Time Technology  Tips and Traps

As we continue to explore new technologies into the future, it will become increasingly important that you don’t fall into any time traps with these popular technologies. I am going to try to provide tips on how to avoid these time leaking traps that so many of today’s technologies are causing, most relating to the communication end. Technologies I am going to cover are the internet, web-based email, pop3 email, text message, voicemail, fax machines, answering machines, business phone systems, cell phones, instant message, home phones, cable TV, YouTube, DVD players, and PDA’s.

As a general rule I believe technologies were first created with the intentions to make all of our lives easier, to save us time, and help us remember our list of things to do. Generally speaking, I believe most of this to be true, but I believe there are a lot of problems in theory with a lot of these technologies. If you don’t keep on top of them, or don’t watch your time closely you can really waste a large amount of your time. I believe the increased ease of communicating with people via technology has to some degree made it worse. A perfect example of this is e-mail, which is a great form of communication, but because it’s so easy for the masses, SPAM greatly worsens this concept.

Another big thing that has ruined technology is the lack of compatibility, it’s changing too quickly, and it takes far too much time to learn the technologies’ new features upfront before we know how to use it. One other problem is there is still a large part of the population, mostly those 40 years or older, that simply don’t like technology, didn’t grow up with it, and aren’t open to learning it. Technology works best when those using it along with others who understand it, if the others don’t’ understand it, it will cost those who understand it time, which they may feel is not for them to teach. I do know technology is the #1 cause for America’s growing short attention span. Technology has now introduced unlimited amounts of info and activities to keep the global world busy.

The Internet-Access to the internet is a great resource for most, it saves a lot of time, and has a lot of information to offer. Unfortunately with billions of pages today, it’s hard to know what’s worth reading, and what’s even true. It seems everyone blogs and now writes on the internet, so it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to tell who’s the expert and who isn’t. We all have found hours of time being saved by search engines, especially Google.com. I believe Google.com is one of the biggest time savers that the internet can give us. I believe yellow pages, and phone number lookup sites are much faster online as an alternative to the big books. The internet sometimes can get us off course with so many random articles written about absolutely nothing of importance. I personally like the internet as a hobby and I believe it to be a great research tool. It’s great for looking up information quickly. If you can stay focused on the internet, and use it when needed, it can be a big time saver. I think there are far too many amateurs marketing on the internet with get-rich quick or something they have spent only 1 week testing out before they market it to you. We need to cut through most of this SPAM and learn to read only what’s important. You may want to use only trusted well-known websites or spend time reading reviews. You really have to watch out on how many email lists you sign up to without knowing because eventually you have 50 companies sending you 1 email per day, plus another 100 spamming you that you didn’t ask for. That 150 per day can consume an hour or more of your time daily. In most cases I would just suggest not signing up to an email list online, it’s usually good for 2 weeks, but after that rarely does that newsletter work out. The internet is a great way to learn something about everything. You have to realize that many years from now knowing a little bit, about an unlimited amount of things won’t help you much in life or with your career. You should try to focus your learning to 1 or 2 specialties that interest you, and than you may possibly use that info later in a small business you own. That way all of the time you use learning on the internet as a hobby is relaxing and at the same time helping you out in your future career.

Online Passwords-I understand the need for security, but we now have so many passwords to keep track of it’s an overwhelming use of all of our time. You could have the same passwords or keep all passwords saved on your computer, or on your PDA, but if someone got your computer, or your PDA it’s a big security risk. They make you change the password constantly. I, like many people, just click the “forgot the password” link, it’s just easier. It takes up a lot of time, somehow you need to have your passwords saved somewhere safe. Forgetting your password often can be very time consuming, a very big waste of time.

