I’ll always remember the day I went to teach my Sunday School class of 12 year old girls and my co- teacher had hand crafted cute little bookmarks to give to them.
They were cute–just adorable. And when it came time for the lesson, she said, “I didn’t get to it. I spent all my time making these bookmarks.”
This story reminds me of a principle that some people in business really need to know to be successful. Do the Essentials First. Take an inventory of all the activities you are doing and select the most important things.
In other words, stop with the busy work. Really.
“Put–the–glue-gun–down, Sally.”
There are essentials in business, and then there are extras. You need to make sure that you always have time to complete the most critical things. These always get done…First.
You can’t pay your bills and feed your kids with how many people follow you on Facebook. If you have a thriving business, or a really great coaching program, or stellar products you are already selling….Twitter, Facebook and all it’s social media counterparts, can ADD to what you are doing.
A slow drip of tweets & posts are great icing on the cake. But if Social Media is your cake–if it’s the only way you think you can people to find you–you’ll be extremely busy, and unless you are Gary Vaynurchek (Crush It), probably poor. The fact of that matter is that compared to other ways of marketing, like joint partnerships, affiliate marketing or pay per click for example, they are somewhat slower on yielding direct financial results. Categorize these tasks appropriately where they go…they are not first on your list.
#1: Do the Essentials First; delegate the “extras” or do them as quickly as you can.
Consider perhaps….
**Writing a page or two of posts yourself (so you’re authentic) and have someone else put them up throughout the week. Hire a VIRTUAL ASSISTANT! I love it, I found mine at www.VirtualAssistants.com.
**Use PING or HOOTSUITE, to link all your social media networks together. Once you link everything to Hootsuite, for example, which is what I use, it sends the same message to all your social media networks.
One Post at Ping = a 10 Site Show (FB, Twitter, Linked In, etc.) Pretty cool. This is what we call “leverage.” Same amount of effort, maximize results. This is the only way for moms with big missions to live, breathe, and be good at all of what they do.
**Also, let go of perfectionism on your Blogs (and tweets.) Be passionate. Be real. Bring Your knowledge. And by all means, Be You. You don’t have to look a certain way for people to like you and want to hear what you have to say. It’s like when I used to make sure that every little corner of the house was clean before people came over to dinner. They came for people & food–not to see my clean linen closet (it was nice though, all those towels folded exactly the same way), but blah…who cares? Your Blogs, You Tube videos, and posts do not need to be perfect. Far better that they be done.
I remember when I recently did 4 video takes to launch a new coaching program. My hair fell in my face twice and the lighting wasn’t great. I wanted to do another take, but if I did, I would be a few minutes late to pick up my daughter from school. There was no way I’d make my angel wait for me. I sent what I had to my marketing manager, Seth, and he said, “It will do.” (that was not exactly praise 
That video has brought in $15,000 of sales already, whoops, looks like $25K actually.
If you want to be efficient in business learn to have a laser focus on what is essential, and get it done swiftly, as you do it well.
All the other “extra” tasks get put into one of 3 piles.
- Delegate
- Do another Day
- Let go of it
Let’s do some math here. (Math is not my strong subject, but I have a calculator handy just in case) I recently wrote an article called, How More Conversions Mean Less Laundry for You. Conversions means the number of people who choose to participate in what you are offering them.
In it I explained that if I sell one program at a $1000 and I pay my home assistant $10 an hour…I just bought myself 100 hours of laundry folding.
Now, maybe for some, that might not resonate. For a chic like me who thinks matching socks is like serving prison time…that’s fine freedom, baby.
Everyone has 24 hours in a day.
Not everyone has the same amount of wisdom, passion, skills and energy.
L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E is what we are talking about here.
Use your talent, skills and the big beautiful brain of yours in ways that actually bring in people to your company. Real people. Real people with real money who really want what you have. Do those items FIRST.
Then pay people to do the other stuff and get rid of all that you don’t need to be doing. This is the only way that we can grow our businesses and stay happy and present at home.
For a long time people said that you can’t be great at business and great at home, especially if you are a woman.
That’s B.S. (A Belief System)
You CAN BE. Only if you cut out all the excess in both places. If you are wise, disciplined, talented, and you leverage your time–you can spend all your energy in your most important relationships and the most important parts of your business.
Show me a person that can do that… be disciplined with their time, be a visionary who grows their company and shares the burden through delegation, while always being loving, dedicated and connected to their family….
That is ONE POWERFUL CREATOR… the whole world is changed by you.
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