, show up at 8:00am, stay there till 3:00pm, follow your class schedule, do your homework, move to a ringing bell, and so forth.
You are told when to go to lunch, when to go to the playground, when to go to the gym, when study….
Then when you enter the workforce, you are told when to report to work, when to go to lunch, and when it is time to leave. You are even told where to live, what car to drive, what clothing to wear, and where to vacation (more on all of that later). And even when you move up the ladder, and become a manager or a leader in a company, there’s still somebody above you that gives you the projects or sets the vision, the schedule, and tone.
Where you live, what type of car you drive, and the vacations you take!
Now what about where you live, the car you drive, and even the vacations you take? That is all told to you…Think About IT!
Here’s what I mean: Your yearly income is $60,000.
When you set your budget:
- How much can you afford for a house?
- How much money can you set to a car?
- How much can you save to take a vacation?
So your income dictate the type of house, car, and vacation, and where you live. And who dictates your income? YOUR JOB!
In a few years, your income increases to $70,000. Now what can you afford to spend for a house, car, clothing, vacations?
Soon your salary is $90,000 dollars. Bigger house, that sports car, savings account, eat at fancy restaurants, and dream vacations.
So you see how the company dictates where you live, the house you buy, the car you drive, and the type of vacations you can take?
BUT…
When you’re an entrepreneur, nobody tells you what to do!
So picture this…
You quit your job and show up for your new home business on Monday morning.
Now that’s exciting. Picture yourself at your new business.
You go to the kitchen and make coffee….
You power up your computer at 8:30 am and stare at the monitor.
…now what should you do?
You suddenly have all these options of what to do with your time, and that’s the struggle because most people spend their time doing the WRONG things to build an online marketing business.
I know….I’ve been there.
I thought I was an entrepreneur, and started an online marketing business years ago.
I also had a full-time job. As with any job, I had task assigned to do and a boss to answer to. My job was structured so I knew from hour to hour and day to day want was expected.
When I became an entrepreneur in my part-time business, there was nobody standing over my shoulder telling me what to do it.
I was not conditioned to manage myself….“What should I do?”
I found that I could take a day off and the business was still there. As an entrepreneur, this was my business and I could do anything I wanted to do.
The problem was that I didn’t have any “accountability.” No one except Me to be accountable to.
I had to really realign myself if I wanted to make stuff happen.
Even tho my business was part-time, I needed to….
Do something every single day to make stuff happen!
That became my daily goal: Make Something Happen!
Of course there are many things that you can do to move your business forward, but what will actually move you toward your goals?
Watching videos, reading books, attending webinars and trainings, and administrative stuff is all important, for instance…
But they don’t really drive your business forward.
For example, reading this post is good, right?
Sure, you need to learn every single day to have the skills and inspiration to build a network marketing business, but it doesn’t drive your business forward.
So What Really Matters?
Since I was an entrepreneur in my home business, the ONLY things that moved my business forward was when I got on the phone to prospect for new business, met somebody face to face, set up appointments, or actually went on appointments to present my business opportunity.
If I didn’t do those things every single day, then nothing really got accomplished that day.
Online it’s even harder because there are so many distractions.
You can spend hours in Facebook groups and on the Google community pages, talking to people and emailing back and forth.
And it seems like you’re working, right?
But if you don’t do the things that move your business forward, are you really working?
Are you really making stuff happen every single day?
A good entrepreneur makes stuff happen.
To be honest, I didn’t do that. And my business suffered.
Working Hard or Hardly Working?
Don’t confuse working with getting stuff done.
The truth is…
If we really look at the difference between working on the stuff that drives our business versus doing everything else—if we’re really, really honest—most people don’t work very much at all.
And if your an entrepreneur in your own business, most people don’t really work it. Oh they might say they do but when it actually gets down to actual do productive stuff, most will only do the minimal…or the 80/20 rule.
It’s not that uncommon, for people to spend 10 hours a day doing stuff on the computer, yet only spend 15 or 20 minutes really doing the stuff that truly drives their business.
Think about the 80/20 rule, which basically says that 80% of your results in life will come from 20% of your activity.
