Using A Transcription Service Makes You More Money

I get asked quite often what is the best way to easily add more to the bottom line and perhaps the easiest one of all is using a Transcriptionist instead of a typing things out yourself.

Why you might ask?  Well, it is because you already know how to talk and I bet you can’t type 100 words a minute.  Plus, you won’t make money when you are typing. You make money by doing whatever wonderful thing that you do that is unique and wonderful.

Think about this. The average person can speak 7,000 to 10,000 words per hour.  Bet you know some people that can blow those numbers away.  Some books only have 40,000 words in them.

So, in 4 or 5 hours you can get out the book you have always been thinking about writing! LOL

But really, it is about not wasting time on things that you are not good at and spending time on things that you are great at. That is how you make money.  It is not what they teach you in college or any type of schools for the most part. They always tell work on your weaknesses.

WRONG!!!!

You let someone that is GREAT at the things you are weak at and concentrate on getting even better at what you are great at…  There are people that LOVE to do what you hate doing and they are faster and better at it than you can ever hope to be and they enjoy doing it.  So, why not let them?

Using transcription services is one of those things.  You can do blogs, letters, memo’s create products etc.  Talk for an hour and then let someone else spend hours typing it up and you move on to bigger and better things.

While normally transcription services run about $60 + per audio hour or $1.00 plus per minute of audio, you can get them for only $36 per audio hour or 60 cents per minute at

www.YakWrite.com .

How To Get 10 Minutes of Transcription For Free

Simply email info @ YakWrite.com and put 21 in the subject line and they will tell you how to submit up to 10 minutes of Audio to be transcribed.  Hurry up though, there are only 20 of these being given away.  Once you try it, you will be amazed at how much easier it makes things for you. It will also free up a lot of time.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

While I knew it was possible,  I had just never done it myself.  While I was driving less than five mph, apparently that was 4 mph too fast when driving during a gully washer and you have a mini-creek in the middle of a suburban street, you can take out an alternator in one big splash.  Thank goodness for AAA.  Love you guys!!!! You Rock!

While chatting with a client on Skype from the comfort of my cushy chair, and swiveling around to grab a file, little did I know that by having the headset get stuck in said chushy swivel chart that you can pull over your computer that just so happened to have a 1 terabyte external hard drive on it where I store most of my work and my anti-virus software.  Said hard drive make a terrible noise and died with a spasm right after it hit the floor.

Can you say ARGGGHHHH…  That is when I figured out the limitations of my back up system.  Looks like it may be another two weeks to see what can be recovered.  And because I did not get my anti-virus reloaded to the main drive in the first hour, guess what? You guessed, 4 bazillion infections later.   The good news it was and is all contained.  But wow, what a pain in the butt.   But there is the 3 doozies for you.

Now of course if I had been using what we put our clients on I would have been fine but hey, that would have taken an couple of extra hours to do.

Guess what?  I have lost about 30 hours of productivity and counting now.

So, let this be a lesson to you.  Don’t drive in Torrential Downpours if you don’t have to.  Don’t put external hard drives anywhere they can fall off and make sure your back up systems are fully up-to-date!  Oh, and don’t go on the Web for even two seconds without Virus Protection.

Drowning your car and killing a hard drive and getting some viruses all officially and unofficially suck.

That being said, it won’t happen again and it could have been a whole lot worse.

I only have about 150 urgent emails to answer and if you are one of them, I will get back with you ASAP.

Cheers,
Andrew

OK,  my friend’s 15 year old daughter Megan said this to me awhile ago and I realize how wise she is every day.

If you run a business, this is especially true. In Tony Schwartz’s book, The Power Of Full Engagement, he shows several studies that when you get interrupted by things like texts and emails that it takes you a full 20 minutes to get back to the mental focus that you had before you stopped what you were doing to check the text, email, im etc. Wow, does that suck or what?

Not only that, specifically when you are texting, because of the brevity, important details are often lost and misunderstandings occur on a regular basis.

How Much Texts Really Cost You

I am in the process of quantifying this, but in the studies I am doing right now with a couple of guinea pigs, each text looks like it costs somewhere between $20 to $300 in actual lost revenue and this is harder to quantify, but it could be over $500 to $1,000+ in lost opportunity costs.  Pretty cool!

How does that make you feel?

So, do yourself and your business a favor, and stop texting unless it is a freaking emergency. Because it does make you stupid even if you are not and it does hurt your bottom line whether you realize it or not.

Plus, if you really have to answer texts all day, you really need to rearrange how you are running your business. If you can’t disengage, you don’t have a business, you just have a job.

If I don’t answer your text, now you know why.

Cheers,

Profit Consultant

HIRE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: Part II Qualified Sameness

THE CHANGE PEOPLE PATTERN™ – SAMENESS

By Marilyne Woodsmall

HIRE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME:

THE CHANGE PEOPLE PATTERN™ – QUALIFIED SAMENESS

Remember that now more than ever, given the present state of the global economy, it is so critical in your hiring practice to choose the right job candidate who best matches the tasks to be performed. Employers cannot rely on traditional resumes and a person’s physical appearance in hiring the best people for specific jobs. Instead, when you use People Patterns™ in your hiring, you will save you time, money, and valuable resources. You will enhance your productivity since you will be hiring right the first time rather than wasting time looking for new people to replace bad hires the second time around.

Over twenty years ago, we created Profiling Plus™, our own behavioral assessment instrument that specifically targets hiring and personnel. This effective and practical behavioral tool is one that synthesizes our knowledge of behavioral change and typological research and models. In the context of these articles, we are simply focusing on one aspect of work.

People Patterns™ are so revelatory in understanding why people do what they do. Remember that knowing how a person thinks and how he or she behaves in a particular context in the execution of a given task is going to be much more informative as far as determining how competent a given individual is going to be in the execution of a certain job. I insist on reminding you of an important point. It is that the best predictor of future behavior is past history. What determines a person’s suitability for a job is best reflected by what the person has done in the past in similar situations. It is these very factors relating to past and present behavior that are revealed through People Patterns™.

In this article let’s focus on the second element of the Change People Pattern™: Qualified Sameness, as it relates to personnel and hiring. There are obviously certain tasks that are much better suited for individuals who are qualified sameness in orientation.

Interestingly, the average business person in the world is qualified sameness. Chances are that if you are the typically successful business person, you probably see the world and conduct your business through qualified sameness filters. Also, the military often appeals to those who are qualified sameness (as well as sameness people). If there is a lot of variety of task, as in special forces units or with the French Foreign Legion, for example, you will more likely find individuals who tend to have marked difference traits in their behavioral profiles.

