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.

Bookmark, or Email this Page

Close this Window Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea

del.icio.us Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com

Furl Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace

MyWeb Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy

Slashdot Sphere Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Save Time, Fuel, Money

If you stop to really think about how much time is wasted driving, I believe you will start to realize how much total time adds up over a week, a month, a year. For example, let’s take something as simple as picking up an item from someone, who is in a city that’s 30-45 minutes from you. Could they meet you half way? Could you meet them at a place on their end of town? How much does this 45 minutes really cost you in your life? Actually much more than you think, let me explain.

Let’s look at a simple component of driving 45 minutes to a place, and 45 minutes back. Some people will say, it’s their lunch hour, so they have time. You need to think of every aspect. If Fuel is near $4/gallon, and you spend 90 minutes on the road, let’s assume you are driving 80 miles for that trip in total. If your vehicle gets 20 miles per gallon, that’s 4 gallons of gas consumed for that trip, that’s $16. For someone that makes $10-$12/hr that’s well over 1 hour of additional overtime needed this week to make up for that. In fact you will have to work as long in hours as the trip itself just to pay for it, actually much more, keep reading. Also when you learn later to make your time valuable, you could have done something else with that 90 minutes, so that opportunity cost was lost.

I will explain opportunity cost more in future writings. $16 only is the cost of the fuel itself, if you take possibly another 25 cents per gallon for wear and tear, or in other words, you are using up your vehicle and can expect car repairs later, so 80 miles x 25 cents per mile=$20. Are you adding this up? We have $16 for fuel+$20 for vehicle usage(future car repairs) and also opportunity cost where you could have done something else. We still haven’t counted time spent on getting lost at least a little, you may not get lost this time, but maybe you will detour slightly 1 time every 10 trips you make on average. We have not talked about the time it takes to sit down and type out an address and write down, or print directions on the computer from a mapping website like mapquest.com

So what’s the alternative to this $36 up to an unlimited amount of lost money for this simple trip? How about a 41 cent USPS stamp to have it mailed to you. Which they may pay for anyways. Yes, I know that takes a few days by mail, it takes time, but in most cases this is time that shouldn’t affect your life too much. How about if someone faxes you what you need? Buy a fax machine, they cost very little these days. If you don’t have a fax machine, go to Kinko’s, or a local similar office supply store, even that trip isn’t nearly half the price. How about if someone emails you what you need? These days there are so many alternatives to driving so far away. Also filling your day with busy activities like this only stresses you out over time, if you have enough errands to do, stress as you know causes various health issues later in life after a period of time. Don’t just always feel rushed, don’t just fill your day with busy work.

By having someone mail you, email you, or fax you instead of going to pick up whatever you wanted, you have now just saved a minimum of 90 minutes. I would guess this one time saving tip could be used 3 times per week on average at a minimum of 1 hour per trip, so that’s probably 3 hours per week saved per person for this idea alone. In the example above someone that makes $12/hr just spent $36 for making that 90 minute trip based on the example above and that doesn’t even include lost pay of $18 if they had to punch out, off the time clock, for 90 minutes. Is it any wonder now why the middle class never seem to catch up with their lives, and are frantic and far too busy in life.

The Middle class feels like they are on a treadmill their entire life and never seem to be able to catch up. That person that just punched out, off the time clock, and drove that trip spent $36 + $18 in lost pay, that’s $54 in money spent because of that one trip that could have been done for 41 cents or zero to you, free by email, fax, or other sources. Maybe even something that can be done the next time you are in the area. $54 total for someone who probably makes $80 in an entire day after taxes?

You can see how time choices and wasting your time would be the equivalent of taking 3 steps backwards and 1 step forward. You can’t catch up, you will just keep getting more and more behind in life. Eventually this leads to going to seminars and spending big money on get rich quick type of stuff because you figure that’s all you have time for. Seminars and trainers themselves are fine, just don’t get in the get rich quick trap. Don’t be as concerned about getting rich quick, be more focused about going in the right direction, even if it’s a little slower because we all know that going quickly full steam ahead in the wrong direction can be disasterous.

