Time Mangement Tip:

A 9 Hour Work Week for
Those Who Still Work 9-5

As a home based business coach, I’m often presented with the same three challenges for online home based business owners who still work the 9-5 grind. Starting your own home based business can offer rewards beyond your wildest expectations, however if you don’t manage the time you’ve set aside to build your business, your doors will close before they open.  Entrepreneurs who still work are often tired at the end of the day and by the time dinner is done and the kids are in bed, they are feeling like calling it a night themselves.  I understand that.  However, if you will stay true to your commitment, this time next year, there’s a good chance that you won’t need your 9-5 anymore because your online business now supports the family.

If you’re willing to do what most people are not, then you will have what most people don’t.  If you can find a running buddy, someone to work your business with, an accountability partner, if you will, making time to get done what you need to do will be of tremendous help.  It’s likely that person will not be your sponsor or upline, but rather someone else from the team, in your company or even outside your company in another business, but you’ve connected through Twitter or Facebook or somewhere else and you resonate with each other.

Here are the three common challenges:

1) Staying focused on the task at hand. Too many distractions; specifically email.

2) Fitting time into their already busy day to work on their business

3) Feeling overwhelmed – too many things to do which leads to doing nothing.

By reading this article, you will have real bite-sized steps that you can take to organize yourself so you can easily and systematically keep moving forward in your business without the feeling of overwhelm, stress, frustration and the feelings and emotions that go along with those.

As you become a home business mentor, you can recommend this same schedule for your new business partners.

I’ve put together a sample schedule based on a 9 hour part-time work week that I use in my home business coaching program. As you become better skilled in drafting your content and posting it online, you will be able to do this same work in about 7-8 hours a week.

Keep in mind, if your budget permits, you can outsource pretty much all of this. However, having mentioned outsourcing, I always recommend you do your own videos. You can outsource the editing and posting of your videos, but let people hear and see you on a regular basis. It’s your face, your voice, and your authentic self that your prospects will be building a relationship with.

Also keep in mind as you read this article, these are money generating activities. Your daily personal development, shuffling papers, organizing your desk, learning skill sets, participating in seminars, webinars, etc., is NOT included in this schedule. Those kinds of activities do not replace your job income, nor, your goals.

I’m also taking into consideration that you are utilizing your lunch break to write your articles. If you do not have the ability to write your articles during your lunch breaks at work, you will have to add that in your schedule perhaps bringing your weekly part time hours to 10-13 hours a week following the full time job/career you already do.

Or, here again, based on your budget, you may want to provide your keywords to an article writer and let him/her do it. They can also rewrite the spins on your articles.

Here are defined action steps you can take immediately to get yourself in a routine and stay on track:

1) First things first: Go through your email and unsubscribe to any and all emails that distract you and steal your focus. If it’s a contact you don’t want to lose, set up a folder in your email and save the contact information. Then unsubscribe, or set up a rule in your options email where the emails you received from this contact go directly into the folder, rather than clutter your email inbox.

2) Next, write out your game plan for all the ways you want to market so you can make sure to get them all in during the course of your working week. Remember, success online depends greatly on the quality and consistency of your content being placed online. Keep in mind that you are in the relationship business and in my opinion, it’s necessary to have a presence online in the social communities.

You don’t need to be in a slew of communities but certainly you will want to identify 3 or 4 to be actively involved in them. At the time of this writing, the ones I’m recommending are Facebook and Twitter. Then choose a couple of forums where you can establish yourself as a leader in your industry.

3) Set your business hours and commit to work those. Hold yourself accountable. Show up for work. Don’t accept excuses from yourself. You are building an asset that will create freedom for you and your family.

HERE’S THE REALITY: Most of you will be tired after working all day at a 9-5 but do the work regardless. Do the work in spite of being tired.

Most people who join a home based business or network marketing company do so because they want to escape the 9-5 rat race. So, when you come home tired and not feeling like you want to put the effort into your home business, remember your ‘why’. If you will do what it takes for a short period of time, you will not have worry about your future.

