Sequence Information: Reduce Overwhelm

Recently while speaking for one of my fabulous oil & gas clients I met with one of the leaders before the live webcast, we were discussing how she was an incredibly valuable resource within her company. Her extensive experience as an administrative professional meant she was the ‘go-to-gal’ for a variety of applications, processes and especially information!

After interviewing her we discovered her secret … it was her ability to sequence information.

She is regularly bombarded with constant requests for her time and attention and there is always someone wanting her to do something, be somewhere or have something completed.

Does this sound like you?

If you want to reduce overwhelm and increase your impact try these strategies to sequence how you respond to information daily:

• Know your 20% - what are the activities in your day that allow you to achieve 80% of your results? The Italian economistVilfredo Pareto is famous for creating what has become known as the 80/20 rule. His discovery was 80% of Italy’s land was controlled by 20% of the population. He was then able to apply this formula to so many areas. It is especially applicable to how we choose to invest our time daily. Focus on your 20% of activities and information that will help acheive your goals.

• Know your agenda – just like every meeting needs an agenda to be productive… every person needs an agenda each day. What are the goals and objectives for your day? When you are clear about your agenda you choose which activities and requests to respond to first.

• Know Your methodology – let the people in your life know the best way to communicate with you. Are you an email girl (or guy), do you prefer phone calls or chatting face to face. Once they know your preferred style they can communicate with you in this way. Always ask people you work with ‘what is the best way to communicate with you?’ and make a note of their preference.

Sequencing is knowing the order in which things happen – you get to choose daily how you manage information and requests.

What can you do today to reduce overwhelm by sequencing information? We would love to hear your thoughts and your ideas. Share them on our blog.

Now that's productive!

PS. If you want to increase your impact by knowing what you should implement first, check out my friend and fellow Thought Leader, Pete Cook’s blog onImplementing an Implementation Mindset

Stay connected: Get Productive on Social Media

Ever feel like you waste time online?
Ever get caught up in the likes, friend requests, recommendations and retweets?
Ever wonder how you can still be productive... and stay connected?

Simple really - just invest 15 minutes! The key to staying connected with those you care about is investing 15 minutes online. Social media can be a great tool when used wisely.

• Use the Giant Timer app on your iPad to keep track
• Use the timer on your iPhone
• Use the clock on your laptop

Be disciplined - this works! 

If you want to have more impact and stay connected try these strategies to manage your time, attention and energy you invest in social media.

What to do when someone calls you a Nazi

Last week we sent out an email campaign offering a January special for the Pure Bookkeeping System (one of my businesses that I run with Debbie Roberts sells this system to bookkeepers). As well as generating some sales, we got the following response:

"… I found that some of the rigours imposed by this system would really not suit me (or the way I work and my clients expect me to work) - they are very regimented and give NO scope for personal attention and individuality - a bit like 'Hitler's Nazi Germany' which my parents (who were German) taught me to detest. On a more personal note, I found your webinar (the only time I joined in), to be quite uninformative and 'useless' to someone in my position ..."

If you are going to be a Thought Leader, and have any sort of public profile, there are times that you are going to be attacked. When this happens (and it is when, not if) you need to work out how to deal with it.

Deb was quite hurt by the email, much more so than me, and I think that’s a result of me being in this game for a lot longer. It also helps that the response to the webinar has mostly been incredibly positive.

I emailed Deb saying “We are doing two things that are going to cause reactions - changing the industry and being successful. How people react to that is about them, not about us. Don't take it personally.”

Here are some beliefs that help me deal with this sort of response:

• Playing a big game and changing the status quo will trigger some people (either people who are attached to current status quo, or more likely people who have tried and failed to change something and become cynical as a result)
• If you are successful you will trigger some people (generally people who are not successful)
• Anything to do with money will trigger some people (we are all a bit weird about money)
• How people react when they are triggered is all about them, not about you
• Some people are angry at the world, and sometimes you will represent the world to them (again this is about them, not about you)
• Everyone (including me) is doing the best they can at their current state of consciousness given their current circumstances
• I want some people to love what I’m up to and some to hate it. If everyone is so-so I’m playing too safe.