Web-based email: Email that is web-based back before 2007 was pretty good, but one downfall was that your mail account got full too quickly and it got full and you had to start spending a lot of time deleting things, it was very time consuming. Since about 2007, Google and Yahoo have unlimited storage for your online email mailbox. This is a big time saver, I find. I really like being able to login to the internet from any location, any state, or country and access my email and files. Internet access is becoming more common today, so web-based email is starting to look better than alternatives. I believe pop3 email probably integrates better with people’s address books on their cell phone, so pop3 email may have that advantage. I believe you can import lists now through many web-based email platforms. SPAM and unwanted email is beginning to be one of the biggest time wasters on any given day. Some people spend 10-30 minutes per day reading SPAM. You can use services like Spamarrest.com. It will have those who send you emails need to verify their account first, which will cut out most SPAM. Two of the biggest time saver tips you can implement into your life would be to not join email lists, or newsletters. Unsubscribe instantly if you no longer want them. This list should be at the bottom of your email you receive from the person or company. The second thing that many don’t know is don’t list your email address typed out on websites like email@domain.com because what happens is spammers have computer programs that scour the web to harvest email addresses. After simply days and weeks they can put together 20 million email addresses pretty easily. As you can imagine they push a button to email those 20 million emails as often as they can. You will get a very large increase of spam by doing this. Ways around this are using email forms. Some will do something like email at domain.com. That will probably avoid a lot of it, but maybe not all.

Pop3 email- Pop3 email is good to set up with something like Outlook. If you are using a blackberry or PDA, it can be more efficient and quicker. What typically happens with this method is the incoming emails download onto your PDA. Years ago when I used to use outlook, once the emails had downloaded onto one computer, you couldn’t access it from another computer, it had transferred to only that computer. I don’t know if it’s different today, but that didn’t work well for me back then. I liked being able to access everything from one location, I prefer web-based email because I found all files were stored from one central location, so no matter what computer you used from home, work, out of state, you could access your files.

Fax Machine-I like fax machines for sending faxes, I don’t like fax machines for receiving faxes. Fax machines are a necessity for faxing. I especially like the fax machines with the memory function, email and storage function. If your fax machine can run through all pages in seconds, especially a lot of pages, this can save you a lot of time. Also, once your fax is saved on the fax machine you are able to save it there or email it right from the fax machine, that can be a big time saver. Title companies and mortgage companies like these time saving features. If you are going to send from a fax machine to someone else with a fax machine, if at all possible you may want to stand there 3 minutes and make sure the fax went through, and then call the other person in 5 minutes to make sure they received the fax. Why spend those 3-5 minutes standing there? The reason is people days later or later that day will forget to mention to you that they never received the fax, so now you have lost and delayed 1-2 days, this can really add up over time. Due to all of the fax jams, and people running out of toner, I prefer to fax to someone’s maxemail or efax # which I’ll discuss in another section.

MaxEmail/E-Fax- I use the service MaxEmail.com. I have used it for years. As of the time of this writing I have my real estate license. I find that it saves me many hours. For those not familiar with how it works, you fax to a local fax phone number, or someone else can fax your own local fax number. At the time of this writing, I pay only $7.95/mo. When the fax comes in, it’s converted to a PDF file. PDF files are easily read through Adobe Acrobat. This saves a tremendous amount of time. You save from paper jams, or the need to wait by the fax machine. There is no need for a scanner, you will have the PDF file stored in your email or saved onto your computer. When the fax gets converted to a PDF file it automatically emails it to your email of choice wet up with your account. From that point, you can choose either to save the file to your computer, and email someone later, or what I do that saves even more time is just forward the email I get from MaxEmail directly to the recipient of choice. You can email or text someone your fax #, tell them to fax you. They do it on there own time, anytime 24 hours per day. It comes to your email and you forward it over. The total time maybe is 1 minute or less. Compare that to driving 30 minutes to pick up paperwork, paying $15 for gas, working overtime to pay for the gas and driving back. In some cases you may have to drive the paperwork to someone to sign, then drive it to someone else once it’s signed. We have all used fax machines before, but the PDF method is even faster. I find with regular fax machines that the other person’s fax machine is often on the same phone line as their home phone, so you have to call them first to have them change it, or can only fax certain hours. Also I find that people aren’t going to wait near the fax machine. When you call the person 1-2 days later they say that their fax ran out of paper or toner, and they need you to fax it again. With Maxemail, I have very few problems. In addition I fax things to myself all of the time just so it can come to my email where it’s saved on my email hosts server as a way to store files. This works great for black and white pages, not color or photos. I have seen people wait by a Kinko’s, just to receive a fax, when all you have to do is have a local Maxemail number. The price monthly is less than gas to drive to Kinko’s.