What distinguishes a qualified sameness person from a pure sameness person is that although the former likes jobs in which there is some repetition of task, the qualified sameness person needs some elements of variety to be part of the task from time to time. Each qualified sameness person is unique in the manner in which the element of variety comes into play. For example, in sales, the individual may enjoy the sameness in terms of selling the same product line, although he or she may like to expand the customer base so that they are always seeing new people rather than focusing on the same list of customers they see all the time. Or else, they may be selling the same product and experience the difference element by traveling to different cities.

Secretarial jobs and executive assistant jobs are well suited to qualified difference in that there is usually a set routine of certain tasks that need to be performed on a daily basis such as going through mail, taking phone calls, making appointments, etc. The element of variety may manifest in the planning of events, in receiving different visitors.

In the typical business, most managers tend to be qualified sameness and they well suited to handle different types of people because they feel comfortable with repetition and variety to different degrees. I mentioned assembly work in a prior article about sameness and personnel selection. Often, it is the supervisor on a given shift who tends to be the qualified sameness (or qualified difference person depending on the tasks at hand) because he or she is the one who has to be able to deal with changes that may come up. These unexpected elements of variety may take the form of glitches in a system that have to be corrected or changes in scheduling, etc. Generally speaking, good supervisors of sameness employees tend to be qualified sameness (or qualified difference depending on the context and task in question).

The so-called seven year itch cycle applies to qualified sameness people when it comes to staying at a given job for a certain period of time. Unlike the classic sameness person who may stay in a job for years or for life, the qualified sameness person will remain at the same position or job from seven to nine years approximately. Often the time factor is dependent on how much variety the person likes to experience in the job.

The other factor that determines how long a qualified sameness person stays at a given job is often based on how long it takes the person to learn a new set of skills and increase his or her knowledge base in performing the task. As long as the qualified sameness person continues to learn new things on the job, he or she is more likely to stay at the same job. The moment that boredom sets in, then the qualified sameness person is likely to want a change of jobs.

Finally, remember that in the typical business world, most people will be qualified sameness in orientation. They will be most happy and most productive in their jobs when they have a combination of repetition and variety. The context in which the variety manifests will be different for each job and for each person, as will the duration needed for the difference factor to appear.

For practical purposes, when it comes to hiring someone who best fits a given position, it is not about a particular People Pattern™ being good or bad. It is simply a question of finding the right person with the appropriate Change People Pattern™ to fit the task or tasks needed for the job to be done with competence and ease.

Click on the book below to order your copy today! Type in 21 in the coupon code and get $5 off!

Outsourcing and using Virtual Assistants can be a key component to not just bringing more profit to your business, but in this new world economy, surviving and staying in business.

With more and more city, state, and federal regulations, taxes, and increased costs of benefits, and insurance, hiring a new employee is an expensive, time consuming, and outright scary undertaking these days. Plus let’s face it, It is a big pain in the butt most of the time as well.

The economy and the Government are making it harder and harder to succeed and both are treating businesses like Red Headed step-children and abusing them every time you turn around.

Small businesses with fewer than 20 employees spend an average of $10,585 per employee to comply with federal regulations. That’s $2,830, more, per employee, than it costs larger firms.

Now if that does not say it all, I don’t know what does.

What would you say if I can show you how to avoid all of those costs and most of these hassles completely?

Well, you can with Virtual Assistants. For just the price of complying with the idiotic regulations and red tape, you can almost pay for two virtual assistants working for you full time.

I started using virtual assistants way back in the late 80’s right after email became popular. I did not know I was actually blazing a trail or just how big of a thing I was on to at the time. It was just a necessity. I needed work done and the person that I could afford was not within 1,000 miles of me.  So, it was necessary that I figure out how to make this work.

I really started using them again full force back in 2007 when I wrote the books, The 4 Hour Muse and The Muse Blueprint.

Because of the books, I ended up hiring several dozens VA’s and I figured out how to set up a system in which to hire and manage really good Virtual Assistants.

That experience is in no small part responsible for my current success. In all of my business ventures that is not a single employee to be found. Every single one on our team is virtual.

Once I broke free of the mind set that I did not have to be looking at someone’s mug to have them work for me, I was set!

I realized this part of back in 1990 when I was working with several Universities in the US and Europe helping set up their “Distance Learning” protocols and standards.  I thought that Virtual Employees would actually catch on much more quickly than it did to be honest. The cost analysis that we did back there were amazing.

Not only does it cut costs, but I truly have access to some of the best minds not just in my town or state, or even country, but in the whole world.

This alone gives my ventures a huge competitive edge. Not only that, when I first started putting together studies on this two decades ago now (crap, has it really been that long? LOL), we saw productivity improvements of over 100% or more in case after case.

Plus the Duhh factor of not having to commute to work, not having to have an office where people constantly pester each other and interrupt each other and that you have to pay for!

Think about not having to get up and get dressed just for the commute alone.  I can imagine having to drive to work.

Not only do I save money in not having to pay all of the overhead, but I don’t have to have a pile of red tape to wade through and the expense that goes with it. On top of that, the people I hire over my competition that makes them come into an office to work on average are 300% more productive.  How is that for a number?

On top of that, I typically only have to pay about 1/3 in costs to them on an hourly basis. If you include all of the taxes, fees and red tape, my costs are closer to  to 1/7th of that of my competition per team member.   LOL  How cool is that?

I have literally some of the brightest most capable people in the world working for me bar none.

Now let’s bring this back down to how you can take advantage of this too.

First off not all jobs can be done virtually but, anything you need done that involves a computer can be period.

For most tasks, you can almost always find a highly qualified person for $7 per hour and under. That is total cost. No taxes, insurance, benefits nada. That is your true cost. 20 hours of work a week and you pay $140 (or less) period.

Now what can a virtual assistant do?

A VA can do anything that you need done that does not involve actually having to touch anything. Here are just some examples and qualifications.

• Transcription
• Accounting
• Data Processing
• Data Entry
• File Conversion
• OCR Conversion
• Word Processing
• Blog Posts and Maintenance
• Works, Word, Publisher, Excel
• Presentation Formatting (eBooks, Presentations, Reports)
• Mailing List Development & Clean Up
• Off-Line to Online Posting
• Product entry for shopping carts
• Online Marketing
• Web Help
• SEO or Search Engine Optimization via linking etc.
• PPC Marketing
• Social Media Updates (update your followers and posts on Twitter and Facebook)
• Forum Advertisements
• Internet Research
• Online Tech Support and Customer Service
• Database Management
• Shopping Cart Updates and Integration
• Web Forms

How is that for starters?

How do I find a Virtual Assistant?

Well you can go online, find them and interview them yourself, or use a service. There are a bunch of them out there for sure or you can do what I do or did anyway.

