Followup on Close Connexion

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about Close Connexion, a new singles concept that has been recently launched in Brisbane. I worked with the founder Danielle Rodgers on her online marketing strategy.

Anyway, the opening event was on 22nd June at Brisbane’s Platform Bar and I was one of the punters! Even though I was involved in the marketing side of the project, it was great to also experience the format as a “customer”.

Unlike any other singles event formats, Close Connexion evenings are based around a table game developed by Danielle called The Meet Market™.

The game is very clever – after 3 minutes of explanation, people who have never met each other before can start interacting via the game. This avoids the “uncomfortable silences” that we all fear when meeting new people – especially in a dating setting.

Danielle has also developed a cool viral marketing tool – packs of 20 “Frequent Flirter Calling Cards” – you use them to exchange contact details with that intriguing person across the room.

From a purely marketing angle, every time someone uses one of the cards, the Close Connexion name also gets a bit of exposure.

I had a fantastic time at the inaugural event and met a number of great people. If you’re on the lookout for a singles event in Brisbane, give Close Connexion a try. The next event is on Thursday 27 July so get in quick.

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The Power of Now

Recently I read this post on Steve Pavlina’s Blog recommending the self-development / spirituality book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

As luck (or was it something else – synchronicity?!?!) would have it, a couple of days afterward I walked through the Cherry Blossom bookstore, which happens to be next to my local coffee shop. Not 20 cm from my face was The Power of Now, so I went ahead and bought it.

All in all, I think it was a very worthwhile purchase. The central message is contained right there in the title – that living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment. Do you often find yourself dwelling on the past or thinking about the future (I know I do)?

If that’s you, then you may find this book worthwhile. It not only provides a philosophical basis for focusing on the present moment as you go through your day, but also contains a number of practical steps toward making it happen.

I notice that on Amazon.com, the reviews of this book are extremely polarised. Some people give it 5 stars, others give it 1. I can see how that would happen – some people comment that the content of the book is so simple (live in the present) and that 200-odd pages of explanation were a waste of time.

Personally, I needed that extra explanation to cover all the angles and questions that I had about the concept. For example, how can you reconcile living in the now with future-based activities such as goal setting, or learning from past experiences?

And as a result of reading The Power of Now I do feel a greater sense of wellbeing as I go about my daily life. That, to me, is the only question I need to answer – does it work?

I recommend this book highly, but keep in mind that it wont be for everyone, so no hate mail please

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Bumper Month in February

Apologies for the brief hiatus in blog posts (good word that, hiatus).

I’ve been snowed under by a spike in new customer enquiries after implementing a few changes in my business.

To recap, the key change I’ve made is eliminating copywriting as a stand-alone service to concentrate on online marketing and website lead generation projects.

The net effect of this is that we’re now working on much higher value projects that attract 10 times the fees of smaller projects but involve only 5 times the work.

I’ve also been working on my productivity and I find I’m getting more done with less stress. I’m in the process of writing a post about the specific changes I’ve made, the results and also a few challenges still to be overcome. Shouldn’t be too long now……

L8r

Will

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How I Plan to Double My Income By Working 30% Less

One of my goals for 2006 is to double my income working only 4 days a week, as opposed to 5-6 days a week in 2005.

In theory, this is easily possible. But will it work in practice? Here’s how I plan to do it…

80 / 20 Insights

The 80 / 20 Principle is one of my favourite rules of thumb. That’s because it’s widely applicable and relatively easy to apply in one’s daily life.

In case you’re not familiar with the 80 / 20 Principle, it says that in any system, roughly 20% of causes will be responsible for 80% of effects.

One application of the 80 / 20 Principle says that 20% of your time is responsible for 80% of your productivity.

What this represents is a great opportunity for productivity growth. If you work a 40 hour week to produce 100 units of productivity, then roughly 80% of those units are produced in only 8 hours (you may need some convincing that this is so. For conclusive proof, read Richard Koch’s excellent book, The 80 / 20 Principle)

My plan is to identify what my 20% of highly-productive activities are, then concentrate my efforts on them at the expense of my low-productivity 80%.

Theoretically, I could produce 240% percent of my current output working only 3 days a week by focussing on my most productive 20% of activities. I hope to get there eventually, but for the time being I’ve decided to aim to double my productivity working 4 days a week.

I’ve started by keeping closer track of my time and identifying what my high-value and low-value tasks are. At the moment my list looks something like this…

Very High Value Activities (the top 20%)

• Selling to interested prospects
• Online marketing strategy consulting

Medium Value Activities (the next 30%)

• Sales lead generation activities for my own business
• Quality assurance of web, sales copy and online advertising work
• Project management liaison with clients

Very Low Value Activities (the bottom 50%)

• Integrating web content
• Invoicing and Accounts Receivable
• Over-checking email
• Commuting (1.5 – 2 hours per day)
• Multi-tasking *
• Distracting work environment **
• Procrastinating

Notes:

* Multi-tasking is a real productivity killer. Time Management experts recommend that you work on tasks in larger time blocks, rather than jumping from task to task.