Think of this scenario, let’s say you were so rushed, that you didn’t pay attention to your directions or didn’t look at a highway sign. Let’s say you drove 60 minutes North which was the wrong way on the highway. The question is how much time did this mistake cost you? If your answer is 60 minutes, then you’ll like this blog, I have some great time ideas to teach you J. The answer is 2 hours (120 minutes) because had you been traveling South is the correct direction, you’d already be 60 minutes south, but having made the mistake, you now have to backtrack 60 minutes to get back to your starting point, then travel an additional 60 minutes to get back to where you would have been, you just lost a minimum of 2 hours you can’t make up, unless you speed, and that will be another writing J.

All this talk about fuel prices, and time has got me now thinking about how much our choices may now change from Flying on a plane vs. traveling by vehicle. No question that airline prices have gone up some because of fuel, but Fuel for cars are up about 100% over the past 12-18 months. If the trip is long enough, it may just make sense to take a plane. For example I am in Minneapolis and have driven one time to Chicago, and I can tell you I will likely always fly in the future. This flying vs. driving concept I will explore in my future writings, so stay tuned. Remember Time is Money!

Bookmark, or Email this Page

Close this Window Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea

del.icio.us Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com

Furl Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace

MyWeb Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy

Slashdot Sphere Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

Time Choices

Time choices is not so much about somebody looking over your shoulder every day and telling you what to spend your time on is either right or wrong. It’s not about how exactly you allocate each minute with each activity. Time Choices is the idea that at any given moment in time, you have a choice in which direction to go with what you are doing. This concept in itself can get quite big, and have dramatic effects, but for right now I would like to break it down to it’s most simple form, a 24 hour, 86,400 seconds average day.

First let me give away now, why this idea of daily choices with what you do with your time is so important. The reason it’s so important is each tiny decision shapes who you become in the future. It shapes and defines through a journey of steps who you someday will become, or strive to be. Here is how I want to be a little different than everything else you read. I don’t want to be the person you have heard over and over talk about how to clip coupons, or save $2 on some item, and after you save $1 here and $5 there, you will save $500,000 someday many years from now and be able to retire on that.

Please understand me when I tell you, that saving money with your time is better than doing absolutely nothing, but that’s all it is, it’s 1 step up from nothing. Time, and nothing returns on money will eat up your savings faster than you can save it, or make it. You must understand that over time by simply saving and having inflation go up at rates of 5-6% or more every year (it’s probably much more) you will absolutely burn away your 0% return or 1% return you are getting annually on your money while it sits idle.

What I need to teach you is that it’s not just about the money, it’s about how you spend your time. Someday, if your time is wasted, or you make the wrong choices, no amount of money can be thrown to solve your poor choices and deferred way of living. Time is even more of a scarce commodity than you realize. My job will be to prove this to you, no matter how much “time” it takes.

We are all presented with choices every given day, and it’s up to us, not anyone else which direction to go, which road to take, which choice we believe we should go with. One audio CD I would highly suggest on this concept is “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson. The idea is that everything we do in life day to day is easy to do, and easy not to do. This theme is repeated over and over, is well presented, easy to follow, and really sinks in. This is a 3-CD set, and I would recommend you to listen to it repeatedly because I think it’s easy to forget, and I believe it’s important to condition your mind, and to create habits based on the concepts taught on this audio.

This CD set leads me to my question for my readers, Is having habits a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is, that it depends on if they are good habits or bad habits. The reasons are obvious, but I think anyone can realize that, good habits done successfully for a long period of time, actually snowball and create momentum. What do I mean by momentum? Momentum means it speeds up, it means that a simple 10 days of successful habits in a row, it does not mean simply 1+1 for 10 days in a row until it equals 10. It’s not just the sum, it’s more of a compounding effect. In other words, it’s contagious. Let me ask you another question. Are things that are contagious good or bad? Again, we are use to hearing contagious being used in the context of being a bad thing, but good things can be contagious as well. We should only be so lucky to be presented with opportunities and to ride the wave of a positive contagious ideas.

It’s time I start to give examples of choices of how you spend your time on a daily basis. Every time you sit down to eat, you can eat vegetables and fruits, or you can eat a well-rounded meal, or you can choose to eat fast food. Why do we eat fast food when we know it’s so bad? Are we rushed? Are we out of time? If that is the case, hopefully I can find you more time in a given day with my writings, so that you don’t feel forced to eat something so bad for you.