I found out that like with any other employee, I can be kind of tough to find a good one. In fact, because I am such and exacting bastard and I proudly say that, I went through 32 applicants and hires before I found a keeper.   Now you may have much better luck or lower standards, but that is my current ratio.

I started a little service called www.YakWrite.com some time ago.  I started it because since I went through the rather arduous process of finding these great VA’s I wanted to keep them around when I did not have work for them. I figured would let other people use them when I was not!

So I pooled my VA’s and now have them in one spot that anyone can use.

While we primarily do Transcription at under $20 per Audio hour, we also offer Virtual Assistants that have been prescreened and are managed by us for $7 per hour and under.

Many of our VA’s have degrees and even advanced degrees. They just happen to live in places where the Government has not gotten out of control yet and the cost of living is 1/5th of what it is in the United States and in a lot of Europe. It is as simple as that.

In fact overall, I would say that our VA’s work ethic is far better than many people in the US today.

Add to this all of the cost savings, I can’t figure out why nearly every company around is not using them.

It will take some getting used to if you have never worked with a VA before but, saving a boat load of money can make the learning process pretty bearable to say the least.

So, you might want to think about what you can outsource in your business. You would be amazed at how much easier and profitable your life can become.

If you would like to try out a VA hassle free. We have a trial run for you consisting of 7 hours of VA time for just $49.

Go here to find out more.

I will post more information on how to get the most out of your VA and tips on how to work with them effectively.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

Whoever came up with them is still laughing their Butts off as they are trotted out by people like they are spun of Gold or something.  I also think they laid these out there to clear the field for them to swoop in and grab the profits from their less adroit competition.

I have seen a number of these recently on Facebook and Twitter with lots of accolades.

Well, let me give you something to think about before you swallow these axioms whole.  They are only correct in certain situations and they are totally wrong in many, many others. Especially those involving money.

I am going to give you a couple of examples of how they are wrong.

When you are interviewing or making a presentation, you DO NOT want to be one of the first ones. The last one in has the greatest chance of leaving a good impression by far.  You have about an 80% greater chance with all things being equal of getting the job or the contract if you are the last or one of the last to be interviewed or to give you sales pitch.

How is that for a monkey wrench upside the head of the Early Bird?

As far a procrastination, this is an Art that took me quite sometime to appreciate.  Procrastination in many things where other people think that there is a fire, can actually self-extinguish said fire all by itself.  Just because they fail to plan or think that you must jump on something does not mean that you can’t procrastinate to the point where the finally realize that it was not that big of a deal in the first place.

Also, by procrastinating, it can force you to focus on just the nuts and bolts of the situation and not mess with the non-essentials.

So, the Early Bird can be the first to get Shot Down and Procrastination can make troubles dissipate.   How is that for a different twist on things?

Call me after 10:00 AM please… 

Cheers,
Andrew “Easy” Anderson

OK, let’s face it. In spite of everything the talking heads in DC say, they are not helping small to medium sized businesses at all. The largest spending bill in the History of the World has been a big flop.  Not that this is surprising to anyone that knows anything about History or Economics, but Oh well.  They have taken the Economy that was in the Ditch as they are found of saying and driven it Thelma and Louise style off the Cliff.

Point in fact, the more they say they are helping, the more we find out they are putting small and medium sized businesses in the cross hairs for shot to the head and extinction.  Perhaps never before in the history of the US do you have a more clueless bunch of Politicians when it comes to the Economy.

Although, I may take have to take that back as their is a growing consensus that they know exactly what they are doing and they are doing it on purpose and there is a stack of evidence pointing toward that view.  This is simply because that no one in their right mind would believe that you can spend and tax your way to prosperity.  So, therefore it is being done on purpose for control, socialism, and the redistribution of wealth.

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Winston Churchill

They tried this progressive stupidity when Churchill was around and it did not work back then, nor will it work now.  I think anyone with more than two brain cells realizes the spending on stupid things has to stop.

With that being said, if you want to stay in business, take care of your family and existing employees, or flat out just survive, you need to cut costs, increase efficiency, or better yet, figure out how to do both as fast as you can.  If you don’t, you won’t stick around for very long. And not to rain on the parade, but the biggest tax increase in history is coming in January and they specifically said they will not give small businesses a break.  Read about the tax hikes here.

The world knows this and has proven it today by pushing gold to the highest price in history. They voted with their money and there is no truer or less corrupt ballot than that.

So, how can you survive what is going on?

Virtual Assistants Or VA’s To The Rescue

One of the ways to do that is to use Virtual Assistants.  Why? Because hands down, the usually cost less than 25% to 80% than hiring an employee.  And with all of the new

regulations on mandatory health care and all of the new taxes you have to pay, it is becoming even more economical.

I got my first Virtual Assistant or VA back in the 90’s and really got on the band wagon in 2007 when I went and found a bunch of them.

Typically right now, I pay between $6.50 to $7,50 per hour for my administrative VA’s.  And rather than pay someone per hour to do my Transcription, I have a fixed cost of $18 per one full Audio Hour.  These costs are totals.  There is no other expenses involved.  Nada!

On the Transcription for instance, that is equal to 10 to 20 Blog posts like this that I can whip off and record and they come back to me all typed up. That is about 7,000 to 9,000 words typed for only $18!  Think about how much work that is and how much more productive you can be!

Compare that with probably paying someone $15 to $25 per hour, plus taxes, benefits, retirement contributions, and now mandatory health care and you can easily be in the $30 to $50 per hour range.  And in many places, even higher. Argghh.

So, comparing apples to apples here, I am going to pay about 75% to 90% less than if I were to hire a regular employee.  Not to mention office space and equipment.  And, if I don’t need them, I don’t have to worry about laying them off.

Now, the larger companies have been doing this for about 40 years or more, and it actually goes back hundreds of years.  But, because of the Internet, it is available for any business that has access to the Internet to do the same things the big boys do.

Not only can I add a whole lot to my bottom line and get lots more done, I am also free to travel.  I am not tied to an office. Where I have access to the Internet, I can run my business.

Freedom and lifestyle were the main reasons why I got on the VA bandwagon in the first place.

Now, that I have sold you on VA’s, many people just starting out have trouble with finding good ones.  I just want to let you know that this is normal.

Over the years, I have found the  “Great to Bad” ratio for VA’s is 30 to 1.  In that I have to go through or interview about 30 VA’s to find one good one that is a real keeper.

So, plan on going through a number of them to find a good one.  But, it is well worth the effort!

A Moral Dilemma? Not Really…

There will be a few people out there that say there is a moral dilemma with this.  Well great, I hope you are my competition.    I won’t go into details, but the bottom line is if logic is used, there really is not a moral dilemma at all if you take some time to think about it.