** A recent study revealed that poor workspace design causes the average office worker to waste an astonishing 1.5 hours a day looking for misplaced items and being distracted by desktop clutter.

Looking at how I’m currently spending my time, all of a sudden a 100% improvement looks not only realistic, but almost easy

The Plan

Cull Productivity Black Holes

1. Redesign my workspace: Clear away unneeded files and get rid of non-essential items on my desk.
2. Move to a home office: Eliminate commuting time (will have to watch being distracted by midday Oprah though)
3. Check email and blog comments no more than 3 times a day: No compulsive clicking the Send / Receive button. Writing and checking emails in one block instead of doing it many times a day.

Systematize and Delegate More Tasks

Many tasks such as integrating web content, project management of websites and invoicing etc. still need to get done. It’s just that I shouldn’t be the one performing those tasks when there are much more productive things that I could be doing. So I plan to…

1. Re-organise my project management systems: our current systems are not nearly as productive as they could be. By organising tasks differently I can free up time.
2. Training, systems and procedures: to make website and integration work easier to delegate while maintaining high standards.
3. Delegate project management: My new web designer Phill starts on Monday. He’ll become the key contact point for project management issues. This one thing will free up a LOT of my time.

Beter Time Management Practices

1. Keep a desktop “to do” list: to help keep track of tasks and priorities.
2. Less multi-tasking: structure work in longer, more focussed blocks.

Results to Come

I’ve started keeping a diary of my activities and results and I’ll report back a month from now on initial progress. If you have any great time management or productivity-boosting tips, I’d love to hear them. I welcome your comments and ideas.

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Re-engineering your business model

Like about half the Internet, I’ve been reading Steve Pavlina’s Blog over recent days (sheesh, that guy is a machine). One thing that caught my attention was a comment on the often-heard statistic, “80% of businesses go bust within 5 years” .

Steve commented that, of the nominal 20% that survive, the vast majority end up doing something quite different from their original business plan. This meshes nicely with my belief that most business plans aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Within a month, your nice ring-bound business plan is so out of date you have to waste another week writing a new one. Or just do what most small business owners do and put it in the bin and and wing it from there.

This has certainly been the case for me – my business model has morphed consistently over the two and a half years that I’ve been running Marketing Results. And further dramatic changes are in the pipes for 2006.

This article traces how my own business model has developed and some of the wrong turns that I’ve taken along the way.

How my business model has evolved

The impetus for starting my marketing consulting business was partly the fact that a cushy consulting contract with my former employer was showing signs of winding down. I needed something to go on to, and I had become very interested in high-leverage marketing techniques espoused by the likes of Jay Abraham.

Answer: A marketing consulting business!

On the surface, consulting sounds great. It doesn’t require stock, equipment or expensive premises. But there are some hidden catches. One is that any humbug can be a consultant, but it takes real smarts to sell consulting services.

In my case, it took at least a year to get a handle on how to market my services (i.e. to graduate from Marketing for Consultants 101). Then it took another year to decide on my current business model (i.e. fee for service Internet marketing consulting and lead generation).

Phase 1

My initial service offerings were a hotch-potch of the various skills that I had picked up in my previous direct marketing role:

• Trade consulting (specialising in the Japanese market)
• Direct marketing consulting (a fully outsourced direct marketing solution)
• Websites that sell (web design and marketing)

I had little success with this lineup. Apart from the relatively poor fit between the different services, none of our offerings were developed into a sufficiently compelling proposition for clients.

Phase 2

There’s a joke my Dad used to tell that goes like this:

Man to Insurance Salesman: Do you realise you need a licence to sell insurance in this state?

Insurance Salesman: I knew I wasn’t selling any, I just didn’t know why!

Hey, I didn’t promise it would be a good joke.

This was my situation in Phase 1. Things weren’t working because the cash register wasn’t ringing, but with very little data to go on, it was hard to understand what the specific problems were (at the time – now with the benefit of hindsight and greater experience I could list them in about 2 minutes).

One thing I did know was that our offererings were far too broad and unfocussed. So I got rid of trade consulting (originally, that was supposed to be our lucrative core business) and added advertising copywriting as a stand-alone service. Direct marketing consulting morphed into general marketing consulting.

So now our service offerings were:

• Small business marketing consulting
• Websites that sell (web design and marketing)
• Advertising copywriting

A day or two after we changed the website, we turned on Google Adwords for the first time. That very morning, we received our very first enquiry for copywriting. At last, some positive feedback.

Phase 3

With the combination of our new service offerings and effective Google Adwords campaigns, new leads started to trickle in. Not enough to pay the bills, but enough to get a foothold.

At this stage, I remember our strategy was to first get smaller copywriting jobs and aim to convert them into repeat business and more comprehensive marketing projects. Copywriting was the “doorway service” that would lead to further work [that turned out not to be the case].

It was now a year since I started the business. The cash wasn’t rolling in like I expected, but we were making some headway.

Around this time I decided to enrol in Jay Abraham’s Internet Marketing Empire course, a 6-month mentorship program with a US$6,000 price tag. This was a huge leap of faith, and it meant dipping (further) into savings, but I felt it would be worth it if we could really build competency in one area (especially the area that had brought us our first few clients).