When it comes to responding our natural reaction is either fight or flight – attack back or submit. I recommend an Aikido response, which is neither. In Aikido we are trained to move off the line of an attack, which means not fighting back, but also not giving in, giving the opponent nothing to fight again, just a hole for them to fall into. In this case moving off the line is simply unsubscribing the gentleman from our mailing list, not engaging him or defending ourselves.

Love to hear your thoughts and experiences – you can leave your comments here.

We are networking... not connecting

Recently I read the fabulous book Fascinate by Sally Hogshead (yes that is really her name) and it was full of great gems, strategies and learnings on how to be more fascinating.

There were many things she says in the book on how you can be more fascinating, she even details a process for it and outlines your 7 triggers to be more persuasive and captivating – definitely a great read.

One statement that really impacted me was ‘we are networking, not connecting‘. She went on to say that we’re doing things so we can tell others we did them. “We are living hyperlinks!”says Richard Laermer. Wow – what a powerful statement. In his book Free, Chris Anderson says ‘hyperlinks are the formal exchange of attention and reputation’.

In our digital, hyper-connected world are we missing great opportunities to really connect with people we care about?

You have often heard me say ‘we don’t have time to do everything… we only have time to do what matters’.

Today decide that you will reach out to someone and truly connect with them, have a real conversation, look them in the eye, put down the remote control, get off your iPhone, iPad, blackberry (whatever your tool of choice is) and connect.

Thanks Sally for the reminder, we all need to connect more if we want to have a true impact in the world.

Now that’s productive!

10 Questions Before You Generate New Business

When you approach your annual marketing budget I hope you approach it with the mindset of money I spend must turn into leads captured, appointments made,new business created.

Drilling down a little you can start with the 10 questions below or formulate your own to work out how much it costs you to generate new business.

1. How much money do I budget on advertising per campaign?
   
2. How do I sequence a lead into an appointment then move them into new business?


3. How much of my actual time is required to convert new business?


4. How long does it take from the initial contact to convert new business?


5. How much is my time worth?


6. What resources are required to capture the prospects details,handle the enquiry, include follow up, face to face, administration,research,creative?


7. How much does all of the above cost me per client?


8. What is the average value of a client?


9. How much do I actually spend to get a new client?


10. Should I reconsider how I invest my budget in the future?

Forget about throwing any more money down the gurglar with your marketing & advertising when you work out how much it costs you to generate new business then you can quickly improve your decision making and invest your money in the most cost effective way.

Five Things to do Beyond Black Belt

Extract from Pete's recent book Sell Your Thoughts - how to earn a million dollars a year as a Thought Leader (co-authored with Matt Church and Scott Stein)

1. Grow: more of the same, and work harder

Keep growing the practice turnover. Employ more support staff; leverage the IP delivery by certifying coaches and training trainers who can take the IP to places you are unwilling or unable to go — different countries with different languages being an obvious example. Continue to launch new clusters. Crank up your primary clusters. Become a Million-Dollar Expert and more.

2. Shift: change gears and work smarter

Go from transactional modes across the board to leverage modes, as discussed earlier. Don’t just write books; create membership sites. Don’t speak for a fee; sell from the platform. Explore every minute spent and increase the return on investment of your time.

3. Flip: take yourself out of the game and turn it on its head


Take a 180-degree turn in direction. Move away from being a practice and begin to build a business. Take your name off the door, build proprietary software systems, and start to employ a management team and consistent service delivery. You stop being a technician and basically systematize everything so that it becomes turnkey. You may want to do this on your whole practice, or simply on a portion of it.

4. Combine: let your practice be the rainmaker for your business


It’s easy to review entrepreneurial models like Branson and Trump to see the power that a star entrepreneur brand can have on the business. You might want to contribute the distribution your brand brings to the business as a way of driving growth and embedding energy.

