096 – How Would Your Business Survive Whilst You Are Traveling The World?

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Highlights for business tips:

00:10 – Key tips for traveling while running your business
00:40 – Having strong systems and great team communication
01:36 – Unconventional advice gets you an edge in business
01:56 – Lunatic Millionaire teaches us un-conventional truths
02:26 – Having access to a directory of high level business contacts
02:54 – SilverCircle is now open to new members
04:50 – Reducing resistance to your offers
05:59 – Anticipating future needs in advance
06:09 – Check out the new iPad Mini
07:01 – Identifying your biggest challenge and how to overcome it

Transcription:

James Schramko here with a Business news update and as you can see I’m back home in Sydney. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the videos that I’ve made from different parts around the world. In this episode we’re going to be covering some of the key things that I learnt when I was travelling for a month that might help you run your business. So let’s get into it.

Things learned during travels.
Travelling on 7 airplanes to 7 countries, I’ve really had a good chance to stretch the boundaries on my business to see how it functions when I’m not there. I’ve often talked about this “works without you” factor for running your business, but here’s a few of the key findings that I learnt.

Firstly, it’s really important that you have strong systems set up and great communication with your team. As you may or may not know I have nearly 80 staff in my business. When I was away, we had a system that if they needed me to work on something then they had to put this subject line “URGENT.” After a month I was able to clear my emails that were urgent in less than 30 minutes a day. The once that were not urgent built up and over a month I ended up getting around about a hundred emails a week that I need to look at but are not necessarily urgent.

The second thing is I had the team leader send me every single working day a numbers report. This is a dashboard snapshot of our business. It shows us our sales, our support tickets, our main bullet point issues and by using this system, I was able to continue running my business while I was travelling with my family.

One of the things that I’ve learnt about business is that the best things are generally uncommon advice. There are great Harvard reports and books and stuff that you can buy on Amazon and I recommend you read as much as you can but a lot of the things that I’ve learnt have been taught to me by people who are unconventional. And I had the pleasure of running a webinar during the month called Lunatic Millionaire and on that training I taught my students the things that I’ve learnt from a guy that was running with me, a hundred million dollar a year plus business. I have now turned that into a product. So look out for Lunatic Millionaire.  I strongly recommend you get a hold of it. If you’re a member of SilverCircle or SuperFastBusiness, then you have access to it automatically. Otherwise it’s certainly worth the investment.

SilverCircle membership is open for registration.
It’s important that you have a directory or a rolodex or really good contacts. That’s one of the great value benefits of SilverCircle. This week I opened up the directories section of SilverCircle so that members can exchange details and really get the maximum value for their membership. Now keep in mind, these members are around a thousand dollars per mark mentoring fee so they have got a good investment and they’re very qualified people.

If you would like to join SilverCircle, then go to SilverCircle.com and check the status. I’m now displaying the status whether it’s open or closed. It generally opens once every 3 months and right now, as I’m recording this it’s open. So if you do want to join, it’s time to contact me. The way to join is to email me and tell me about why you think you’d be a good fit for SilverCircle. What it involves is me speaking to you every single week and I will help you grow your business much faster than you can do it by yourself. The evidence is the results that my students are getting. We’ve had many students double their business and that’s really what I’m all about, helping you double your business. That’s the minimum criteria that I would like to help you with right now.

A routine can make things easier for you.
Another factor about travelling is that it really shows which parts of your routine are working. Everything’s thrown out. The currency’s different, the language can be different, you have to remember to wake up on time, to be in certain places, you’re staying in different accommodation, your meal is pretty much different everytime and you’re always taking in new inputs from the scenery and the surroundings.

When it comes to making things like a video every few days or doing the business things, that’s where routine kicks in. I found it was actually easy to create these videos while I was away because I have it as a habit. It’s a routine and it doesn’t require as much willpower as it does to make complex decisions.

Here’s a link to a great willpower book that I read about willpower book that certainly changed my attitudes around routine and demonstrated how important it is to build things into your structure that require very minimal input. So I’ll put a link to that right near this video, I suggest you check it out. It’s a really cheap purchase on Kindle. Get onto Amazon and buy it today.

Reduce the resistance.
One thing I’m working on in my business and I work with students is to reduce the resistance for your offers to make things easier for people. That means having great usability on your websites. It means thinking about what’s going on in the mind of someone when they come to your site. What they’re going to do when you send them direct response pieces. When you phone them up, make it flow smoothly.

I’ve been connecting business internet to my house recently and when I contacted the representative, it was really easy for me to explain my situation in a way that help them understand what I was trying to achieve and I got the result faster. When you structure things for people in a way that reduces the amount of effort they have to put in to trying to understand what you’re saying, that’s when you’re rolling resistance reduces and things move forward faster. Other things like risk reversal, guarantees, special offers, using less fields that people have to fill in will also help you get forward faster.

Also, if you follow people up instead of making them have to follow you up, that’s even better. That’s a great way to build your business. If you’re actually scratching the itch that your customer is having just as they have it without them having to do anything. You’re right there for them.

The iPad mini
One thing I’m really enjoying is the new iPad mini. In fact I’ve got it setup here with my bullet points for this session instead of using a whiteboard. The little flap on it actually folds out and it sits there, I think it’s a great device. It’s certainly great for reading Kindles which I do every single day and to listen to my music, but as a work device, for making notes using Evernote, it also has a camera and Siri. So I’ve thrown out my iPad 1. I’ve passed that down the line. The iPad mini’s for me. And I also can put it neatly into the hoody pocket and smuggle it onto an airplane or it fits into the pocket of my shorts. It’s far more portable than the iPad but it’s a lot more usable than the iPhone. I recommend the iPad mini.

Remove the logs on your track

My action step for you this week is identify your biggest challenge and figure out what is the most logical step for you to implement to overcome that challenge. I would call this clearing the logs off the tracks. So if you are the steam locomotive powering along the tracks and you’ve got logs on the track, you have to pull the logs off. What log are you going to pull off the track this week to move forward with less resistance?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this session, I’ll catch up with you next week, until then, have a great week.

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