Answering Machines-I think the time of using answering machines has passed, it’s a think of the past. If you can’t physically hear an answering machine’s message from another location it doesn’t make sense to me. Answering machines also aren’t that private. Voicemail is a much better digital alternative to answering machines. No more tapes, no more fumbling around, go with voicemail. Voicemail can be listened to from any phone and any location, provided you know the password. Can you imagine driving 30 minutes home just to check an answering machine? Get voicemail, lose the answering machine. Voicemails often can be forwarded to people with the right setup.

Business Phone Systems-When I talk about phone systems I am talking about business phone systems for fortune 500 type of companies, such as your electric company, cable or internet company. I am a firm believer that these companies need to keep their prices so competitive that they need to put you on hold for 20 minutes or more, or put you through so many transfers and hoops that it’s really put a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. I don’t mind who works at these companies, but when you can’t understand what they are saying it’s also a very difficult process for the end consumer. I believe a lot of the people that answers these phones are not well trained in, and they are learning things on your time, because the management didn’t take the time to train them in, and there is a lot of turnover. I personally am deciding to not deal with many of these companies anymore or avoiding dealing with them whenever possible. These customer service places can take up hours of your time per week and per month. Whenever possible I would recommend getting your questions answered online or do your transactions online. Another thing I would recommend is immediately asking for a supervisor. The supervisor has authority to do some things while new employees don’t. Also the supervisor has more training and may be easier to understand on the phone. At the very least you need to make sure you have been transferred to the right department to answer your questions. You need to make sure you make it clear to them that you may cancel if service isn’t provided, or your questions aren’t answered, this may speed them up.

Playstation/Wii/Xbox-These gaming systems are so much better than when I was growing up. They are coming out with new games all of the time. For those who designed them they did an excellent job, so excellent in fact that many kids and adults play for hours, even a full day. Everyone needs a weekend to relax or have fun sometimes, but I wouldn’t recommend it in place of, or an alternative to using your only free time for exercise or educating yourself. Take a break to play a game, but don’t spend all your time and money on this stuff and don’t let it consume all of your time. If you are under 16 years old, have fun enjoy your younger years. If you are over 25 years old, it’s time you focus your time on activities that help your education towards growing your future.

Text Message- I personally like text message as a quick efficient way to communicate in today’s world. I get far more done with text message then without. I get far more done with text message than by phone in those cases where the people I am calling are busy, and we are kind of on the same page. Text messaging while you are driving or for leisure activity isn’t really a time saver, or recommended. If you text message in the business world with other associates, you can find that you get answers more frequently, and much quicker turn around time if they too use text message. One day if there comes a time that too many people text each other, or if it ever gets as bad as SPAM has with email, then texting may no longer be valuable as a time saver. You can’t call someone and reach them in a meeting, but you can text them. You can’t call someone in a loud restaurant, bar, or similar place, but you can text them. People tend to take hours or days to check their voicemails, not so with text message for those that use it. Text message has things put in writing. Writing works great for addresses, directions, phone numbers, names, anything that someone needs to reference later. Text message is usually only done between people that know each other well, so the priority is usually higher. In today’s world your cell phone and home phone receive too many calls from telemarketers. Even too many calls from credit companies where you are only 1 day late on a payment. Too many companies call now, and I believe that consumers are now burnt out. Texting limits messages to only people you know. I have had 30 questions answered in 1 business day over a few hours by 1 person. I would compare this to be similar to instant messaging. I find it hard to get someone’s attention on the phone for more than 5-10 minutes these days.

Cell Phones- Cell phones do save some time when used properly. They help in cases of emergencies. Cell phones help to call ahead, or to give early notice. Cell Phones are great to call out and get answers to questions you have. Situations in which I think cell phones take up someone’s time, would be when they walk around the grocery store for 1 hour talking to someone on the phone about each isle in the grocery store, each food item, and what they do or don’t want to buy. I believe some people use a cell phone to talk just for the sake of talking. Others ways cell phones waste a lot of time would be the numerous calls that come in to voicemail. These days, far too many voicemails are coming in any given day. Some voicemails are very long and take a lot of your time. Most people who have there cell phone and listen to voicemail don’t have a pen with them at the time, so they listen to it, but don’t bother to write it down at that time. Communication amongst others has become too easy with cell phones, and I think too many people take for granted the easy access. Users decide which calls to answer by screening calls with their caller ID, instead of dealing with something right then or there. It’s too easy not to answer the cell phone in today’s day and age and just deal with it later. This one occurrence has made cell calls amongst people a very big time waster, in my opinion. The biggest time waster of all with cell phones is voicemails. Let me explain that later in the voicemail paragraph. A lot of other problems are that people call others back before they even listen to the voicemail just left for them.