Do I myself eat fast food? Sure I do, but far less than I use to, I am not saying you have to quit eating fast food entirely, I am just saying think about it before you do, it’s just as easy to go down a few doors to choose something a little more healthy, you won’t notice enough of a difference today, but over a period of time obviously you will.

How about the example of when you drive to work 5 days per week. Let’s use an average of 45 minutes each way, which is 90 minutes per day, which adds up to 7 ½ hours per week in your car or truck. If you vacation 2 hours per week, then you drive 50 weeks per year. That is 375 hours per year of driving during a regular work week. That doesn’t even include driving for errands, or at night, or on the weekends. Let’s call it an even 500 hours per year for my next example. Many of you drive up to a cabin often, or travel hundreds of miles every year on mini vacations, so 500 hours per year is probably pretty accurate.

What choices are you making with those 500 hours every year you have? Are you talking on the phone about nothing important? Are you listening to gossip on the radio? Are you listening to music from 30 years ago? Are you listening to people on the radio complaining about their lives? Why are you doing any of these things? Why not put in some tapes or CD’s training you to be a more well-rounded person? why not get educated in a few areas of your life? I don’t just mean listen to something boring that makes you hate the entire drive. Mix it up some, listen to some about health, some about investing, some about getting better about your business, learning family values, learning home budgeting. Listening to educational info for your mind 500 hours per year create a huge impact, it’s like getting a degree, or taking college classes.

Many people are already doing this every day, every week, every month, every year, and if you aren’t, and you are listening to gossip radio, you are becoming “dumber” every day. The gap between others and yourself is widening every single day right now as we speak. That’s why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. It’s because sometimes they are both going in complete opposite directions with their daily choices. I realize poor and middle class people are not able to have access to some things because they don’t have money. Do what you can, and make sure you are at least going in the right direction, make those right choices, hour by hour, day by day. One day the sum of all of those choices, or should I say the compound effect of all of those choices, defines who you will become. It’s a challenging journey, but it’s a journey you’ll be glad you made, when you reflect back.

Are you eating out of a carton of ice cream watching Jerry Springer on television, or are you eating fruits and vegetables, while watching something educational, maybe like “The Big Idea” on CNBC. Are you sitting down eating fatty chips watching gossipy celebrity shows, or are you stretching and doing very easy activity for 25 minutes while you are watching something rewarding.

The choice is yours to make, both are easy to do. If your momentum goes in the wrong direction, the wind is against you, it creates friction, and life gets tougher every single day you wake up. This is the part that amazes me about people about their actions and choices, why would you make daily instant gratification choices, defer what’s most important, when all it will do is just haunt you someday. It’s not like years later when the going gets tough you can step out of your shoes and detach yourself from the ball and chain you have created. At that point, you are now stuck, you are in a ditch that is extremely tough to dig your way out of. In fact it’s the deepest ditch you have ever found yourself in, in your entire life, most likely. For example, why would you smoke when it has been proven to shorten ones life, and increases many health related illnesses. I think people should spend their life’s choices and their time, with the idea in mind that they have something to look forward to someday.

Another very important point about listening to these educational audios on television and in your car, and I can’t emphasize this often enough, this is the ultimate time leverage. You are taking what is a lifetime, or a career of mistakes that others have made before you, and you are getting trained, and getting the highlights of the right things to do, lessening the chance for future mistakes. Other teachers have made it a mission in life to teach you how not to make the mistakes that they have made in the past. Take advantage of this great opportunity, and listen every moment you get. $8 for a used book, or audio, is a small price to pay for this education.

I will have future posts about choices we make in our lives, and our choice on how we spend our time every given day. I would appreciate if you keep reading for many weeks and months to condition yourself towards the goal of bettering yourself, with the idea in mind that someday you can take what you have learned and make that contagious towards others, so that they to can benefit from your education through time leverage.

We need to be very decisive about our selves, our goals, our purpose, and what we really want in life. Don’t waste your life doing nothing at all. We ultimately write the story of our life. We act in our own play as the lead actor. We can choose to be our own hero, or we can be our own worst enemy. It’s up to us to decide who we believe we can truly be!