Richard Branson, for example, simply runs a highly leveraged three-cluster practice alongside his entrepreneurial ventures. He probably speaks 10–20 times a year at, say, $75,000 an appearance; he sells his books through a major publisher (more for positioning than for profit), let’s say 100,000 copies sold at $5 a book; and he runs retreats on his island for entrepreneurs at, say, $25,000 a head for a weekend. Some rough numbers based on this create a picture of a three-cluster practice turning over just shy of $9,000,000 a year — and doing so with less than 65 days a year of face time. Obviously not enough for him to live off, but it’s a start!

5. Live: use your practice as an experience passport

Use your practice to create rich life experiences. Go from simply measuring turnover (make sure you keep it high, though) to beginning to collect experience points. This is about the tax-effective business trip with family in tow. It’s about who you meet, what you do and becoming the envy of your neighbourhood. Got an intellectual crush on Seth Godin? Book him to deliver a keynote address at your conference. Think Harvard would look pretty cool on your resume? Enroll in a Harvard Business School intensive program. Enjoy tropical locations? Buy a villa in Bali and facilitate executive retreats there. Want to become fluent in Spanish? Play the game of maintaining a black-belt practice while you’re based in South America. Take out your bucket list, and start ticking things off.

PS Want to read more? Download chapter 1 here, and order the book here.

5 Big Ideas And 5 Steps To Make Them Happen

Played alot of sonic the hedgehog with my son Noah over the christmas break. Got me thinking;What big ideas are going to spur your thinking and get you rolling this year!

Do you want to be,do or have more-

1. change - necessary for growth


2. community- immerse yourself in patterns


3. conflict- allow for synthesis and change


4. exploration - confront the "unknown'


5. power- ability to influence

Your BIG IDEA deserves your commitment. Bottom line is below, 5 steps to make it happen.

1. Pick an idea from the 5 listed above or use them all


2. Mindmap everything you can think of ... things you want to be, do, or have


3. Explore ways you might grow, change, contribute, serve and learn over the period of time ahead of you


4. Identify your outcome and create a statement towards the positive


5. Complete a 90 day action plan for Quarter 1

 

 

P.S- The difference between those who enjoy enduring success and those who don’t is their degree of commitment to the process of getting it along with sonic bursts of action!

P.S.S- This blog was inspired by Sonic The Hedgehog, I suggest revisiting this classic for inspiration.

University of You

Ever wanted to found a university?



Probably not, but even so, this is your chance. 



Let me tell you about my university - the University of Pete. I finished my Masters of Business a few years ago, and realised that a lot of what I learnt just came from what I read. The University provided the structure and the accountability, but I could have done a lot of it on my own. 



So I decided I’d found my own university, and allow only one enrollee - me. And each year in January I set my curriculum for the year. This year my curriculum includes:

• Read and summarise 12 books (I do this every year)
• Learn to use Keynote and Pages (Mac versions of PowerPoint and Word) really well
• Showcase with Matt Church – a six-month program to design and deliver a world-class keynote
• Learn Indonesian to a competent conversational level (vocab of 1500 words)
• Learn about “lie-spotting” – not sure where or how, but I’ve been reading a bit about it, and think it could be pretty handy to be able to read emotions better

I just read a great book by Josh Kaufman called The Personal MBA: Master The Art of Business. He has created a list of 99 business books that contain the fundamental principles of business, and he makes a compelling argument against spending $150k for an MBA in a top American school when you can learn the same stuff yourself.

My invitation is to create the University of You and to set your learning agenda for the year.


What will your curriculum be? What do you want to learn this year? Is there an area of your financial world that you want to know more about? Or an area that relates to your business or your work, or even just your personal effectiveness? Being a Thought Leader obviously requires you to keep building your knowledge, both in your area of expertise, and more broadly.

I’ve created a discussion group on Thought Leaders Central called University of You 2012 where you can record your curriculum for the year, and see what others are studying. I’d love to hear what you’re planning to learn this year – what courses and workshops you want to take, what areas you want to study and what you really want to learn.