Balance Your Talents and Shortcomings

Some of you are bad mouthing yourselves when you shouldn’t be - while others have no idea how bad you suck at something. It’s time to really find out where you stand because as an entrepreneur online, you don’t want to waste time on things you’re not good at – your goal is to achieve more - and you have alternative options for those things.

You might know for a fact that you stink at graphics. You look at what you’ve created and it just pales in comparison to the professional graphics you’ve seen online.  It’s not for a lack of trying, either.

You may have purchased top of the line software, taken classes, read tips on blogs – it’s just something you know better than to waste your time on. It’s worth the outsourcing fee to have someone with talent do it so you can work on other aspects of your business.

Probably 90% of the graphics you see on most people’s blogs and sites look amateurish. It’s stuff that you see and it makes you immediately take the person down a few pegs in terms of expertise (even though logically, you know it shouldn’t).

Graphics are one of those things where to me, you either have it or you don’t. There is no in between, “almost there” type of category. Now with some skills, I can see levels and appreciate those who are intermediate.

Take writing for example. I can overlook someone who typos once in a while or who spells something different or even wrong. But if the whole thing is a mess – a nightmare mess – I think they just don’t care, and that reflects poorly on them as a leader in whatever niche blog or product I’m reading.

With Internet marketing, you don’t just learn strategies – you learn skills. You’ve probably been so wrapped up in your own business model(s), wondering if they’ll hit or miss – that you haven’t taken time to work on bettering yourself.

This MUST be worked into your schedule.

The most successful people I know are lifelong learners. They study everything – time management, leadership and coaching, writing, and if they don’t want to outsource, things like graphics.

Whether or not you outsource your content creation to a freelance writer, you still need to know how to write. You need to know all of the steps:

·         Brainstorming and idea generation

·         Comprehensive research

·         Organization of thoughts

·         Writing from scratch

·         Editing and polishing

If you absolutely can’t write and it literally makes you frustrated, then you should set aside funds to outsource it all – your blog posts, articles, emails, courses, and even social media accounts.

This is a skill that most people can improve with. But the fact is, they’re too lazy. They’re so caught up in making money that they don’t want to take time to step away and learn a skill.

You should love to learn. Take time out of every day to learn. Develop a love of researching – it’s fun to play around online and dig for stories or use keyword tools and see how unique you can get my results by thinking outside the box.

Take a speed-reading course locally - you’ll love what it can do for you in terms of being able to quickly consume ideas from an article or book.

Read little bits and pieces of many books at a time. One day grab the Time Warrior book and read a page out of that. Another day tune into a Tony Robbins video that inspires you to put yourself out there unafraid.

This stuff doesn’t take a lot of time because you don’t put a burden on yourself. Learn in small increments. You can do that. Learn and apply, learn and apply – even if you’re reading one page – or one paragraph! – you can make progress that betters you as an online entrepreneur.

You might have had the attitude to date that you have to sit down and read large chunks of a book and finish one whole book before you move on to another concept.

The fact that you might only be able to squeeze in half a page or a page a day felt wrong to you, so you keep waiting for that day when you have time to read a whole chapter. That’s why you never read that book at all.

There’s rarely a job in existence that requires absolutely no training or attendance of meetings where you’re going to be educated about how to be better employees.

This time, you’re the person at the helm who has to enroll yourself in some sort of continuing education efforts. That doesn’t mean you have to take a formal class at a local community college.

Just carefully and honestly analyze your skills, see which ones you have the potential to get better at and find many ways to learn how to be better at it. If you don’t care to get better, then you’re going to find success a much harder thing to achieve – and you’ll have a hard time balancing your work and life because you’re struggling more than necessary. 

One more thing – you can always learn something new, from somebody new. Don’t ignore newcomers who have great insight just because you feel more comfortable with a household name.

Serve Others While Creating for Yourself

Nothing helps you take action faster than helping someone in need. We sure don’t put ourselves on the front burner, so if you can find a niche or a business model where you’re serving others, it will benefit you tremendously.

In this business, one of the driving factors in helping you get more done each day will be knowing someone out there needs you.

You feel fulfilled when you open up your inbox and see people asking for your advice.

You smile when you log into your blog and there are pending comments from people appreciating your blog posts and insight.

