It’s basically saying that “I can’t do it all, so I have to choose.” Some things get dropped and some get put on hold allowing you to put focus and energy to get priority projects taken care of.  It’s all done very intentionally. 

For creative types like me who are overflowing with ideas and the mounds unfinished projects that follow– it is a refreshing thought.  

One of the hardest things –nix that–THE hardest thing for me in building a home business is finding focus due to information and idea overload. (A close second would be time management).  I put a lot of needless pressure on myself and I start feeling stressed when projects get neglected. It’s really senseless to try to keep up since I’m always getting new ideas.

Mike Filsaime talked about this some in the 7 Figure Code.  He said that multitasking is going to take you longer.  If a project normally takes 30 days, then in 30 days you will have money coming in if you focus on just that one project. If you juggle 3,4,or more then it will take months then it will take months before you see any return.

It sounds like sage advice and I’m doing my best to follow it.  

Deborah  
 

I spent a lot of money early on buying products that seemed interesting, but were either not what they promised or not what I really wanted to do. I wish I had some of that money back now that I know that I want to do Internet marketing.

Having made those kinds of mistakes in the past has made me more cautious about who I choose to learn from. No matter what we do, we need to learn the ropes from someone whose been there. We can do everything from scratch, but it is a much rockier road.

I’ve been piecing together information for a couple of years and I have a lot of knowledge about Internet marketing. What I don’t have is a good system and a way to wade through all of the info in my head. All of the successful people will advise you to get a mentor and I’ve been searching for the right person.

A few weeks ago I got an email from a friend telling me about a free webinar on creating your own info product business. I watched it and it looked promising. They said they were the “couple next door” and not gurus. That was nice to hear.

I didn’t jump right in, I decided to analyze things. I watched the webinar and analyzed their whole sales letter. With this couple, I had an advantage. We know some of the same people, so I got a personal recommendation. 

Another thing I did was use a chapter from Tracy Repchuk’s 31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles to evaluate a mentor. One of the things she said was to look at the testimonials. The gurus are always cross promoting each other. What you want to look for in a mentor is someone who has testimonials from everyday people. These people have gained success from studying with the mentor, not just because of connections or past knowledge.

I did finally buy it and it is different from most everything I’ve used. It’s an 8 week course in developing your own info product and building a business around a niche. One of the biggest selling points to me was that it focused on real niche topics, not just internet marketing.

I’m working on the first week and it’s a doozy. It’s about evaluating yourself and finding the niche topics that fit you. Then it goes step by step showing how to do the market research. I have struggled to find something that would give me info on how to research a product.  There’s not a lot of preliminary prep stuff out there. Most of it is jump first, learn to swim later (or never).

What I like about what this couple is doing is that the information is given in different forms – print, video, and audio.  They are also sending assignments out weekly and there’s no telephone call! I hate those calls where you sit listening for and hour and a half and get a 5 minute Q&A because they went over. There are calls just for Q&A, but the course is pre-recorded. 

Even though I’ve got a lot of technical knowledge, I’ve noticed that they leave no stone unturned in the tutorial department. There are so many links explaining how to do things. There was even a video on how to download audio and PDF files from the Internet. It’s very user friendly.

So far it has been a great fit for me. I’ve actually taken all of the ideas that were floating in my head – at least the internet business ones – and put them down on paper. It was a great accomplishment for me.

It’s an 8 week course and if all goes according to plan I will have a product and a launch at the end of it all. I’ve banned myself from reading or responding to anything else so that I can focus my efforts only on this. I’m not going to give a chapter by chapter report on this, but I will let you know my progress.

Keep thinking and rethinking,

Deborah

PS: Oops, I forgot to tell you what the course is.  It’s by Steve and Kerry Beck. You can find it at www.my8weekprofitplan.com

First, it’s not a fit for where I am right now.  Several times over the course, Mike Filsaime mentioned that what you do for a 7 figure business is very different from what you do for a 6 or 5 figure business.  The strategies he’s teaching are focused on taking your business to a high level of structure and forward momentum.

My goals are different seeing as I am a work at home mom of a preschooler and I’m preparing for homeschooling. I’m not ready to have employees and a rented office space. My office is in a black tote bag and goes with me to the wifi enable coffee shop. (OK, not really work-at-home, but did I mention I have a preschooler)

Everything I learned from the course so far has been wonderful and they have colored my decisions and how they affect my future. I really had to weigh whether it was best for me to finish or to put it on hold until later.  I decided to put it on hold.