Well, actually there is but the moral dilemma falls on the side of not using them.

It is the dilemma of businesses that  go out of business by not taking advantage of VA’s when they explain to their families why they won’t be able to afford their house, car, or put food on the table.

The biggest dilemma is truly about not getting VA’s right away so that you can save your company, yourself, your family and your business.   The dilemma is in not using this tool to allow you to prosper, profit, and keep the employees you have.

The Upside

The upside is HUGE!  How would you like to to be making more money and working less?

How would you like to be able to start doing things with your loved ones and family that you could not afford before?

How would you like to become financially secure and not worry about money ever again?

How would you like the freedom to travel wherever and whenever you wanted knowing that your business was humming along and making money while you are traveling and sleeping for that matter?

How would you like to immediately reduce expenses?  How would you like to not worry about what the idiots in DC are doing to health care or employee mandates that you have to somehow come up with the money to pay for them out of your own pocket as a small business?

How about not having to worry about money for a change?

How would you like to send of an assignment before you go to bed and wake up to find it complete when you wake up in the morning?  Trust me on this, it is an awesome feeling.

In my book “Start On Monday” that you can purchase buy clicking on the cover below, I go into more details on how to effectively use VA’s to help your business profit.  Plus, you get to read it and try it out for 14 days before you decide to pay for it!

Plus, you can get six hours of VA time right now to try them out for only $45.

Also, when you purchase the book, you get a 45 day free membership in my program. With it, you get access to my VA’s at the prices above.   This takes the hassles out of finding good ones.  If you like it, it is only $15.77 per month.  I made it so low that I did not want anyone to use price as a reason not to take advantage of this offer.

I will be posting more information on VA’s and how to set your business up to be run virtually soon.  If you have any specific questions, I would love to hear them.

Cheers,
Andrew “Easy” Anderson

OK, what the heck am I talking about here you are asking?  Well, over the past few years this has come become more and more clear for me.  My partners and I have had hours and hours of conversations about this and we have come to unanimous conclusion. Clients SUCK and Customers are GREAT.

Let me explain here and see if you agree.  I used to do a number of Websites for clients. This involved first educating them on the basics of what they needed to have for a profitable Website.  Then after that part of the process was over you get into the components and look and feel of the site.   In that most people are clueless when it comes to this, only about 1 to 2 out of every 10 clients actually could express exactly what they wanted and were flexible enough to understand that getting the site up and running first should be the main goal.

Then after the site is up, you then go back up and tweak it.  We have also came to the conclusion that in far too many cases the more you do for them, the less they appreciate it and place no value on it.  These are also the Clients that are the biggest pain in the butt.  I have on a couple of occasions dumped thousands of dollars into a site only to still get nothing but complaints from them while they never realized that they may have been the reason why it did not work out with the past 2 or 4 developers.

That is a Warning Sign too.  If they have tried several other people to do the same things an it did not work out, you really need to dig in and see what the scoop was. Now many times it could simply be they got incompetent people.  But in well over 60% of the cases in my experience, it is the customer that is the problem and not whoever did the previous work for them.  Be careful and do your homework here.

Plus, I have seen in many cases while you can wait for days for them to get you the information you need to move to the next step, even though the delays caused a train wreck to your schedule, they expect you to drop everything you are doing and get right back on their project.  They never realize nor care that it may have caused you a week’s delay and it may be another week or a month before you can put them back into your schedule.  They think that the customers that do what they are supposed when they are supposed to should suffer for their actions. Baloney, I won’t let that happen.

While most people don’t blink an eye when they pay their car mechanic $85 or $125 per hour to fix their car so it is reliable, they want a Website that is the basis of their business done for peanuts.  It is both laughable and sad at the same time.

The same goes for Marketing clients as well. Many don’t want to pay $5,000 to $10,000 for assistance that can make them hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that year.  But, they will spend thousands on one stupid ad or marketing scheme or tool.  LOL

I have heard this from others in all stripes of businesses and niches.  Now again, not all Clients are like this, but day in and day out, enough are to have made me and my partners get rid of 99% of our Clients.  I will tell you about the exceptions here shortly.

Get Rid Of Your Clients And Turn Them Into Customers

What is the solution?  Get rid of your Clients and turn them into Customers.  What is the difference between a Client and a Customer?

Customers are those that pay a set fee on preferably a monthly basis for a set, well defined deliverable and you have little or no interaction with them.

There are lot of ways to accomplish this if you sit down and think about it.   The faster you can move your business to this model, the faster your profits are going to go up and your headaches will go away.

Now I mentioned there was an exception to this and here it is it and you will have to do some thinking on your part to figure out how to implement this.

I have to warn you that part of this may be counterintuitive.

You need to figure out a very high threshold for your fees.  Not unreasonable mind you, but you want to be in the top 2% to 5% of your competition.  For me with Websites, if a client can’t plunk down a minimum of $5,000 to start and then can pay $100 per hour for work after that, then I don’t deal with them.  Even then, I don’t want to take on too many clients under those circumstances.  And the only way the get that far is if there is a chance to make even more money on a Joint Venture with them in some way.

Why does this work?  Well for one, those that can pay this amount are usually successful and realize that time is money and they also value quality and they value your time as much as they value theirs.   Things will get done on schedule and they will be open to your expertise and while they may have suggestions and ideas, they are not going to be whiny or overly demanding and things almost always get done without a hitch.

They understand that paying $5,000 to $25,000 for a site that can make them several hundred thousand to several million dollars per year is a great investment that anyone would be hard pressed to find these days.

Now that being said, what products or services can you offer that are similar in nature that you can raise the price point on so that it only attracts qualified Clients or what can you do to turn your current Clients into Customers as defined above?

Answer these two questions and you are on your way to making a lot more money, enjoying your work more and getting rid of most of your stress.

And remember this point.  The Client Model offers Zero Leverage to your income as you only have a finite amount of time.  Whereas the Customer model allows you to automate the process and usually if you can figure out how to service 10 Customers, you can scale it to service 10,000 clients with very little effort.  And you will actually see your costs per Customer drop dramatically and your Profits increase in the same fashion.

Now that is Fashion that I can get into!

Cheers,

Andrew “Easy” Anderson

Bad Ducks

As an Entrepreneur, we are all usually faced with too much to do and too little time to do it. I am sure that you know what I mean.

In the past year, I have gotten off track with letting the Ducks peck me a little by little until I realized because of some family matter that demanded even more of my time, that they were literally beginning to peck me to death.

Now the things is that I know better and point in fact point this out and hammer it home with my customers and even have a whole chapter devoted to this in my Book, Start On Monday.

There are however easy fixes for this and I have had to implement them because of literally some life and death matter.