You love it when you post something on a forum or Facebook or Twitter or G+ and your item gets Liked, ReTweeted or Shared with others because it’s just that good.

You still have to balance giving back to others with working on your own monetization strategy. You can’t give all day for free unless you have your own financial needs met first.

Maybe one of your business models is literally to be a service provider. When you’re working for someone else in exchange for pay, it helps you get a faster income – but you still have to balance that with other business models.

One of the most common work-life balance issues I hear about it that people who are service providers don’t know how to work for others and get some of their own stuff done. They act like they never have time for their own projects.

You need to be aware if that’s a problem you have, and realize that if your goal is to someday have residual income, then you can’t put clients first all of the time, or you’ll never achieve your goals and you’re setting yourself up for failure, with time as your excuse.

If you have some sort of schedule for client work mapped out, put your name on there, too. You have to act as if you’re a separate entity – a demanding client whose needs you have to meet ahead of all others.

Some people take years to learn their lesson. A service provider can start raising their rates to existing clients so that they can take on less work and get the same pay. Once they do that, they’re able to squeeze in a bit of time for themselves and their own projects.

By balancing out those projects, do you know how it changes them?

Up to that point, the service provider dreaded work. They were always working for other people and seeing their projects take off (many top sellers on ClickBank, which sickens them).

Once they start sitting down to work on their own stuff, they become the hardest worker you can imagine. They don’t stop to look up – they just take that small amount of time and do as much as they can, as well as they know how.

And it pays off.

When you start releasing your own products and seeing profits, it makes it that much easier to schedule in more time for yourself until you’re weaned off of client work forever.

Never lose sight of the fact that YOU are your best client.

On the other hand, fulfill your obligation and working on other people’s stuff every day, too. Over the years, you can get faster at things like writing and then spend the rest of your day writing your own products, cleaning house, running errands, relaxing and spending time with your kids.

In fact, the way you can prioritized your schedule today is to deliver other people’s work first. That’s because your own projects will be something you feel passionate about, whereas if you worked on your own project all day and then when you got tired, had to write about “fish tanks” or whatever topic someone hires you for, you might be drained and dreading it – so get it out of the way first thing in the morning.

Balance New and Recycled Information

Affiliate marketing is a great example of how you can create something new and then recycle it later, saving you time on work and freeing you up for LIFE.

Being an affiliate marketer is a great business model that can naturally work into your content structure. Each time you blog, create a product, or post on social networks, you have the opportunity to recommend something and get paid for it if others buy.

One thing many feel helps them with affiliate marketing is just genuine conversation and sharing. Never wake up one day thinking, “I want to increase my Hostgator commission, so I’m going to post on FaceBook about Hostgator.”

When you begin cultivating a relationship with your readers, conversations just happen. You hear from them via email or maybe you see a comment from them on your blog, so you create a natural reply with a sincere recommendation.

Do you have specific affiliate sites where you make every post about promotions? Sure! That’s okay! But on a daily basis, start making commissions based off of email exchanges and web 2.0 interaction that makes your time spent networking worth it.

So, let’s take a non-marketing niche example. You might be one of the people who feel like they don’t have time to add affiliate marketing into the mix. You already have trouble posting on social networks like you’re supposed to.

What if you have a vegetarian site where you posted blog posts and you were creating an info product on the topic? You could easily add affiliate marketing in by combining your social networking and promotion.

Create a video blog of you preparing a special vegetarian meal in a crockpot (making dinner – which addresses personal needs). Put the step-by-step instructions and text on your blog.

But then take that video and add it to Facebook on your fan page, too. Only do it a little differently. While your blog post might be a specific post on “Making Vegetarian Beefless Stroganoff in a Crockpot,” your Facebook post might be, “5 Favorite Vegetarian Creamy Meals.”

You could post your top 5 list, invite others to do the same, include the video – and add an affiliate link that points your fans to the exact crockpot you’re using! This is quick and easy.

You’ve doubled the usage of your video (blog and FB), and you don’t have to create a 1,000-word FB post – just a list with a link! Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be.

You’ll see many gurus talk about recycling content – this is an example of that process. Recycle and spin it. Don’t sit there thinking up a unique FB post for half an hour when it isn’t necessary.

Be Humble, But Confident

One thing that causes many work-at-home entrepreneurs to not get as much done as they wanted to is a bad case of low self-esteem. This is true in many online elements.