One complaint I have about the 7 Figure Code is that it is only on DVD. I once heard Mike Filsaime say that he does video because that’s what the people want. That may be true, but I’m going to get a lot less out of a program if the only access I have to it is sitting passively in front of a tv or computer screen.

It would be fine if there was something to see, but these guys are standing on stage talking using PowerPoint presentations. It’s good to see the slides, but I need something more portable.  If he had offered the audios in addition to the DVDs I could listen and re-listen as I am doing other things.

I walk around with my MP3 player as I’m running errands, etc. It’s a great way to get an education without having to carve out more time. If I had audios, I could listen over and over again to reinforce what I’m learning on the DVDs.

That being said, I think the content I’ve watched so far has been top notch and has taught me a lot. It will definitely be revisited when the time is right. 

Deborah

Everything he was saying boiled down to one main point – “The sales process is the profit nervous system of your business.”  He started it all off with the statement that nothing moves without a sale.

It’s funny how many people, myself included, cringe at the word sales.  It does generate a lot of thoughts of insincere people using high pressure tactics to get you to buy something you don’t want or need.

I’m quite free with the buying, though. When I look at things from that angle, I realize that most of the time I’m willing and happy to buy the things I want or need and there was no pressure involved.

I’m very excited about this segment of the course. Stephen really lays out how to create this sales process even though it will take some deciphering.

Another thing he said is the value is not in the product it’s in the process – specifically the sales process. It makes sense.  You can have the best product in the world that everybody needs, but without a great way to sell it you really have nothing.

In my MLM experience, you hear a lot of people say “the products sells itself.”  NOT.  A product can go only go on it’s own strength so far.  If you don’t have a good way to produce and promote the product or to service and retain customers then your product is going to sit there.

The ones who are successful in MLM didn’t ride the coat tail of a product that sold itself, they built a business around the product.  This is true for all types of businesses and products.

He also said that actions that don’t contribute to success in some way are wasted. He gave analogy of some of his coaching clients.  They have a business that is not working, they call him in and talk about all of their efforts to automate what they are doing.

What do you think he tells them? You don’t automate something that doesn’t work.  It does seem silly to take an action that doesn’t bring anything valuable to you or your business and to put it on autopilot in order to multiply it.  Multiply anything by zero and you still get zero – that’s pretty elementary.

But, how often do we do this without realizing it.  We may not be consciously creating an automated system, but we keep doing the same things, in the same way, getting the same results.

Both Stephen and Mike have pushed home that you have to have a way to measure what is going on.  This helps you find out what’s not working so you can focus on fixing the weakest link.  It also tells you what’s working so you can duplicate and learn from it.

Again, this makes senses, but it is going to involve a different set of skills to learn and a system/process of doing it.  It’s one of those things I’ve got to get lined up in the system. There’s a little bit of framework for this so far, but I’m hoping for something more indepth later in te course.

He did give a great guideline.  He said “Don’t do what you can’t measure, and don’t measure what you can’t change.”  It such common sense, but I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own.

He also had a point about information overload.  He said no one goes into the bookstore and gasps “Too many books!!!” and passes out on the floor from the stress of it.  He says it’s because a person goes into a bookstore knowing what they want and knowing what you want helps you to discern what is going to be beneficial to you. That’s a true point.

I would like to add to that part of the reason you don’t get information overload in a bookstore is that is has a system and everything is nicely categorized for you.  Also, they are not always throwing free stuff at you ith huge bonus packages of more free information…………
and emails for their other products……with free stuff…
…… and yet more from their JV partners
…. with all of their free stuff……….ad infinitum
It’s really a huge flaw in the system, but that’s for another post.

I wish I could better communicate with you all of the jewels of this presentation, but I’ve just barely scratched the surface on it.  I guess there’s a reason why people pay him $10,000 for a one-on-one strategy session.

To your best,

Deborah

So it’s simple, right? Get a system. Maybe for some people it comes easy, but not for me. People roll their eyes at me about saying this all of the time, but it is true– I am a creative, right brained person.

Right brained people are great with things like brainstorming and idea generating because we think in patterns – seemingly random. Left brained people think in straight lines.

Guess who creates most of the systems? Yu-huh – the lefties. So I try to avoid reinventing the wheel and I find these systems and none of them make any sense to me. They are not things I can maintain.

Plus, a lot of them leave gaps. They assume you understand something or, because they think in lines, they don’t take into account all of the variables.

Worst of all, most really don’t have a system. They just have a bunch of methods or tools. That is the most overwhelming – fishing through a truckload of elements trying to join them together into a workable whole.