The kicker is, that I should not have waited to that point to put a stop on it. Because it takes an unnecessary toll not only on you and your business, but your customers and loved ones as well.

Now this may meet resistance from not only your subconscious, but your customers as well.

The first area is emails. I have gone back to checking my emails to twice a week following the lead of Tim Ferriss in his book, The 4 Hour Workweek.

I am going to cover the three major ones and give you their Scientific Names as well.

The Email Duck – Quackus Alotus Toomuchus

And here is what I put in my auto responder:

This is an auto-response. I am now checking my email account on Monday and Thursday of each week.

This is due to a dramatic increase in high priority demands on my time. For my friends and clients, you know specifically what I am talking about.

If you require urgent assistance (please ensure that it is truly urgent and by urgent that involves more than $25,000 or someone is in the hospital and only I can provide the transfusion) and cannot wait until this time, please contact me for any matters that require my personal attention by im on Skype.

Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more and to serve you better.

Sincerely,
Andrew Anderson

Now you may have some backlash at first because it is in our nature to want instant gratification. But, if you want your sanity to stay in check and make your business thrive, you need to do this.

The other things is to not check your email the first thing in the morning. You should spend that time on much higher priority projects. I would wait until after lunch to do so.

It will take a while to get used to, but your clients will understand and you will be amazed at how much more you get done during the day.

Every time you check your email, it takes you 20 minutes to get back mentally to where you were.  So, figure that out by how much you think your time is worth per hour. The same goes with Text messages and the like. Crackberries and iPhones are the same breed of Duck. Check them at most twice a day and better yet only once a day.

The Appointment Duck – Lateus Cancelus

When you set up appointments, make sure you tell people  give you at least 24 hours notice if at all possible they are going to cancel.  You can use a calendar program or phone call for this. Although, I swear this is true, I had the President of one of those Calendar companies use their own Calendar programs to set up the appointment, and it sent out an email confirmation and everything, and they missed their own appointment to talk about their own Software…  LOL

If they do this more than three times, then you have to put your foot down and then schedule it at your own convenience. Trust me on this one, it costs you far more than you know if you continue to put up with this. Because you are losing money by being frustrated, not working on something else that you could have brought money in on and you are going to bump something else to reschedule the meeting.

If there are multiple people involved with the meeting, the direct costs and lost opportunity costs can mount rather quickly. I added this up on two recent projects this happened with and it was in the thousands of dollars.   I about had a freakin Cow.

Which brings up another point about having a running total in a Dashboard on the costs associated with a project. I will show you how to do this in a later post.

If you are working on a big or even small project, it can cause a virtual train wreck of epic proportions and I have found the the offending person will then often to totally clueless as to why blowing one or two meetings can cause weeks or months of set backs by starting a change of other scheduling conflicts. They think (as we all often due) that their project is the most important one and that they don’t realize the havoc or damage they are causing to their project and everyone else’s.

I must admit that I used be be guilty of this myself.  Now it is your job to point this out to them upfront. The vast majority of people are just not aware of this is all.   So it is your responsibility to point this out to them. 99% of the people out there will have a V8 moment and get it right away.

Because I have tendency to want to pour oil to calm the waters, I have not enforced this in the past, but no longer.

I am going to make everyone on my new clients (and old ones too) read this post and it should help.

The Lack Of A Next Day Plan Plan – Runus Amuckus

This is one of the biggest ones that very few people do and yet it is one of the easiest and fastest Ducks to get rid of and believe it or not, it is one of the most dangerous ones as well.

Before you go to bed or quit work, you need to write down no more than three important things that you have to get done the next day. And, they should directly involve bringing in money ASAP as a priority.

Things such as billing someone, or getting out a proposal. Everything else should take a back seat to this.

The reason for doing this is that your subconscious mind will focus on that and give it something to do overnight, and you come up with a solution for it.  You will be amazed at how well this works if you have never done it before.

I have noticed a lot of people that I have gotten started doing this say that they are much more calmer and less stressed by doing this. Plus, it pushes all of the other Ducks out of the way and gives you a sense of accomplishment. Not to mention making sure the money comes in to your pocket.

As I said when I started this, I have been forced into going back to these recently and I did not have a choice.

You do have a choice and you should be doing this anyway. You owe it to yourself, your loved ones, and your clients.

And I want to add one other Duck that can be a dangerous as well.

Social Media and Blogs – Alots Timeus Wastedis

This is an easy Duck to tame as well. If you use HootSuite, see me interview with them, you can set up posts to your Twitter account and Facebook page weeks in advance. I spend at most 30 minutes once a week to set up my tweets for all of my accounts. If I have time, I will drop in for a comment or two but that is it. I am down to less that 45 minutes a week on these now. Go check out HootSuite.

As far as Blogs go, I can dictate a blog like this in less than usually 5-7 minutes. I send it off to be transcribed and poof, there it is. And if you are using WordPress, which you should, you can set posts to be published days, weeks, or months in advance!

So, there is no need to let the Ducks do you in. But if you don’t take charge they will bleed you badly or possibly even to death.  Don’t let it happen.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

PS – No, my editor has not looked at this yet..

If that has not worked for you yet, I have another way to approach things. Rather than making a huge list of things that you need to get done, you concentrate on doing just one thing and concentrate not on the outcome per say but on how you are doing the process. I think that you will be pleasantly surprised out how much more you get done. Instead of writing a whole list of things that you want to get done for the day or the week, you make your list only have the one item that has to be done. Just one.

Then after you accomplish that, you then add another thing. You are not going to forget all of the things that get done, but you will start getting a sense of accomplishment.

You see, if have your own business, or you are even thinking about starting your Muse or Business, you expect more out of yourself than most people.

This is a good thing for the most part, but you also have a tendency to think in a positive fashion so as an

Entrepreneur we have a tendency to think that we can do the impossible all of the time. While we can do this most of the time, we are not going to be able to do this all of the time.

What happens when we do this is that even when we get 26 or 27 of the things we set out to do on any given day because we wrote down 28 or 30, our subconscious registers that day and ourselves as a failure. Even though we got 27 things done and kicked butt, deep in our mind, it still registers and not having done enough. Stop it; it is not good for you.

Try just writing down one thing that you have to do, do it and then write done one other thing that needs to be done. Don’t even think about writing anything else down until you have completely finished whatever it was that you were going to do.

Try this for a week. Then try it for a month. You will see that you productivity and the quality of the work you do is much better.

Now lets us get back to the best way to start. Well here again, start today, do just one thing no matter how big or small but do start and do not wait until tomorrow. If you do this every day you will be surprised at the results.

If anyone deserves a break, it is you. You are going to get there. Next I will write about what is stopping you from becoming a huge success and how to overcome it.