·         Who would want to sign up to your list?

·         Who would want to see you on video?

·         Who cares what you have to say?

·         Who do you think you are creating a product as an expert?

Confidence issues take up a lot of time because you have to sit there convincing yourself to go forward with something. Think of all that you could get done if you would just set aside your fear and go for it on the very first try – to be able to shut that little voice up inside your head would be great, right?

Much of what makes your business models (like product creation) a success or failure is your mindset. A negative mindset might tell you there’s already too much competition in a niche. It might tell you that you don’t have enough experience to create an advice book on a topic.

Negativity will keep you from creating a high converting sales page because that requires you to brag - to some degree – about what a great product you have.

Every time you give in to low self-esteem, you’re sabotaging your success. You’re also impeding your work-life balance because the part of you who does believe in yourself has to constantly battle with the uncertainty, and that gets exhausting.

This is one of those times when you need to kick your own butt. You have to tell yourself how ridiculous you’re being and embrace your ability to make a total fool of yourself – because WHO CARES?

I don’t know if it’s an aging thing or what, but the older you get, the less you care about what others think of you if they’re people whose opinions you don’t value anyway. Be here to serve a very specific audience – and those who don’t appreciate what you share can find what they need from someone else without you getting your feelings hurt.

Don’t go to the opposite extreme and become a close-minded braggart, either. You have to balance out your modesty with your self-assurance.

Balancing More Than One Business Model

There are many benefits to operating more than one business model as an Internet marketer. Some will say that pursuing one thing at a time has its own perks, but it’s too risky in terms of developing a sustainable income for when life happens and you need to address your personal life more than your professional one.

Multiple business models prevent burnout. You might get really bored being in one niche, using one business model day after day. You might like to have some variety!

Having more than one business also gives you financial peace of mind. You can mix up the fast earners and the slow, residual income streams. Use service providing like ghostwriting when you need immediate income, and create products like private label rights or courses for slower, on-going money.

Some people are so panicked about money that they focus on just one business model, claiming they’re hurting so bad for cash, they can’t vary their efforts.

But desperation doesn’t enable you to forego balance. Not for any significant period of time, at least. It’s okay to focus on one business model for a week, for example – but make sure you never neglect the other branches of your business.

To help you manage more than one business model, map out what tasks each business model requires of you. For example, with product creation, you might map out a list like this:

·         Conduct keyword research to see what niche wants to know

·         Look in forums for niche conversations about topic

·         Create outline for eBook

·         Write product

·         Editing process

·         Sales copy creation

·         Test purchase and delivery…etc.

It will help if you create a calendar breaking each task down into bite-sized efforts. For example, you can’t create the entire product in one day (in most cases), so you might want to break it down by chapters.

Your day might include one thing from this list for product creation, and then you would pick another task from another business model. Throughout the day, you’ll be building all of your business models at once.

Some people use tools to help them micro manage all of these tasks on their to do list. You might prefer not to. You might use a simple spiral notebook and a pen. There’s no right or wrong way to track your progress, but I do want to explain how micro managing can help or hurt you.

It’s great to plow through your workload with some accountability and tracking procedures. But the problem occurs when you start spending more time with your tools and accountability than you do your actual work.

For example, you can use an online tool like a mind map to help you visualize the flow of procedures for your info product. That’s great! But if you procrastinate with the actual writing because you keep staring at your mind map and tweaking small elements of it, then it’s doing you more harm than good.

Accountability partners work in a similar fashion – there has to be balance between keeping each other on task and spending all day commiserating about your trouble achieving goals.

Prioritize your work tasks. This is a huge key to success for most people I know. You will always have a to do list a mile long. As an entrepreneur, there won’t be a down day where there’s not something you could be doing.

But some things take priority over other tasks. You have to know what comes first and make a commitment to get things that must get done that day, done! No excuses.

Some people get overwhelmed seeing a long to do list.

Simply understand going into it that most of those tasks are going to be swept onto the next day’s list, but if you can get to it, be happy! If you finish your most important top 5 items, be glad you already have the rest listed so you don’t have to lose momentum figuring out what to do next.

It’s more a mental obstacle than anything else – so if it intimidates you, or makes you “feel bad” when you finish your day and still see items sitting there, then get to know yourself and how much you can realistically achieve so that your to do list is never too long.