Voicemail-Search the internet and it’s easy to find people rant on about how they dislike voicemail. People talk too fast on voicemail, often they don’t leave names or phone numbers. Many times you have to listen to voicemail 1 at a time from the beginning. When you are leaving a voicemail you have to wait through that 60 second greeting, or you can just press 1 to bypass it, but if you are driving, or in the dark it’s not as easy to press 1. I know for a fact that 90% of people I talk to do a poor job of returning voicemail because their voicemail is always full, or their voicemail has 25 other messages. Here’s how it often works: I call and the person doesn’t answer. They call me back after I just left a voicemail and say I see you called. So that cancelled each other out, a waste of time. Let’s say I leave them a voicemail and they would normally call me back later. Here’s what happens, they check some of their voicemails while they are out driving or doing something else, and they don’t write down their messages, they try to memorize them. Then later they forget to call because they didn’t write it down. Now let’s say they are fortunate to remember they need to call you later the next day, they don’t because they would have to go through 25 voicemails just to get to your voicemail, if they can find it, with your phone #. It makes for a very inefficient process. Even if you are good with writing down your messages, and taking good messages, the problem is that nobody else is, especially busy business professionals. I personally think voicemail on cell phones has not worked well since 2004, and I have preferred text message to it at least since the year 2005 for getting work done with other business people. People will leave a 5 minute voicemail, then they will say there name or phone # really fast, and if you don’t catch it, you have to listen to the whole voicemail again. People need to speak slower and leave their phone # in the beginning of the message. I find voicemail a bit difficult to check and program while driving, so it’s something you really need to sit down somewhere and check. At that point we might as well have a small laptop, and wireless internet. I would suggest text message or cell phone email, maybe the use of a blackberry instead of voicemail. Voicemail also is audio; I personally like things in writing, it’s easier to reference later. Once you listen to a voicemail, you first need to write it down and then enter it into your cell phone or blackberry, so you might as well have just emailed to your blackberry, where you’ll save many steps and get the same end result.

Instant Message-Instant Messaging through AIM, MSN, Google, Yahoo messenger, or any other online medium is common for a younger audience, but as you get older it makes more sense for business purposes, especially when those people are long distance, from other states and other countries. Some of these instant message applications have great text log features. They have good file transfer features, and they are often best used when each party communicating is at each others computer at different times and schedules. I personally think the best part about them is that it creates a chat log in writing. Having these items before you in writing can allow you, the computer user, to do stuff on your computer while talking, great for multi-tasking. You can instant message someone without really interrupting what they are doing, they can answer it at their own time on their own schedule. Instant message was popular many years before text messaging on cell phones. Instant messengers can also be implemented with some internet users email address books, which can prove to be convenient. These instant messengers will often update their software and come out with new versions, in which you can be doing something else while waiting for the download to finish.

Home Phones- I think home phones don’t make a lot of sense in today’s modern technological world. People are so often away from home these days, that by the time they get home to check messages it’s been too long, or at the very least slows things way down. These days get a cell phone plan to replace your home phone, and use the cell phone for both. In the case of DSL, you can just get cable internet in most areas, so there really isn’t a reason to have a home phone. A home phone number is just another number you’ll have to remember, program, and get everyone else to have to remember or program. If you are someone that moves every year, everyone you know has to update it frequently into all of their technology products. Just get a cell phone and keep that number forever. When you switch cell phone companies you can take the phone # with you now, and before you buy the next cell phone, please make sure you can install your SIM card. Right now I use sidekick through T-mobile, and all of my phone numbers and names can be entered through my T-mobile account and everything is saved over the airwaves for when my phone crashes, or even if the battery is removed.

Cable TV-Due to the overwhelming amount of channels available on cable television these days, those with a remote find it’s easy to channel surf for hours. With everyone’s increasing short attention span, it’s easy to see how after hours of watching cable TV, one may not really learn anything. Try to find educational TV, focus on a niche that will make you smarter at what you love. This concept will strengthen you into more of an expert in whatever niche you choose. Don’t spend your time watching crazy car chases, cop shows, and Jerry Springer shows, that is not a good use of your time.