So should you be spending most of your time…
Learning or doing?
Am I learning or am I doing?
Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t spend time learning, going to webinars, doing webinars, watching videos, and all that other stuff—you need to do those things to build a business.
Just don’t spend ALL of your day doing it.
Make sure you allocate your time wisely.
And to help you out, here are three steps to do just that…
When I started my online marketing business, I had a single goal every day…
I had to do something to move my business forward. Did I do it? No, but I soon learned really quick that if I don’t work toward my goals, it just wasn’t going to happen.
I set up a DAG…Daily Activity Guid.
While having my coffee, I would list my activities for the day.
- Monday maybe a day filled with Postings.
- Tuesday could be contact all who responded to Mondays posts
- Wednesday create a video and add to my YouTube account
- Thursday is/or could be a day off
- Friday is a full day of follow-ups
- Saturday and Sunday is family day.
I had to write a blog post, I had to do a Facebook post, I had to create a YouTube video and I had to follow up with anyone who responded to my activities.
Follow-up is so important that I spend the major part of my daily activities communicating with my potential prospect.
Did I accomplish that goal every single day?
Again, No, I didn’t.
But I soon learned that if I did everything I could possibly do to make sure that I increased my chances of accomplishing it, I could see my business grow.
So, I would contact people, I would learn a new marketing strategy and I worked my business toward the goal.
Over time, I got to a point where I was able to hit that goal almost every single day.
If you get into the habit of driving your business forward every day with the important actions, you will get to a point where stuff is going to happen every single day.
Most people don’t know how to set goals or they are unrealistic in their goals.
After making stuff happen, the other key to managing your time is to write things down.
Again, I didn’t do this. I relayed on my memory (wrong).
For an “A-type” personalities (like myself) it’s the hardest thing to do, because you don’t like to be managed.
As an entrepreneur that’s why I went into business for myself…not to be managed by someone else.
Nobody likes having a boss. In fact I never liked being a boss.
What I found is, if I don’t write things down, and actually schedule everything in my calendar, they won’t get done.
Again, I learned that to have a DAV I was able to do more in less time and drive my business forward.
Before I knew better, I would make a “To Do List.” If your are making a To Do List let me make a suggestion.
Don’t do as I did by making 10-20 even 30 To Do’s. Not only is it impossible to complete them, the list always seem to grow…and grow.
Here is my suggestion: Make a list of 5 things to be done today…DAV. Get them done. If you happen to have 1or 2 left over, add them to the next day.
But only have the next day with 5 things. What you will soon find is that you will be completing your 5 things and you will be less stressed.
Especially when you’re trying to do multiple things during the day to build your online marketing business.
When you have a lot of things that you have to do, especially when you have a family, time can really go by quickly.
So Write’em Down.
The answer is to write down all of those 5 productive things that you want to make happen.
Write down your 5 priorities to be completed today and then prioritize those 5 items on your list.
Attack the first one…get it done…then the second one…get it done… and so forth. Work them in the order of priority.
It doesn’t matter whether you write it down in your calendar, type it out on your computer, or keep a piece of paper; it helps you to be crystal clear on what needs to be done.
Let’s say that you make a commitment to write an email every day.
- Schedule it in your calendar.
- Write it down.
I place a Sticky Note on the front of my computer.
I know it sounds simple, and you’re thinking…
“No, I don’t need to schedule it. I know I’ve got to do it every day.”
Well, if you don’t schedule it, there are going to be days when it’s not going to get done.
I can promise you that.
But if you put in your calendar that every day from 9:00 am to 9:30 am, or whatever, I’m going to send out that email, and you create a calendar alert, it’s going to get done.
You’re going to get that reminder, and I promise you there are going to be days when stuff is going to happen.
If your like me, you will get sidetracked, you’re going to forget, but when that reminder comes in you’ll be like…
“I gotta do this. I made a commitment. I have to stick to my schedule.”
The “Magic Key”
Those three things…
- setting goals
- writing down your priorities
- prioritizing your priorities
…are the little things that really make a big difference over time.