This is one of the things that positively separates those who make it from the ones who don’t. You will find yourself repeating these same words to your new business partners as you begin your home business coaching and you’ll fully understand where they’re coming from.

Committing to 3 nights a week and half a day on the weekend for your money generating activities will put you on the path you want to be on. It will get your phone ringing and people finding you online. You must be putting out value packed content. This is key. Failure to do so will throwing content into the wind and hoping someone sees it and you won’t get the results you are seeking

Here’s a possible schedule for you.  Keep in mind that not all marketing is included in here.  You may choose to substitute the kinds of marketing you do every other week or so.  Make it a variety, make it fun.

PREP WORK TO DO DURING YOUR 9-5 LUNCH BREAK EACH DAY

Rather than eating lunch with the work crew in your office, find a quiet place, even your car if need be, put on your CEO and Million Dollar Mindset and write articles. Take your lunch to work so you can maximize your time.

Keep your articles short, about 300 words. Change up the articles to make them at least 25% different, using different titles, rearranging sentences, paragraphs, changing out related keywords etc.

So, by each Friday, you will have 3 original articles and 3 rewrites of each for a total of 12 original articles you wrote.

Take the three articles and their ’spins’ that you wrote during lunch last week and work with those as follows:

MONDAY: (Should take no more than 2 FOCUSED, UNINTERRUPTED hours)

1) Submit your 3 original articles you wrote last week to 3 articles directories. (30 min.)
2) Create a Squidoo Lens or Hub Page with a spun version for article #1 (30 min.)
3) Add a few friends to Facebook, offer value (15 min.)
4) Say hello on Twitter, offer value (5 min.)
5) Post another spun version of article number 1 to your blog (10 min.)
6) Bookmark your articles and blog post (3 min.)
7) Vote and rate 2 other’s stuff on your booking marking site (10 min.)
Pop into a forum and contribute 1 post (15 min.)
9) Do keyword research to build your list of key, targeted words and phrases you will be using in your articles. (20 min.)

TUESDAY: (Should take no more than 1.5 FOCUSED, UNINTERRUPTED hours)

1) Create a hub page or Squidoo lens with a spin verson of article #2 (30 min.)
2) Add a few friends to Facebook, offer value (15 min.)
3) Say hello on twitter, offer value (5 min.)
4) Post another spun version of article number 2 to your blog (10 min.)u
5) Bookmark your articles and blog post (3 min.)
6) Vote and rate 2 others’s stuff on your book marking stuff (10 min.)
7) Pop into a forum and contribute 1 post (15 min.)
Continue with your keyword research (20 min.)

THURSDAY: (Should take no more than 1.5 FOCUSED, UNINTERRUPTED hours)

1) Create a hub page or Squidoo lens with spun version of article #3 (30 min.)
2) Add a few friends to Facebook, offer value (15 min.)
3) Say hello on Twitter, offer value (5 min.)
4) Post anther spun version of article number 3 to your blog (10 min.)
5) Bookmark your article and blog post (3 min.)
6) Vote and rate 2 other’s stuffs on your bookmarketing (10 min.)
7) Pop into forum and contribute 3 posts. (15 min.)
Continue with your keyword research (20 min.)

SATURDAY: (Should take no more than 4 FOCUSED, UNINTERRUPTED HOURS)

1) Create 3 videos based on your 3 articles you worked on last week. (30 min.)
2) Edit videos and upload through Tube Mogul or Traffic Geyser (1 hour)
3) Add videos to your blog posts, Squidoo Lens, Hub Pages, that you put up already this week. (30 min.)
4) Write out some new titles for the upcoming week’s articles and make a list of your keywords that you want to be using. Make a summary of your main topics so you care ready to write come Monday at lunch. Your lunch time for writing is not preparation time to write, but rather actual writing time. So, prepare for your 3 articles during this Saturday work time (30 min.)
5) Finish up any work that didn’t get done so you can hold yourself accountable to your goal of getting your minimum content online. (1 hour)

Give this a try, change the days of the weeks you work based on your family schedule, allow yourself to be flexible, but just be sure and get your work in. I’ve given you some bite sized action steps and the amount of time each step should take. You understand that as you become better and more efficient and comfortable with doing the work, you will accomplish your work in a quicker time.