YouTube-Youtube.com is a great website for video clips. It has a great variety of videos to choose from, internet surfers spend days viewing them. It’s simple enough to get caught up on this site because every video on average only takes about 3 minutes on average. Because of the short timed videos, it’s very easy to get caught up watching one video after another for hours. You’ll have to admit most of the videos on the site, besides the music videos are funny stuff, but can be considered a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, everyone needs to watch some funny video’s every once in awhile, for a good laugh, just don’t consume hours of your day on the site, unless it’s for educational use.

DVD Players-There are so many DVD movies out these days, and they are so inexpensive that many people find themselves buying themselves a large collection, stacking up large piles. Your life can easily be consumed just watching movies all day and all weekend. In addition, watching the same movie over and over doesn’t make you any smarter, or present anything new in life, wouldn’t you agree? Personally I don’t think it makes sense to buy hundreds of DVD’s, maybe a few of your favorites that you like to see often. Today renting a movie doesn’t cost that much, try redbox.com. Owning anything for the sake of owning, usually is a bad idea. I know what you’re thinking, it cost $3+ to order it on TV, $3+ at the store, and it’s only $7.50-$10.00 to buy it, that’s not that much more, but it does add up. Later you’ll buy bookshelves for that collection of your DVD’s. that’s one more thing that’s going to sit there throughout the years that you probably won’t get to. Years later when it’s time to move, it just another thing that takes up your time. I recommend just renting a movie when you have that urge to watch it, then return it. Don’t collect DVD’s, it’s time consuming. The time it takes to sell them someday, or the fact their will be another technology better within 5 years doesn’t make it worth collecting.

PDA’s- The personal organizers these days have great features to keep individuals organized. Today’s PDA’s include a lot of short cuts and great reminders. I believe they are best when used daily. Once you lose the daily habit it loses it’s importance, or things are forgotten. The appointments on the PDA are only good if you stick to the dates and times. Having everything in one place can save someone a lot of time. That time use to be spent searching for lost information. Some circumstances with PDA’s present challenges, such as: When you get to be in too much of a hurry, you get too much going on, and you forget to charge your PDA battery. Imagine that you jump in your car with your PDA, you are running late, traffic is worse than you thought, you go to your PDA for directions to the place you are going. It’s at that point you realize that what you had is on your PDA, but your PDA battery is dead. You are now stuck, you can’t go back home since you are now in traffic. You could call the place that you are driving to, but their phone number is also on the PDA. Some electronics, if the battery is left dead for 12-24 hours, you’ll find that the information erases on the device. Everything at that point is lost. All of the hours of entering all of that information. You’ll want to make sure you sync your PDA to your computer so that the information is backed up on your computer in case that were to happen. Another example is if you were to only back up 1 time per week, or maybe more frequently, every 3 days. The first time you lose your data, you realize that you have lost 3 days of info, that’s still a lot of lost time. It may take more time of yours to make up those 3 days lost than what it was saving you every day in the first place. You must back up all of your information, all of the time. Backing up does take time, but it’s too costly if you lose everything, you can’t afford not to.

TIVO-I believe that TIVO devices due to it’s versatility with recording, pausing, and saving could allow someone to multitask and get important things done while watching TV. This may be one technology that could allow someone to muti-task and save a great deal of time. Also if you were going to avoid going out and getting something important done, but now you are able to because of the TIVO, this is another example of where TIVO can offer a time flexibility. It’s got a feature similar to stopping time, or controlling time. Also you can skip through commercials with TIVO, that is a big time saver. It has an online guide to help you find what you want quicker. The online guide for ordering movies could be cheaper and quicker than driving to pick up a movie.

Time Leverage through Marketing

Anyone that plans on reading my writings for any long period of time into the future will realize that quite possibly my favorite way of Time Leverage is through Marketing. I believe marketing to be one of the best uses of your time, and most profitable dollar per hour activities. My marketing strategies will vary by different products, services and situations. Marketing can be done 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Marketing can be done for free, or little money. Obviously there are some marketing methods that are better than others. Due to the efficiencies of technology, 24/7 time clock, and creativity of today’s mediums for marketing, it can be quite a great use of one’s time.

