Productivity, Staffing and Mindset Tips

Hi Everyone,

Over the weekend I've been in Auckland, New Zealand, hanging out with Mark Joyner (New York Times bestselling author and founder of www.Simpleology.com), Marc Lindsay (www.amautomation.com), and another successful marketer called Joshua (who sells garden sheds online).

Marc and Joshua flew in from Australia, I flew up from Christchurch, and we went to catch up with MJ for the last time before he moves back to the United States (he has been living in Auckland for 7 years).

Anyway I thought I'd share a few tips I picked up from over the weekend:

Productivity tip

If you have staff or outsource workers working for you, get them all to fill in a short questionnaire detailing: a) What they did yesterday b) Any obstacles they came across c) What they are planning to accomplish today?

Even better, if you work in teams, get them all to do this in person or over the internet live so they are able to give feedback to each other. This should take no more than 15 minutes if done live. 

Personally I find that I get a LOT more work done in any given day when I start the day by writing down or punching into my iphone exactly the tasks that I want to have completed by the end of the day. This is a variation on that idea and in my opinion would be a helpful addition to just about any organization if it doesn't have a similar process already. 

Mindset tip

Every time I spend time hanging out with MJ, Marc and other successful people, I find my mind always seems to expand. This is both in the number of ideas that I have, and also in my overall inner belief system as to what is actually possible.

Personally I need to challenge myself to try to meet and spend time with people who are considerably more successful than me. That's easier said than done but there are ways and I feel I have a lot of online experience to share with others who may be incredibly successful offline.

MJ was telling me about how last time he was in New York, he hung out with a Billionaire, bumped into Helen Clarke at a party, and met several other influential people.

This isn't luck on MJ's part, it has come about due to years of hard work, intelligent marketing, diligence, reputation enhancing, branding, networking, friendship building and lots of other factors.

Personally I don't expect to ring up Richard Branson tomorrow and hang out for a week at his mansion. But I will be actively networking, helping others as much as I can, and building my own reputation through my various high quality websites and the growth of those businesses and I do intend build my reputation through authoring my own bestselling books too (my plan is to start with my first in the middle of next year).

You’re probably wondering... ok Mark, that’s great for YOU, but how can I get to know successful people?

For you guys reading this, here are some tips on how you can get to know millionaires:

1. Have a strong mindset. Be the kind of person who strongly believes they can do anything. And be a resourceful person, there is nothing wrong with asking questions to other people, but at least try to find the answer first yourself.

Don't be the person who emails in to support, what is 'ppc' or what is 'ebay'. Be resourceful, Google it first.

If you are asking other people to take time to give you advice on anything, just make sure you've at least spend 60 seconds looking for that answer yourself first.

You need to have the attitude that others are there to help you when you can't help yourself. Our customer support doesn't mind answering any kinds of questions, but that kind of mindset is usually symptomatic of a larger problem that you will need to overcome if you truly want to succeed big in the long run.

In short, be resourceful as a habit. Don't ask 'can I do it', ask 'where do I find the information on how it is done'.

2. Assuming you have the above attitude, one way to get to know internet marketers in particular is to be their most successful student.

Personally my most successful students aren't usually on the members forum for an hour a day, they are quietly going about their business only to give me an email 6 months later telling me how great they are doing.

There is nothing wrong with hanging out on a members forum and asking questions and helping others, that's great too, but go in there with a purpose, ie:

a. You can't find the answer in the members area of the product, or on Google, so you go there to find out the answer.

or 

b. You go in there to spend x minutes of time helping or inspiring others. 

or 

c. You actively choose to go in there AFTER you've done your work for the day on your website(s) and are in there for your own entertainment (if you are one of those guys that just love being in there :))

Just don't go in there out of habit or addiction. If you do this, you are taking time away from time you could be actively working on your business and being successful and you are only spending time surrounding yourself with people who are just getting started like you.

Successful people don't hang out on forums, they spend the majority of their time actively working on their business and moving it forward.

3. Flood yourself with information from highly successful people. Buy info products from reputable people, implement what you learn, buy books from amazon.com from people like Mark Joyner, Richard Branson, Jack Welsh, and so forth. Through consistent flooding of your mind over a period of time (it can take over a year), you'll upgrade your mindset to that of the people who are influencing you, then you'll see the bigger picture and probably by then you will be a LOT more successful than you are right now.

4. Another way to get to know Internet Marketers is to run a strong online business then go to live internet marketing events and tell successful marketers about the success you are having and a certain % of these marketers will be keen to get to know you too.

5. Make sure it is a win-win relationship. This is essential if you want the relationship to be a long term one. You have to be able to help them as much as they help you (either that or you better hope you went to high school with them or they are a family member :)). Helping them doesn’t have to be in the way of great advice that comes from you and leads to increased sales for them, it can be a strong testimonial from you that they can put on their website, it can be through helping out their customers on their members forum, or through other means, you just have to put your mind to it.

6. Once you know other successful marketers, so long as it is a win-win relationship (ie you give helpful advice as much as you receive it), there is a strong chance that they will happily introduce you to others in the future as you will be a good person for other marketers to know.

Note: Another thing you may need to do is weed out negative people from your life (or at least spend less time with them).

Health, Family and Friends first

Make sure you keep fit and healthy, keep spending time with your family or all the money in the world won't make you happy.

Productivity Tip (advanced only)

I'm looking into Agile development (with regards to managing software projects). I won't write up about that here as this has already become more of a novel than a blog post, but you can google it if you are interested. :)

Productivity Tip (advanced only)

Always make sure your staff know what their KPIs are as they will help them measure their progress towards the goals of the team they are in and of your company.

In short a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a quantifiable measurement agreed to beforehand that reflect the critical success factors of an staff member. You can also have overall KPIs for your overall organization.

Another analogy is ten pin bowling. Imagine playing a game with no pins... how would you know you've done well? You need the pins there to enjoy the game and to know what your score is. KPIs are like the pins in ten pin bowling.

Staff hiring (quick notes)

I'm going to be checking out Top Grading and also BrainBench.

One thing one company does is they offer their staff $2000USD to leave, they do this during the 3 month probation period. Sure it sounds costly but it helps eliminate people who are not there for the right reasons and will save a lot more in the long run.

Fulfillment

I'm going to be checking out Shipwire. I've looked at disk.com and speakerfulfillmentservices.com but haven't been overly impressed thus far, but am still investigating. Any tips anyone?

One key for me is quality of packaging, I want to be able to get my own plastic die cut so it looks quality when my cds, books and dvds go out.

Well that's it from me, what a long blog post! Phew!

All the best!

Mark