I’ve written a series of time management articles that offer various solutions.  You may find another recommended solution more viable for you.

Time Mangement Tip:

DEALING WITH EMAIL

I’ve been doing a series on Time Management as it’s a key factor in getting nothing done when you run a business from your home.  With all the distractions that keep home business owners and network marketers from their business building activities, it’s Mr. Email.

In this article, I discuss the email problem that most everyone suffers from.  I haven’t met a person yet who tells me they have it under control.

Most people don’t even realize it’s sucking their time.  Email is the greatest thief of our good working production time.  Here’s some recommendations to help you get a handle on this so you can conquer your tasks and get your “to do” list done.  In the end, you’ll feel better about what you’ve accomplished for the day and you’ll make more money.

1)  Unsubscribe to anything and everything that isn’t moving your business forward.

2)  Set up folders in your email for the contact information youwant to keep.

3)  If you’re saving emails from individuals for the purpose of file swiping and ad copy ideas, then rather than unsubscribe, set up a rule in your inbox that says when an email comes from a specific address, automatically put it in that persons folder.  In this way, you are not distracted in your day to day operations and when you need ideas, you’ve got the emails in the folder for review.

4)  Stop looking to the left and right for a business opportunity if you have found one and you’ve made your decision based on all the criteria you set and you’re happy with it.  It’s just going to distract you.  These come into your email every hour.  Again, unsubscribe, and clean your email out.

5)  Set up a vacation response to be sent automatically to all who email you.  Let them know you check email once a day or twice a day, and you will respond at that time.  This is a Tim Ferriss tip, author of The 4-Hour Work Week and it’s worked well for me.  It can for you too.  It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get back to someone for a few hours.  Give yourself permission to be professional about it.

6)  When you’re done checking email and it’s time to get to work on your business building activities, completely shut down your email program.  You don’t want little notices and bells going off every few seconds trying to steal your focus.  The same would apply to your phone, IM, Skype, Twitter, everything.  Off.  The only thing that should be on is perhaps music that you’re best creative listing to.  The TV is too distracting.

7)  Don’t reply to negative comments and hateful, grumpy people.  In fact, don’t even finish reading the email.  If you receive a not very nice email, as soon as you know it’s going the wrong way, just delete it.  This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does and it’s someone from my list, I simply unsubscribe them.  You won’t want negative energy coming into your life, your business, your time.  There’s no room for that.

Now if it’s a legitimate complaint or concern, then give good customer service and resolve the issue.  I think you know the difference.

It won’t take you long to realize just how much time you were spending on email once you clean up the mess that’s probably there now and follow these simple steps.  You’ll be amazed.

Leave me a comment if email is a problem for you or you have any other suggestions that can help people who may be reading this.  I value your thoughts and comments.

Time Mangement Tip:

REPURPOSING YOUR CONTENT

I shared with you in the last Repurposing Content article about beginning each working session with the creation of an article, then taking that article and turning it into several pieces of content.  In this article I want to offer another time management idea.

You can accomplish the same batch of production by the end of the week, however, you go about it a little different.  This way works best for me.

Rather than create a new article each working session, then go about repurposing it into the video, Squidoo Lens, Hub Page, Blog post, etc all the same day, I take one day and do all the same type of work.  For example:

Mondays:  Write 5 articles and submit to 3 article directories
Tuesdays:  Using the content from the articles, create 5 videos.  Edit them and upload them to your video hosting sites.
Wednesdays:  Using the content from the articles, create 5 Squidoo Lens.
Thursdays:  Using the content from the articles, create 5 Hub pages.
Fridays:  Using the content from the articles, Make 5-10 blog posts.  You schedule their release at different times throughout the upcoming week.  Bookmark your posts.