So, remember, just one thing at a time and build success on success.

The Answer And A Video Explanation Of Your Most Valuable Asset

So, what do you think your most valuable asset in business is that you have?  If you are like the rest of the go getter’s out there, we have a tendency to think that if we work a little harder, a little longer, and put in more of ourselves we will solve the issue of of the moment.

Now you would think that if you just could put a little more time in, you could get it done.  Well guess what?  No matter how well you manage your time, it won’t matter.  Will you get more done for a while? Of course but you can’t run effectively day after day at full tilt for 16,17, 18 hours a day.

Your most valuable Asset In Business is your energy levels.  If you go after a problem after you are well rested and healthy and your head is in the right place, then you can solve many problems or issues that come up in a manner of minutes.  Yet you try and do the same high level task when you are tired and it could easily take you hours to come up with the same quality of solution.

In the book ” The Power Of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz they bring up some very good statistics and examples of why this is true.

You know what I am talking about.  Where you are tired and even the words won’t come out of your mouth right and the simple things are a pain.  Well, guess what, when you are like that and the extra hour that you put in would be better spent resting.

As a recovering, oh heck, who am I kidding, active Workaholic,  I have to watch out for that myself.  The only reason that I do is that I do like what I do so much that I find myself taking things to the enth degree sometimes with projects.   Yet I know that I would be far better taking the time off and sharpening the Axe as it were.

The kicker is sticking with that philosophy even though I know it is true.  What does it for me is that I have people the depend on me now to make the right decisions and I know that burning the candle at both ends only should happen once in a while and not all of the time.  It is not effective at all.  It is also a symptom of a simpleton.  I already have one of those T-Shirts and I do not need another thank you very much.

Now that is not to say you should not have tight deadlines.  But you need to plan on taking time off to keep your energy levels as high as possible.   Take at least one day of the Weekend off.   If a project has you burnt out, then spend time on another one, step away from it for a few hours, days, or even weeks.   It can make a huge difference in your profits, and your quality of life.

Here is a video of Tony Schwartz speaking at Google about this subject.  Also, learn why multi-tasking does not work.  I have been following him for several years now and his stuff works and it makes sense.   Actually, it is common sense which is the least common of all senses.

And guess what?  I am actually getting more done.  While I have known this and in fact have even written about it extensively.  But it is amazing how just a few minor tweaks in the way you do things can have a profound effect on your life, your income, and your happiness and fulfillment factor.

Or what my Partner Craig and I  like to call the MadFun factor.

Guess what, checking your emails 40 times a day usually accomplishes nothing productive whatsoever.  You need to ask yourself am I keeping busy to keep busy or am I truly being productive?

Typically 20% of what we do results in 80% or more of our profit.  This is called the Pareto Principle for those of you that have never heard of it or the 80-20 rule.   Pretty cool guy actually Mr. Pareto.

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
Annie Dillard

Here is another Post that I did that talks about this that you might find interesting.

So, you might want to thing about unplugging.  It can put more money in your Wallet, and give you piece of mind that you might not have felt in some time.

Cheers,

This is an interview that I just did with Dave Olson over at HootSuite which is one of the best tools you can use for Social Media and your business.

They just released a team collaboration tool to manage a Businesses Social Media that frankly, just totally rocks and you need to get it.  I allows you to have several people use your Social Media and collaborate while limiting permissions.

Below the interview, I have  a video showing you what it can do.

If you are using not using this great Social Media tool (and it is free) and your competition is, at least you will now know why you are losing your customers to the them!    I am sure the blog will get hammered so be patient while the audio loads!

You can download the interview here in MP3 format.

Below is a raw transcript of the interview.  I wanted to get this posted ASAP.   HootSuite really gets it unlike so many companies out there.  Keep an eye on them for sure and go get HootSuite for criminy sakes.  Here is a link,  HootSuite.

Hope you enjoy this!

Cheers,

Interview of Dave Olson with HootSuite by Andrew Anderson.

AA is for Andrew and DO is for Dave of course.

A.A: I’ve got Dave with HootSuite on the line here, and of course this is Andrew Andersen. Dave, you want to introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do?

D.O: Yup. My name’s Dave Olson, and I work for HootSuite as the community director. I oversee all the marketing and support related task as well as spend a lot of time out just spreading the message to our passionate user-base.

A.A: I happen to be one of those passionate users, which is why we’re having this conversation today. I’ve noticed that you’ve got a really cool product that is honing in on businesses, which really need to use Twitter, and I’m just gonna kinda let you go off on your riff and tell us about HootSuite, and tell us why you think Twitter is good, and go for it.

D.O: What HootSuite tries to excel in is using Twitter and other social media platforms within groups – It’s all about the teams for us. And really, from the very first iteration, HootSuite was built to solve the problem of how do you manage multiple Twitter accounts with multiple editors. It kinda came out of that agency background. But as we built this product, we’ve listened to users and really saw where the future trends are leading, which is more social networks – people don’t just hang out on one. It’s not either or with Facebook and Twitter, it’s both in most cases, especially so in marketing. But now we’ve taken it a step further to create a context of owner and team members. Which allow groups to control their different social networks at a very granular level where they can have owners, advanced team members, and basic team members – they can all be created ad hoc so you can create a group around a topic, a project, a client account. All without revealing confidential password information which is really great especially considering the transitory nature of a lot of work environments where you might have interns or people moving on, people changing jobs, changing departments, and so on.

A.A: Right. And the value of that account is becoming higher and higher as more people depend on it too.

D.O: Oh, absolutely. We find, by listening to what people are talking about out there – and I spend a lot of time on the road talking to agencies and enterprises, and consultants and so on – they really think of HootSuite as a destination. This is their dashboard that they open up first thing in the day, even before their email, to listen to the pulse of what people are saying about their pertinent brand names out there. It’s tremendously important, and I would say, to businesses who aren’t using Twitter yet, even more so that talking to the people, it’s even more important to be listening to what people are talking about right now about. They’re talking about your brand even if you’re not listening. If you’re not involved in the conversation, you’re not getting in front of potential PR disasters, and you’re not out there prospecting and gaining more customers by being out there, listening to the people, and responding and reacting to their comments. [00:02:58] your own company, but certainly your competitors as well

A.A: And it can if you’re out in front of it, and I just wanna give a real brief example: I had made a Twitter comment, I’d used a product that I wasn’t happy with. They’re well known, I don’t wanna mention them in here. I made a Tweet about it, and I wasn’t being mean about it, I’ve learned never to do that because I have problems too, and I don’t know any company that has these issues but they had seen the Tweet, I had the CEO and their VP of marketing get a hold of me within 15 or 20 minutes of that and take care of the problem. I was amazed. And I’m not sure if that could have happened without Twitter and everything else

D.O: No certainly not, and I think where Twitter is really powerful is in its limitations. The whole ‘It has to be a short message’ allows you to digest these little dim sum sized morsels really quickly and respond and react to them. When sending an email, which just gets lost in the shuffle and people write an email and there’ll be 6 different topics in there – so it’s like “Oh geeze, I can’t respond to all of this”. But if you can fit something into 140 characters, usually it can be answered in a fairly straightforward manner. So it kinda creates this back channel into the offices all around the world of these people who [00:04:15] are very difficult to get a hold of.