Before I get too far into marketing, the reason I believe you should apply marketing in your life is I believe everyone should have at least one small to medium business in an area of interest you are passionate about. I believe you should do what you want to do, and you can have a business started for nearly nothing, and for the extra income potential and all of the tax write-offs it’s a good use of your time. Let’s go over some of the inexpensive costs involved to get your business going. $30-$39 for 1000 business cards, think stock paper at Kinko’s, cut to business card size. You can get printed flyers off your computer;many copies for the price of toner. Pay $135 to your state to file an LLC, at least in my state, it’s only $135. You may need to pay your accountant a small amount more come tax time, but the write-offs will more than offset that. Now you are in business for under $200 with some flyers, business cards, and filed paperwork with the state you are running the business from.

Before you start marketing you should have assistants, helpers, or be able to service the leads yourself. You should know exactly how to do whatever service you are marketing, or know how to get and sell whatever products you are selling. If you are still afraid about money, partner with someone on the service. Get paid for your marketing in the beginning until you have some money saved up. As far as the products, use drop shipping, use a website, and you never need to buy the product. Most importantly have a niche, specialize in something. For the internet you can have a domain name for $5 or less, and hosting for your website for $5 or less. Some sites such as Ebay provide you options to open an Ebay online store with products. Other websites like Amazon, have an affiliate program with many linking strategies where you can sell their thousands of products and make a commission from them. There are thousands of programs that will pay you online to market for their companies. The point of this, is that you can be in business for nearly nothing. Save a lot of time, months, years, a lifetime, and make sure you are going to spend your marketing time runing a business that you really love.

When I started working when I was 17 years old, I did telemarketing for 5 years, for those who have never done that, that’s a lifetime, most never last 6 months, assistant managers are promoted often within only one year, that will give you the idea of the turnover in that industry. I did cold calling, meaning I called random phone numbers, or just any phone number and tried to sell someone, this was many years before the do not call list took effect. The idea of cold calling in my opinion is not a good use of one’s time at all, it’s quite inefficient. Not to mention it’s not very much fun. Inbound calls would be more of a warm prospect, and a much better use of your time. How do you get inbound calls? You do marketing, you advertise your product or service and when people call, they should already know what you are selling, it’s at that time that you are providing information and trying to close the sale.

There are a couple of ways to get inbound calls, one is with blind ads, and one is with more descriptive ads. In the beginning I implemented blind ads into my marketing. I liked getting a lot of phone calls, I liked being busy, but as time went on, I preferred to eliminate blind ad calls whenever possible. My definition of a blind ad is something where you tell someone very little why they may call you, and you provide a phone number at that’s about it. Something like a small sign posted in the ground that reads “For Rent 612-555-5555”. If you are a landlord or real estate agent, you are going to get a lot of phone calls, but most will be a complete waste of your time. If you have a 2bedroom condo, North of the cities, not available for 3 months, and where the condo’s association doesn’t allow pets, you will get all the calls from those who have pets, need 3-4 bedrooms as a minimum, want to live over South, and need a place within a month. I would guess 90% of people wouldn’t qualify for what you have based on the specific example above. What’s more, is if you talk to them for 10 minutes each, after 10 minutes you’d realize they need a 3 bedroom or they have a pet, it’s 10 minutes into the call, at which you would realize it’s a waste of a phone call. My definition of eliminating the blind ad part of it, would be to try to cover some of those bullet points on your posted “for rent sign” whenever possible. I am sure now, you can see how that saves you a lot of time by qualifying the lead upfront, before they call you.

If you are going to be driving on the road to work, or for any other reason, why not get a car magnet with your business name, phone number and website on it. Look at it this way, you are already driving, and hopefully listening to an educational audio program, but now in addition, you are marketing your company with your car magnet. That’s time paralleling at it’s finest J. I personally have used car magnets for years, it works ok for me, I think it would work better if I plastered my truck more fully, or did a wrap design. I am not on the road as much as others, but it’s a good idea for the price. If interested in this idea, within 48 hrs and $99, you’ll have a set of car magnets.