And to top it all off, there’s the guilt that these system creators lay on you. They don’t mean to, but it works that way for me. They say things like “don’t recreate the wheel” and “just get something going and figure it out as you go”.

It’s not really bad advice, but it really doesn’t solve the problem, does it? I’ve put lots of things up to figure out as I go, but they don’t go anywhere because I don’t have a system working behind it. So my thing now is to get my system up and figure the system out as I go.

Sometimes it’s right and good to recreate the wheel. I guess I’m a custom model because I haven’t been able to find a wheel to fit my particular car . I know that’s a shock to some of those systems creators out there who don’t understand that the system that is so simple for them doesn’t work for everyone.

My Little Rant about Left Brainers
I must admit, I’ve got a lot of hurt feelings in this area. It’s really hard when people look at the way you think and do then they tell you how you need to “do right”– like your way is wrong rather than different. It’s frustrating to see many, many perspectives while people around you tell you that they are far fetched or nonexistent because they only see the one in front of them.

I shouldn’t let it bother me so much, but I have a lot of old wounds. I have been put down by many people because I don’t act and think “normally”. For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me and that I was less than others. It wasn’t until adulthood that I understood that I was creative and probably my 30′s before I started understanding the value of that and how that shapes me.

OK, those are my issues. I’m working on them. I’ll move on now.

What am I doing about it?
The first thing I did was look back at systems I have created that worked. It was a good experience for me.

I have systems that I set up for business that worked for me. This includes Amazon, EBay, vending, and teaching music lessons.

I really created some great things working at my Mom’s H&R Block franchise and now I’m building new ones working in a company owned office. It’s easier at a job than at home because I don’t have home disorganization clashing with office disorganization.

I’ve tried for years to find a working system for my Shaklee business. A lot of my rant above was frustration with the Shaklee systems- both from the company and from the field. (I’m starting to see some glimmers of cohesion in that area, thankfully.)

Other systems I’ve created have to do with my personal life. It was a real eye opener when I went to a conference when my son was a few months old. I was writing down instructions on how to care for him. It was very detailed and I realized how I had really created all of the systems about how his day went and how to handle situations that come up.

When I started to think about these things, everything else came into perspective. It seemed doable because I had already done it. I’ve just got to do it bigger and more deliberately.

It really seems much more possible to me now.

To your best,

Deborah

It has a paralyzing way to live. The sad thing is that that was over two years ago. If I had worked the flywheel instead of the doom loop I would have had something going by now. I knew the concepts because I listened to Good to Great around that time.

That’s one of my patterns. I hear a concept and get an intellectual understanding, then it might become part of my language. It takes even longer, if ever, before it becomes a part of how I do things…how I am. It usually takes life experiences that solidify that idea. Then when I revisit the concept it starts to take root.

I guess it fits with the idea of planting the seed, watering it, making sure it gets sun, and then it starts to root, to grow, and over time it puts out fruit.

Maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be. In this instant everything culture you start to feel like your broken if things don’t work out immediately for you.

Just today I was talking with my husband about the beets in the garden. It seemed like they were late this year. He said “No, they are ready 60 days from planting.” I realized that a farmer can’t really be an impulsive kind of person.

It sure explains some things about the differences in our families. His family is into delayed gratification and mine is less so. Farmers have their daily tasks and see the fulfillment of it at the end of the season depending on the circumstances.

Blue collar workers, like my family, get a job, go to work, and get a paycheck every two weeks or so. It’s hard work, but there’s no waiting, no building and little risk of losing it compared to the vulnerabilities a farmer faces.

It’s interesting to think how the industrial revolution has changed our culture. How is the information age changing us? It sounds like an interesting study.

The thing about momentum is that it starts to take on a lot of the work for you. When this really kicks in then you experience a kind of tipping point. Then that flywheel is really going strong.

This is also the point when people start calling you an “overnight success”. It doesn’t matter how long it took to get there, it seems like overnight to everyone else.

I’m still pushing at the flywheel, but being reminded of this concept is an encouragement to me especially as I look back over the last couple of years. I’ve made mistakes, lost money, wasted money, flitted about from one thing to the next, overloaded myself with too much free and paid information, etc.

The great thing is to see how I have been pushing at that wheel. All of these experiences have built me and I do see some momentum building. I am able to pare down so much better than before. I still get overwhelmed with information, but I’ve noticed some internal changes.

Now I can look at things and make quicker decisions about whether it is going to bring me value or weigh me down. This is even stronger now that I have started identifying my hedgehog.

Of course, taking direction in itself is not the way. It’s about taking appropriate action steps in a consistent direction with a working process in place. It’s really easy to take the wrong kind of action and do it consistently. That’s really frustrating – lots of work and no fruit. Do you know what that’s like? I sure do.