Throughout the week, Twitter your list and send them to your various pieces of content.  You’ll have 5 opportunities to share your content with your Twitter list.

Also, don’t forget to send a broadcast to your email list and invite them to see as well.

If your time doesn’t allow you 2-3 hours a day, scale the work down to 3 articles rather than 5 and go with those.  Even 2 is better than nothing.  Your goal should be to get as much content out to the web as often as possible to keep it fresh, to keep your links building and to allow your customers and prospects to see that you are present in your business.

I work best this way because I create better, I get my mojo going on, I get in a thought process, a rythmn, and it’s quicker for me, to do bulk of the same type of content in one sitting.  For those of you who have ADD or get bored quickly, the process explained in my previous article may suite you better.

Regardless, enjoy your work and always ask, “How can I best serve others with this content?”

Time Mangement Tip:

REPURPOSING YOUR CONTENT

You have a list a mile long of things to do.  You consider all the tasks you need to accomplish for getting content on the web and it seems daunting.  You quickly become overwhelmed and like a deer in headlights, you freeze.  You stare at your list.  What do you do first?

Create that article?

Do that video?

Set up that Squidoo Lens?

Post to your blog?

Develop your hub page?

Work on your email campaign?

Create your product?

Get a press release out?

Well, what if I told you, you could do all those things fairly quickly and without too much brain power.  The problem generally lies in having to create the content to start with.  If a business owner sits down and looks at this list and feels they have to come up with fresh content for each piece of marketing, it would be daunting to me too.  So, here’s a solution to make the best use of your time and several ways to repurpose your content.

1)  Create all the above using the same written piece

Each working session, create one piece of content.  Let’s say for example you wrote an article about time management.  Here’s what your tasks for the day would look like.

Write your article 15 min.
Submit your article to three directories 15 min.
create a video, edit it and upload it talking about what you wrote about 30 min.
Take that same article and create a Squidoo Lens 15 min.
Take that same article and create a Hub Page 15 min.
Take that same article and reword it just a tad bit and post it on your blog 15 min.
Bookmark your post 5 min.
Add an email to your follow up campaign and give a teaser sentence and then provide the link to your blog for your prospects to read. 7 min.
Go to Twitter, post your link and if your Twitter is embedded to your Facebook, it’s been posted there as well. 3 min.

You’re done for the day.  Great work!  You’ve spent 2 hours and look what you’ve accomplished!  This would be very focused and deliberate work.  No phones, no emails, no texting, no IM, no interruptions.   Imagine the content you would have online if you did this 3-4 times a week!

2)  Create an ebook from your articles

Take the best articles you’ve written and compile them into an ebook as a give away to your leads.

3) Take a tele-seminar recording and create a transcript

People love having something tangible, something they can read.  Many people are visual learners and you can offer this free to those who attend the tele-seminar and then offer it as a small product to everyone else.

4)  Take a long article you wrote and turn it into blog posts

You can segment your article into several blog posts.  Blog posts do not have to be long and it keeps Google happy.

5)  Take your ebook and turn it into a video series

Summarize each chapter of your ebook with a video.  People love video documentaries or video series.  It doesn’t take that much extra work to create videos after the brain work is done in putting together the book.  So offer the book and video series as a product seperately or together.

6)  Turn Powerpoint presentations  into articles/blog posts and vice versa

You can leverage the research and content created for the presentation as a compliment or inspiration for supporting materials.

For example, a single PowerPoint presentation can be leveraged as content for a series of blog posts promoting the event for which the PowerPoint presentation was created. Alternatively, a series of blog posts or articles can serve as the structure for a presentation.  Such inspiration doesn’t need to be limited to blog content and can be extended to contributed articles, microblogging and other media such as video.

