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In the video:
00:05 – Traveling to gain contacts and expand your perspective
01:21 – Revisiting your assumptions
01:42 – Being the customer
02:14 – Content creation and syndication system live training
03:02 – How do you run your business while traveling?
04:43 – Working out the essential versus trivial tasks
05:20 – Charging for odds and ends
05:59 – Planning your day the night before
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Transcription:
James Schramko here with a business news tip.
Travel more overseas and learn new things
One thing you want to do to increase your perspective is get out and travel. I make sure that I leave the office every few months and I travel overseas. I get in a plane, I go and meet new people, I open up business markets.
I’ve been to most major places now; I’ve been to the UK, to Dublin, and to United States, Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, Detroit, Atlanta, Phoenix. All these places and open up business channels. I make new contacts in each place and I suggest that you get out and travel.
Travel can broaden your perspective
Go to a good event in a market or topic that suits what you do. That way you’ll open up new contacts and you’ll bring fresh business ideas to your business. Have a look at what’s going on in the airports and in the cities and the local TV news and the newspapers and the directories and just see what other people are doing and get that perspective. That’s what helps you grow and expand your business.
And it’s nice working from home like this but I think if you would stay in your cave too long, you get a little bit stuck. You need to go out and shake it up a bit. Go to another culture. Go somewhere where they don’t even speak the same language and see how people do things.
Walk in your customer’s shoes
Now what assumptions are you making in your business at the moment? When was the last time you checked your pricing or your competitors or where your business positioning is in the mind of your prospects? Go out and survey.
“Go and have a look at your business from the outsider’s view.”
Question everything, that’s my request for you this week. Just go and have a look at your business from the outsider’s view. Walk into your business with your customer’s eyes.
We used to do this when I used to run Mercedes Benz dealerships. We’d walk into the dealership as a customer. We’d have a look around and we’d see what people are doing and we would check our prices and we’d think what would this customer be thinking given all the options they have available to them, especially going to our competitors. We would literally phantom shop or mystery shop other people in our market to see where we rank and to see how our experience compared to our competitors.
SilverCircle event soon
Here’s a reminder. If you want to learn how I make these videos and how I put them on my website and put them in front of thousands of viewers and get into iTunes and build an authority website, I’m teaching how to do that this month at this location and I will be happy to work with you on this. There’s a link right near this video, SilverCircle.com is where you want to go to check out the event details and to register.
It’s going to be a very small personalized event and I’ll have plenty of time to talk about your business and give you some follow up consulting as well. To make sure that you implement what I’m doing each week. I’ve got the routine down and now you can implement this into your business. I hope you can come along to the day. It’s the last event that I’m running this year.
Business automation
One of my members of SilverCircle Mastermind this week asked me, how am I going to run my business while I’m overseas? And the short answer is, now that I have a team and they meet every single day, and the meeting happens with or without me, I don’t actually have to logon to the meeting. I don’t have to logon to Skype.
The main thing I need is email contact with my virtual assistant every few days. Because she knows how I think, she knows what I am looking to do in the business. Everyone is very clear on what we’re doing, what our goals are, what the accountabilities are, what the data reporting is.
So if I can just get access to a computer every now and then, which is these days very easy from an iPhone travelling in most places. You can get a phone connection and connect to the internet. Then my business will still run without me.
“How well will your business run without you?”
My question for you is, what is the works without you factor of your business? How well will your business run without you? In fact why don’t you put your business on a little bit of a you diet for the next week or so and just get a feel for how crazy things can get.
Use that time to do research or read up on things that you’re a specialist at or create some great content like interviewing an expert in your market. While that’s happening, see what’s happening with your business.
Ultimately you want the business to run without you as much as possible so that you truly have a saleable asset and that you have the ability to rest and as Steven Covey would say sharpen the saw. Pull away from the business. I think even if you pull away a little bit for a week what you’ll find is it helps you to find the essential routines versus that things that you’re doing that you probably don’t even need to do.
Probably most business owners are spending too many hours doing stuff like Facebook or trolling through emails that they don’t actually have to do. The best way to find out is to observe what you are doing for a week. And go in a little bit of a diet for just one week and see how your business fairs.
In fact place some comments near this video on what you found by doing that. I’d love to see your inspirational stories or even some confirmation that it was really helpful for you to do this.
Charge for the odds and ends
Here’s a tip if you’re in the service business, you probably get asked a lot, could you just do this little thing or there’s just this one small extra thing could you do. If you start charging for your odds and ends what you’ll find is a huge increase in revenue. One of our SilverCircle members has been able to really lift his sales by just charging for the little this and the little that.
I think you’ll find that it all adds up and you’re training your customers to know that this is something that you pay extra for. Really, it’s not a bad thing. It just places a value on your time and your expertise, and more than likely the customers are happy to pay for this. That’s why they come to you in the first place.
Plan ahead
Final tip this week, if you really want to get good stuff done tomorrow, then just plan it the night before. I use a little Reminders App on Apple and I just make sure that the next three things tomorrow are loaded up the night before. That way no matter where I’m at, at the end of the day, I know what I’m focused on tomorrow.
For example, I put in my thing last night to make a business news update today. And here we are. So, hope you have a great week.
Catch you next week.
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Please leave a comment below:
Hi James, thanks for another great video. Just in relation to Working out the essential versus trivial tasks, I was listening to the 4 Hour Work week recently and Tim mentions that he advises his coaching students to set an alarm three times per day asking “Am I being productive, or just active”. I set those alarms as per his recommendations and it’s amazing at how many times you catch yourself doing trivial tasks instead of working on the essential. It comes down to the 80/20 rule again.
Look forward to next week.
You bet Eddy. I had a sign on the wall in the office “is what you are doing right now the most productive thing possible?”. Another saying we had was ‘come to work to work not wait’. (In a car dealership sales people tend to sit around waiting for a customer to walk in).
I just finished up 4 months selling new cars in a dealership in Cairns. (Can’t beat on the J.O.B. training.) Anyhoo, the sales trainer’s mantra was; “What am I doing right now that will help me sell a car?” Similar principals, maximum output. To your readers, I highly recommend setting 3 alarms per day to ask yourself such a thing… amazing results.
Oh yeah!! that gives you an education for sure
James, totally agree with your travel philosophy. We aim to travel twice overseas each year. One big trip (3-4 weeks) and one small trip. Maybe a week or so. Very difficult to get away from work but essential both to refresh and gain perspective. Biggest tip? Don’t plan your whole trip. Be flexible. Travel light. Iphone and ipad. And observe everything. Always come back with new ideas.
Great tip about over-planning. I have my round the world ticket booked. I know when I arrive and when I leave and the rest is wide open.