With business cards I got to Kinko’s and put the artwork 8-10 up on a 8 ½ x 11 stock thicker paper, with crop marks on where to cut. I have Kinko’s make copies on a copy machine, black, blue, or maroon toner, whatever you like best. Probably an earth tone colored paper, or off white. I then proceed to have them do final cuts of the entire stack of copies, and for like $30-39 I have 1000 business cards. Your card should talk about everything that you do. The best way to remember this is, when someone thinks of your service, they would think of you. Remember, if you don’t tell them what you do, they won’t think of you, it’s that simple, I can’t emphasize this enough. I have had my 1000 business cards made within 2 hours many times. This is a fast easy solution, with very little time needed. If you are going to sell expensive items, and just a few large items per year would sell, it may make sense to go with an upgraded glossy business card with a photo, it should probably look more professional. Vistaprint.com also has offered 500 free business cards in the past with promotions, but it will read as Vistaprint.com on the backside.

Your own website is one of the biggest time savers of all. Without going into too much details, don’t get a free site, or hosted site, you want 100% control of your site, your own domain name that you can brand. Your site most likely answers the most common questions that your customers will have about your products. Having marketed since I was 17, having been exposed to marketing materials since I was 7 years old, I can assure you that 95% of all questions people will ask are the same questions over and over. You should create a website that answers all of these questions. Your site should provide a lot of information about your products or service, and provide photos whenever possible. The best-case scenario is that the surfer/customer order your products online without every calling you. If you can accomplish this, you are making money 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. For those of you not counting right now, that’s 168 hours per week your business is open. Some people hate the internet, and some of those people work only 30-40 hours per week. That means, you will have a 168 hour head start on them because remember your website is working while you are sleeping and also while you are at work every day like the rest of the world. This is just 1 step on how to get ahead in the world. If you aren’t doing it, remember that someone else is, gaining on you every hour of every day, it’s your choice.

Online marketing compliments website domain names very well. For one thing, you know those who would find you through online marketing, are online already and have a computer and use the internet. With the web these days there are so many free ways to market online. The marketing ideas, and mediums are endless. Online marketing will be a common theme in my writings, so look for online marketing in the near future. In my business of real estate, I find that for those who want properties or for those who are property owners, what I have found is that 95% of all questions I get weekly from them in any given situation can be answered on the following pages:

http://www.minnesotainvestors.com/propertyneeded http://www.minnesotainvestors.com/propertyowners

In addition my real estate blog http://www.minnesotainvestors.com/blog covers many other topics as it relates to business and real estate.

The reason these property pages are important is, if the buyer, or seller were to call me I would just ask them these questions anyways on the phone, experience has told me this. Once they fill these forms out, it will automatically email me the information. I then can return with a phone call and I’ll be informed when I do call them based on their situation. If I were to get only 12 of these leads per week from this form being filled out, and if you figure that someone would take 20 minutes each on the phone to provide me their answers to these questions, that’s a total of 4 hours per week I just saved. I am happy to talk to anyone that still has questions, it’s just that this one simple trick saved me 4 hours per week, and that’s based on only 12 leads per week. You have just leveraged time by 4 hours, in other words you gained 4 extra hours this week.

If you are already meeting people in life doing other activities and you simply give them your business card, then it’s really not taking up any extra time of yours. If you go to networking events and put your flyers and business cards out, again it doesn’t take much of your time, it’s a big time saver, as long as you go to the event to learn. Whenever someone goes to your website and reads for 30-45 minutes about your products, you are saving that time that you other wise would have spent on the phone with them. I think it’s important to talk to customers if they need you to answer questions, but some only have time to read about your products on after traditional work hours, or on a different schedule.

One last marketing item I would like to talk about today is a shirt with a big logo of your company and website name. This shirt should have big lettering and you should wear it everywhere that you go. Examples may be the state fair, the mall, concerts, and out in public. Get your website and company name seen by many. A shirt like this cost maybe $15-25? An add-on to that idea is you can buy more in quantity, such as haveing 10-50 made. Then get friends to buy them for cost, get your name out there. I am not saying go out and just walk the mall only for the sake of being seen. I am saying if you were going out and were going to be seen by many anyways, you should just market your company on your shirt. Why advertise for a sports team or a beer company everyday, like many do now. There is no company better to market for then your own company, you already do it weekly now, just for other people.