After starting the course (but not necessarily as a direct result) our sales started to pick up. We started two consulting contracts with new clients that would pay our bills and then some.

One of these turned out to be a huge success. The other client turned out to be a shyster with an aversion to paying their account (but that’s another blog post).

At any rate, things were picking up.

Phase 4

About 16 months after starting the business an acquaintance, Chris Khoo, came by my office to say hi and mentioned that he was looking for a job. Chris is a very good programmer with all the Certifications to prove it.

On the spur of the moment I asked him if he’d consider working with us. He said OK. I didn’t have the cashflow to pay him but figured that we could see how it goes for 3 months and reconsider from there.

Although the first couple of months were scary, it worked. Chris brought a new set of skills to the business that were effectively like pulling out an old steam engine and replacing it with a modern petrol equivalent. Because although we already had the marketing skills, our technical skills were severely lacking. Chris helped to correct that imbalance.

Phase 5

18 months after starting the business, we had started to focus more on Internet marketing consulting and “websites that sell”. There were a couple of reasons for this…

1. Our web projects were getting fast results for clients.
2. Most of the variables of a website project are within our control. With, say, marketing consulting, much of the implementation can depend on circumstances beyond our control.
3. Websites enable the work to be spread across a team. Marketing consulting tends to be me, one-on-one with the client, leaving us with excess capacity elsewhere

Red Flag: At around this time, we identified a problem. Namely, I was the bottleneck that was slowing down our capacity to perform work.

As our only copywriter, I was spending too much time copywriting and not enough time selling. While I was flat out, our other team members had excess capacity.

We tried to alleviate this problem by outsourcing copywriting work etc., but with poor results. This issue alone probably slowed down the growth of the business by 12 months.

Simple 80/20 analysis showed that revenue and profits were coming from websites, not copywriting (in fact, copywriting is probably negatively profitable), yet I found it very hard to pull the trigger:

“Yes, but isn’t it nice to have that one or two thousand in revenue that’s being generated by copywriting every month?”

The simple answer to that is that time saved on copywriting could lead to an extra 6 or 10K in revenue from more profitable website work. But sometimes it’s hard to do the obvious.

As business owners, we become attached to our business model. We grow more reluctant to take on risk on an ongoing basis, having survived the initial risk of starting the business. Now I realise that a certain degree of risk is an integral and ongoing part of running any business.

So it wasn’t until almost 10 months later that I finally removed copywriting from our website as a stand-alone service. As soon as I did it, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.

If you’re wrestling with a change to your business model like this, just do it. You can always give the new change a 30 or 60 day trial, and if it doesn’t work out, return to the status quo.

Further changes ahead

Another series of events over the past couple of months have made me rethink my entire business model again. Basically, our current model is hopelessly flawed. It’s 10,000% better than the one we started with, but it’s still flawed.

Why? Because it relies too much on gruntwork and volume. Certainly, as the business owner, I do far too much of the 80% of activities that lead to 20% of results.

Our current model revolves around constantly getting new business. Yes, we have repeat clients, but because my focus is on obtaining new business most of the time, when we do work for repeat clients, it tends to be on a reactive, rather than a proactive, basis.

So I asked myself – why is that? The reason is because new business is much more profitable than repeat business, given our current service structure. Our current model requires us to continually chase new work to pay our considerable [$10K+] overhead, and the end result is that repeat clients sometimes miss out on ongoing services that could significantly benefit them.

Quantity at the expense of quality. It doesn’t make sense.

So in 2006, things are gonna change around here…

1. We’re getting rid of our city office and moving to a cheaper and more informal suburban office (all our work is done over phone and email anyway).
2. We’re laser focusing our offerings on profitable websites and online lead generation.
3. Proactive consulting services will be offered to our best clients on an ongoing basis. This will not only produce far better results for clients, but it will free up my time to focus on working proactively with them.
4. Our mantra will be “quality, not quantity”. My primary goals will be enjoyment and balance. When you have those right, profits normally follow.

Further updates to come

That’s the theory anyway – we’ll see how it pans out. Further updates will be added in 2006.

Will Swayne

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Ideas on International tele-commuting

This is my first post from Fukuoka, Japan. I used to work in Japan and I still return 2 or 3 times a year for business and to catch up with friends.

As more than one blogger has no doubt commented, it’s great to be able to keep in touch seamlessly no matter where I go, providing I have an Internet connection.

In fact, the time difference between Australia and Japan is only an hour. If I wanted to, with a few minor adjustments I could work up here periodically and switch easily between Australia and Japan.

All it would require is…

• A laptop (I’m working on a Toshiba T6/518CME right now)
• An Internet connection. In most countries this isn’t a problem, but in some places (e.g. Vietnam), it may mean making do with an old skool dialup connection – not fast enough for anything much more than email.
• A phone (I rely on Skype for inter-office communication, and use a Brastel phonecard for client communication).

That’s about it. The only thing that I’d like to have right now is a phone number in Australia that goes straight through to my Japanese mobile – certainly no challenge technically, but I haven’t got around to setting that up yet. .

Will
From Japan

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