It doesn’t seem like it’ll make a big difference when you do it once or twice…
But when you do it over a period of 90 days, six months, a year, it seriously tends to accumulate.
All you need for all that to happen is The “Magic Key” or just one word…Discipline.
I love this quote by Jim Rohn…
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments. It’s like a set of magic keys that you can use to unlock all the doors to wealth, happiness, achievement, success and so forth.”
If you just stay disciplined to the things that you need to do on a daily basis, all kinds of good stuff is going to happen.
However, for Discipline to work It takes a Commitment.
It takes some habit forming to make yourself do the stuff that you need to do regardless of how you feel.
Do you think I feel like writing an email every single day?
No, of course not.
Yet…
It’s a habit…a commitment.
So I do it.
I don’t even think about it anymore.
It’s a discipline a commitment, and it’s what I do as an entrepreneur.
Most People Are Just Not Willing…
If your goal is to do videos or set up a Face Book traffic campaign, believe me…
It’s a lot more fun to watch a video on how to create a Facebook traffic campaign than to sit there and put your money on the line, and do it yourself.
Once again, “It’s a lot more fun to watch somebody else do it than to do it yourself.”
But if you do it yourself and you make the habit of doing it every single day, amazing stuff is going to happen.
Again, “an entrepreneur will do something every day to move their business forward even if they don’t feel like doing it.”
Most people are just not willing to do what is necessary to build a successful online business.
Think about this…
- They don’t write things down
- They don’t set realistic goals
- They don’t work at their business everyday
- They don’t take time-out to learn
- They don’t make phone calls
- They don’t stay in contact with their customers
- They don’t attend company events
- They don’t act like an entrepreneur
We know we must do this stuff, and yet most marketers and even entrepreneur don’t do it.
Why?
Lack of commitment and lack of discipline.
Here’s a Question…”Where Will You Be Next Year?”
What would happen if you decided to read a book every single day?
Not a full book, mind you, but spending 30 minutes reading every day on the topic of copywriting, for example.
What’s going to happen to your copywriting ability if you actually spend 30 minutes to an hour every single day studying copywriting?
In a matter of six months or a year you’re going to be one of the best copywriters around.
It’s a fact, not a possibility.
It’s the same thing with doing all this stuff in your business.
If you do what you commit to do, every single day, things are going to start turning around for you.
12 Words to Live By
Tom Hopkins, a famous sales trainer wrote these twelve words down on a piece of paper, put it on his desk, and kept it in front of him all the time to keep himself on track.
Here are the 12 words to live by:
“Am I doing the most productive thing possible at every given moment?”
If in your calendar you’ve allocated this hour to be on a webinar, or to listen to this call, then that is the most productive thing for that particular moment.
If you’ve committed the next 30 minutes to writing an email, then that’s what you’ve got to do for the next 30 minutes.
If in the next two hours, you’ve made a commitment to spend some time with your kids, then that is the most productive thing possible you can do at that moment.
If you run your life through that lens of doing the most productive thing possible at every given moment, all of a sudden time management will not be an issue…
…and you’re going to be able to spend more quality time with your family…
…and you’re going to be able to build a network marketing business that gets massive results.
It’s that simple.
Two Things You Must Focus On Daily
What are the things that you need to do that move your business forward, which you can commit to do on a daily basis?
There are ONLY two things you must focus on daily when building a business. If your building your business online this make perfect sense.
And they are…
- Traffic
You’ve got to do something to drive traffic every day. Whether it’s Facebook Live, creating a video, creating a blog post, or doing something to get more traffic to your capture pages, sales pages, or offer pages, you MUST drive traffic every day. - Sales
Next, do something that can actually create a sale. You can get all the traffic that you can for the day, but how about writing an email? How about connecting with the people that are in your pipeline? Those are the things that most people don’t do, at least not on a regular basis. Yet that is exactly what’s going to move your business forward. That is what’s going to drive your sales, your conversions, and ultimately your income.
That’s it!
Now, may I make a suggestion?
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Additional reading:
Home Business Academy YES or NO
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