A.A: Right. You’ve nailed it ‘round the head. What happens is it’s the ultimate in direct marketing. You have to be very precise, as you said, to get your message out there so that it’s understandable.

D.O: Yeah, and I think direct marketing sometimes has this connotation that it’s very indirect, it’s kind of spreading the message too far and wide. Now with Twitter by setting up a listening column and HootSuite for example, where you can listen for everyone talking about llama feed because you’re in the llama feed business, And every time you see someone saying ‘I have to go feed my llama’, or something to that effect, you can be chiming into them saying “Hey, I’m interested in your llama’s too. [00:04:56]. How many do you have?” When it comes time for feed, they’re more likely to contact you. Although I don’t know what the shipping cost is for llama feed across the country, so I should probably come up with a better example – maybe fly fishing.

A.A: It doesn’t matter what it is though. It doesn’t have to be a world away. That conversation could be taking place right in your community, and you would never know about it without twitter.

D.O: Yeah, absolutely. People do forget about the power of – and you see this a lot with tweetups and such where it’s local people. People that might be working just down the street from each other, or hanging out at the same coffee shop, all of a sudden are able to build relationships because they have this Twitter tool, this social media tool sort of bridging that divide of awkwardness that sometimes is between we human beings.

A.A: Yeah, absolutely. It’s obviously added a few zero’s to your guy’s bottom line. It can do that for anyone else too. I know it has in mine, in my consulting business, and everything else that I do. It’s absolutely added a complete zero to our profit this year.

D.O: Bear in mind too that HootSuite is a free tool. While there’s a premium version of the mobile versions for both Android and iPhone at $299. There’s also free versions for Android, iPhones, there’s the web version which is free, enjoy it. And there’s also three flavors of standalone applications that a lot of people don’t realize. People that are accustomed to using a standalone Twitter or social media tool, and they prefer that rather than running it in the web. There’s some versions that you can run it as a standalone application too, and at this point there’s no cost for any of those.

A.A: And $2.99, you don’t mean $299, right?

D.O: No, no. Although if you do want to pay $299, we’ll make sure that we spend the money to feed the developers tasty beverages on a Friday.

A.A: Ok. You’re talking about 2 dollars and 99 cents.

D.O: That’s correct.

A.A: Ok. Just wanted to make that clear for everyone else. What’s amazing Dave is, and we had this in our brief, previous conversation – I don’t know what your numbers are as far as penetration of people actually using Twitter for their businesses. But in my own experience in dealing with clients, I would say it’s really less than 3-4%, if that high, are really using it to their full advantage. It’s kind of amazing.

D.O: Yeah well a lot of companies get on and they don’t think of it holistically involved in their whole marketing and outreach in public media relations strategy. They think of social media as the red headed stepchild that’s sort of stuck in the corner. Sometimes within companies, they sort of randomly assign someone to manage this stuff. But really, this is just another tool in your marketing tool kit and once people start understanding the power of listening and talking in almost real time. It gets over that ‘Oh this is just a fad’ phase real quick if they do it right. The problem is a lot of people sign up for an account, they’re just using Twitter Web and they’re spending their time thinking about what to write rather than how to listen. When they do write, it’s talking about something like – maybe sending out a coupon offer, and they’re talking about themselves, when really you have to be out there building relationships which means talking about what other people are interested in. It’s not about being transparent; it’s about being translucent and sharing the interesting bits about you and your company.

A.A: Very well put. You guys definitely have a handle on it. It’s a powerful medium and I think that if a lot of companies would spend half the money that they spend on PR and advertising, and put in a social media like Twitter and everything else, they would get 10x return they’re getting now.

D.O: [00:08:46] return with spending 10% of the money. When I talk to people who are heavily invested in this kind of traditional advertising forms. I’m like how many people converted because of that billboard ad, or how many people converted because of that radio ad? And those numbers are really hard to quantify, whereas using Twitter and using HootSuite specifically with our onboard statistics, you can see immediately what Twitters generated clicks, how many clicks there where, where the people came from, and kind of the long tail of that – well there was a whole bunch here in the first couple hours, but look at that, it kept on going for another week. How many people re-tweeted that message – it’s real easy to find out. You can very quickly and efficiently generate metrics to justify the success and adjust your campaigns to fine tune them based on what you find is really working and what your audience is responding to. With a billboard once it’s up there, you can’t go in the next day and say “what we meant to do is”- you can’t do that.

A.A: Absolutely. As you said, you can track the links. If you set up your link to specifically deal with those people that were coming in from Twitter and the other social media, you can further leverage that as well and measure it. It just takes a little bit of common sense to get that put together.

D.O: Yeah, and if there’s some analytic stat geeks listening out there, they probably have discovered our custom URL parameters. It’s one of those features that we added, that we’re really excited about. This maybe 2-5% of our total user base understands or cares what this is. But this allows you to attach a whole bunch of information to your shortened URL that will tell you specifically what campaign, where it was sent from, who send it, and so on, so you can really slice and dice and compare – well what kind of conversions did we get from Twitter messaging as compared to Facebook messaging as compared to Myspace messaging, and you can slice and dice those statistics by campaign, which is a great way to turn in reports to your client. Or else for your internal use to hone your tactics. It’s a really powerful tool.

A.A: Can I rephrase what you just said? What he basically just said was “It’s gonna help you make more money”.

D.O: Yes. And spend less money to make more money.

A.A: Exactly.

D.O: And spend more time chilling out because rather than experimenting over and over and over again, you figure out real quick which platforms are working for you, which time of day is the best time to send messages out. You’re not caught in a spiral. You can adjust each campaign very specifically and very deliberately.

A.A: Very well said Dave. I know that you’re in on a tight schedule now. Do you guys track those metrics that you just spoke about? And do you guys have some ideas for that? You don’t have to give me all the information now, maybe perhaps we can talk again because I’m sure the audience is gonna be interested in this.

D.O: In other words, do we eat our own dog food?

A.A: Yes.