7) Repurpose Press Releases and rewrite conversationally as a blog post or article

Take a formal announcement and imagine how the same news would be explained conversationally, without marketing hype or PR speak. Do that and write it as a blog post including links to supporting articles, blog posts and resources within the post or at the end as recommended reading.

Other tips for Time Management

It’s something everyone struggles with at some point in their lives.  It really can creep up and be a problem when you are seeking to run a business from your home.

We are only given so much time and we never get it back.  So the question is, how can we best utilize the time we have?

Here are a few simple steps to maximize and make the best use of your time.  It’s amazing how some of the little things suck hours of time instead of getting to the office, doing what we need to do and get out.

1.  Keep all your passwords in one place.

Don’t waste time looking for these.  It’s not unusual for people to spend 10 minutes or longer just looking for a password.  Get Roboform if need be.  It’s a couple bucks and you’re set.

2.  Turn stuff OFF when you’re working.

Turn the phone OFF, Log out of your Email, Turn OFF your IM and SKYPE when you are working on things that don’t require those.  Your work time should be so focused that you can get in and it out and get it done swiftly.

3.  Do something to get out of breathe every day.

Studies have shown that if we don’t get exercise regularly to the point we are out of breathe every day, we will feel mild and constant human neurosis depression.  We will surf the internet, check email for 3 hours, stuff like that.  Do short mini bursts of activity, such as 20 jumping jacks, or running in place for 3 minutes, just something to physically engage our lungs to get oxygen to our brains. This will perk up our brains.

4.  Forget the REACTIVE business activities

- things like checking email every 20 minutes to see if a new lead came in.   Or checking your Adwords campaign every hour . . . this is like dissecting a dead frog.

Have a PROACTIVE business.  Be focused so hard on moving forward that you don’t have time to check your emails and campaigns every hour.  Have a task, complete your task and go enjoy your day.  Crank out webinars, articles, capture pages, videos, experiment with active marketing.

When you do that properly, some reactive activities becomes necessary because you have so many leads coming in and people joining you, you are checking your email more often.

Do high production things.  To not do high production activities is equivalent to the farmer standing there watching a barren field, waiting for growth instead of getting out there and planting seeds.

5.  Make a “to do” list.

Either the night before or first thing in the morning, make it a doable list of things you want to accomplish in your business that day.  Begin to chunk it out at your scheduled time to work.  At the end of the day you will have something tangible to see how productive you were.

6.  Keep a calendar.

Keep track of important events and things that have to be done for the family, then schedule your work time in.  Try and stick to your schedule as best as possible.  If you take the time you set aside as you run a business from your home just as serious as if you had to be at a job for the same time frame, you’ll become more and more disciplined to report for work and get things done.

7.  Evaluate the time you’re already spending.

Look at all your activities and things you do every day and every week.  Is there anything you can stop doing or outsource?

Can you bring in a housekeeper once a week?

Can you hire out the yard work?

Can you hire out the washing of your car?

Can you hire out your ironing?

Can you make one trip to the grocery for the week instead of two?

Can you hire an after school tutor or caretaker to help with the kids?

Can you excuse yourself from some of the volunteer activities for which you just couldn’t say no?

I bet if you took a look at everything you do, you would be able to find a few things that you can scratch off your list so that time can now be dedicated toward your business goals or downtime that you need for personal development and growth.

TIP FOR PARENTS WITH AGE APPROPRIATE CHILDREN:

I’ve observed many parents with children of very capable age just goofing around while the parents are doing all the work.  Perhaps you’d like to engage your children in taking on more responsibility for the home and yard.  It’s good for them and as your business grows, share the rewards and do something fun as a family.

SUMMARY: When you can come into your office (office space within your home) with a burst of good brain waves, focused in a wealth producing environment, you can be creative, get what you need done, done and get out.  Just doing these small things will increase your wealth and decrease the time it takes doing it.