To your best,

Deborah

The gist of it is that the fox is really smart. He can hunt… he can strategize… he can dominate with his physical prowess and intellect. 

What can the hedgehog do? He basically can curl up completely in a ball where only his spines stick out .  That is his only and best protection.

The reference goes back to a poem from ancient Greece which states  “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”

In business and in life you can see these general patterns playing out.  You hear about people who knew what their career would be in elementary school and people who work in a field for decades.

Then there’s people like me.  I’m creative and curious.  My sister said to me when I was talking about one of the new hobbies I had just discovered, ”You never just stick your toe in the water to see what it is like.  You always jump all of the way in.”

There are aspects I love about being a fox, but the reality is that I’m unproductive. I can’t get projects finished, I can’t focus, and I have a cluttered mind.  Hence, my pursuit of my inner hedgehog.

I have other things to add to my distracted mind such as diabetes, sleep disorders, and a 3 year-old underfoot, but the struggles I have get their roots in my do-it-yourself, know everything, perfectionistic approach to life.  Couple that with a fear of working with other people and I’m pretty much shot.

One thing about foxes is they are very intelligent.  In many ways intelligence can be a barrier to success.  I’m not saying intelligent people aren’t capable of being successful, but there are several struggles that intelligent people face. 

One is overthinking things. I do this all of the time.  When I was in seminary, I had to take the bus for a couple of weeks while my car was being repaired.  Before my initial trip I agonized over how to ride the bus.  How do you know where it’s going? How do I let them know I want off?  Where do I put the money/ticket? and on and on. 

Then I realized.  Why am I making this so hard? It’s the city bus for goodness sake. I did figure it out and always made it to class and home without incident.

In the 6th book of the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore told Harry that since he was “cleverer” than most he made much bigger mistakes that were harder to get over. 

That is the plight of the fox.  The more complicated things get, the greater chance they have to crash and burn.  Simplicity and focus with an eye on developing workable systems is the way to go.  I can see that future even though I’m not there yet.

I never want to completely quit being “foxy”.  I just want to nurture that little hedgehog so I can actually enjoy the fruit of some of these great ideas I have.

To your best,

Deborah 

It started with the general conference administrative stuff that really didn’t apply to me and then went into some concepts from Jim Collins author of Good to Great. 

Some of it reminded me of Stephen Covey. Covey is best known for his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and his time/life management empire FranklinCovey.  His name wasn’t mentioned, so it was probably overlap especially in regard to holding to your values.

I am fans of both of these mens’ work, so the concepts were not new to me.  It was helpful to hear them laid out in this context though.

Mike Filsaime and his friend/business partner Tom Beal began the discussion with the concept of a vision statement which is future focused as opposed to a mission statement which is more about identity and practices.

Writing these statements has always been difficult for me because it is so hard for me to narrow things down.  This presentation of the idea was a pretty short and simple overview, so it wasn’t a life changing “Oh, now I can write a vision statement!”  It’s still going to be a work in progress for me.

The next thing he talked about was BHAGs.  That stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goals.  These are goals that are bigger than you can imagine, but they are still attainable. I’ve tried to set these before, but I never can get the right focus. 

Even though I’m familiar with these concepts, it is helpful to address them in the context of a course where I am working toward something.  So many of the things I have learned kind of float out there in the ether only to materialize in a thought or conversation. They are rarely part of a cohesive whole.

That is really what I am searching for…a unity, a system, a focus.  That’s why I keep working at it. 

I will tell you more about the first DVD in the next post.  Some of Jim Collins’ concepts are very encouraging to me when I think about the path I’m on.

To Your Best,

Deborah

It has been difficult to focus on this because of all of the distractions at home.  It is the plight of the work-at-home mom to find a way to balance work, family, church, personal life, etc. when you are the sole creator of the schedule.

About the course, I came in a very large box with two huge binders and 16 DVD’s in their own cases.  The binders have tabs for each DVD, copies of the PowerPoint slides and a transcripts of each presentation.  They recommend using a composition book for notes. 

I’ve been pulling out the section for the DVD I am watching and put it in a smaller binder so I can handle it easier.  

So far the quality is good, even though I would make serious improvements on the packaging including a DVD binder instead of cases or at least putting titles on the DVDs instead of DVD 1, DVD 2, etc., and making the slides with a light background so I could write notes on them.

I’m processing the information and my report on the first DVD is coming soon – hopefully today. Keep in touch.

To Your Best,

Deborah