D.O: Absolutely. Like this morning when our new release came out, I had everything staged from yesterday to blog posts and the releases, and the videos and all the stuff goes out at a certain time. All of us here in the office, the developers included, released it, because it’s kind of a big deal, they’ll be able to keep an eye on all the conversation and all the chatter going on about HootSuite. Various terms about it, certainly we look at what people are clicking through, where people are coming from, and so on. Mostly the main thing that we look at is the sentiment. Who’s excited about it. Who’s talking about it. Who’s sharing it with their networks. What people are writing about it. We know about that kind of stuff in real time because we pay very close attention to it.

A.A: Good deal. As far as I can tell and as far as my use, it is the best social media product that I know from a business standpoint. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you guys, and I wanted to get the word out there. Great job on the new release there, it’s a fantastic tool. Everybody that’s listening or reading this definitely needs to go and get it. And the price is right, Dave.

D.O: The price is indeed right. And if anyone out there has ideas for features that they’d like to see added to HootSuite, we have a feedback channel: feedback.hootsuite.com

You can go there and put in your ideas for new features. Plus you’re allocated a handful of votes so you can go apply to other features that other uses have suggested that you’d really like to see on HootSuite as well. It’s another tool we use to pay attention to what the community cares about and where the passion is. I encourage you to use those tools.

If you need a little help getting started, check our help desk. There’s all sorts of ways to get in touch with us to get a helping hand to get you rolling with this tool.

A.A: I can attest that HootSuite is very responsive. I’m definitely impressed.

D.O: We try our best anyway.

A.A: Dave listen, I really appreciate you taking the time to have this chat. I know it’s gonna help a lot of people get their act together with social media, and hopefully get a bunch more users for an absolutely fantastic product that I can’t say enough about.

D.O: Appreciate the call and to all the HootSuite users out there, we truly appreciate your support of our product. And to all that aren’t out there using it, give it a try and I think you’ll be pretty happy.

A.A: Alright, thanks a lot Dave.

D.O: Bye for now.

A.A: Bye.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Cheers again,

I am going to explain how getting one could help you make a lot more money.

This is a two part Blog post.  This post  is before I have one of my Editors look at it and the next one will be after I have my Editor go through it.  It may be a miracle if there are no corrections but, I would not put money on it. 

How can not having an editor be costing you thousands or even 10′s of thousands of dollars?   Let me start out by saying that I am the King of mis-spellings, bad grammar and punctuation, on top of making up words, purposely mis-spelling others and being fond of alliteration, so bear with me as I explain this for my situation and how it can also affect you.

So, first off I have really bad dyslexia, which is rather ironic because of the fact that I make money from my writing.  What happens it the the conversation that I have in my head makes perfect sense, that is until I start to type it out and things get all messed up.  Usually, whole sentences will come out backwards and spelling and grammar are  arbitrary things.   I truly look at this as a gift and a competitive edge because this is just part of the way that my brain is wired and it allows me to see and recognize complex situations and see connections and create answers before a whole lot of other people.    But the bottom line is that if you or I have typos, bad grammar and punctuation, it does not matter how great your product or service is, no one is going to buy it!

Here is a fact. Most of us truly do judge a book by it’s cover no matter what we say, a lot of people and clients can’t see past the typo’s and grammar and realize just how much more profit I can help them make.

Do not get me wrong, a lot of people do get “it”, but at the same time, a lot of clients that would normally be lapping up everything that I have to offer don’t get past it.  This makes me a bit upset because I know they are going to end up with some Whanker of a consultant that can spell better but does not know his or her rear end from a hole in the ground about what they are doing and that potential client is going to lose out because of it.

That is what makes me most mad about it.  Of course it took me a while to realize it because while I do like to read things that are spelled correctly, to me it does not matter. But it does matter to some people and you and I need to care about them.

What is the answer?  Get an Editor, they could pay for themselves in 10 minutes for the whole year!    Seriously, if you blog or send out letters or copy, and you are not the worlds best at spelling, grammar, or punctuation, then get an Editor NOW!

Get one that likes to edit, there are people out there that love to do it and that is who you want.  It is easy for them too.   I am probably on the low-side but I pay mine $20 dollars and hour.   Crap, after this though, I am probably going to have to give them a raise.  But, whatever I pay them it is an absolute bargain in that it still probably only costs me about 50 cents to $5 per blog post on average to have one of them go over and get it right.

This means that I could pick up a $10,000 client because I spent 50 cents to $5 dollars on editing that post that caught their interest. Where else can you get this type of return?

Think about it.  People judge you by your output on the Web these days.  This is true in your Blogs, Website, your emails, everything.

As I say this, I still post to my Blog before I have one of my Editors go through it.    They usually are not up at 3:00 AM when I get a cool idea and feel compelled to do a post. But I am slowly disciplining myself to have them at least go over it quickly after I post it.  I probably won’t ever completely brake myself of the habit, but I am doing it a lot less now after I figured out how much money it could be costing me.

I still need to have them go through this site with a fine tooth comb.  If you look at any of the posts, you can tell when one of them looked at it or not quite easily.

Now, all of this being said, I don’t want you to say you can’t afford one either because you can and here is why.   I am going to make both of mine available to you.  Both have degrees and they are awesome at what they do.  They can help make you look like the genius that you are.

Now yes, I know you can probably find ones a bit cheaper,  but you really do get what you pay for in this one particular area up to a point.  I also know that you can pay a whole lot more for ones that are less competent.  It took me quite awhile to find these two.

Here is the deal. You can purchase one hour of their time for $20 at a time.   You can purchase as many hours as you need.  One hour  should cover a number of blog posts or pages on your website.

Just click on the button below and they will get you hooked up.   If you don’t, you will never know how much business you are losing.

Cheers,

Andrew

PS  For fun, just look at both of these posts and compare them.

My client was so busy running round putting out fires, taking care of things that had to be done, chasing their tail and chasing after buzzing flies, they were too busy to stop and actually start making enough money so they could stop running around being busy.

Whenever I am observing a client, I always remind myself to look in the mirror. As I did so, low and behold, I had begun doing a bit of fly chasing myself.   Not nearly as bad as the client, but the buzzing has a nasty habit of distracting you from the important things you should be doing, which is of course…making money.

A lot of this can be stopped in its tracks by simply having a written plan.  OK, I can make something else up if that was too easy but, it is often the only thing you need.  Write out a plan of at most 3 or 4 things that have to get done concerning making a profit, and then one important goal for the week and the month.  Be specific.  Say, I am going to get 20 new clients and build up 8 new residual income streams from them.

Being specific makes a huge difference.  So, don’t let chasing flies cause a fender bender while you are driving down the road to massive profitability.  Let them buzz, you can pay someone else to get them when you have arrived.  You will have enough money to do it.  Massive Profits means never having to swat your own flies.  Unless of course you really want to….     

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson
Profit Consultant