Monthly Archives: January 2017

How to Eliminate Procrastination in Your Life

Eliminate Procrastination and Accomplish Your Goals

I intended on writing this article sooner, but I put it off. That is my lame attempt at making the idea of how to eliminate procrastination a funny one. The truth is that putting off, delaying, or postponing anything you deem to be important in your life is not one bit funny. So, what can you do to eliminate procrastination from your world once and for all?

The first method that worked well for me was to write down my goal and give myself a deadline. A goal without a deadline can be put off indefinitely, so by adding it to my to-do list I had no choice but to tackle it by the next working day. I learned much about myself in the process, such that I would much prefer to write than to speak with someone I do not know on the telephone, and that the longer I put something off the more difficult it seemed to become.

You will also want to break down the tasks and activities you write down into smaller pieces, or chunks. For instance, when I am creating a new online course or writing a short report, it’s much better for me to do that over a period of two or three days instead of trying to make it happen all in one day at a single sitting. That’s when I can become overwhelmed and then I accomplish very little that day. Instead, I make a list of what will be included in my project and then work on it one section at a time.

Visualizing the future is also helping in the effort to eliminate procrastination. This means that I step back to look at and visualize the bigger picture of what it will be like to accomplish my project. Basking in the joy of having another course to add to my inventory of products makes me feel like I am headed in the proper direction for my business.

In the interest of honesty, I will admit that fear used to be the driving force behind my tendency to procrastinate on certain issues. But as I have progressed as an entrepreneur those days are long gone. If I ever feel fearful, I push through the situation and keep moving forward. Having the ability to harness your fear will make everything in life easier and more joyous.

These days I am accountable first and foremost to myself. That means I must accomplish my goals in a timely manner and stay on schedule at all time. Yes, occasionally there are times when I get behind or change course at a crucial point in a project, but for the most part my days of postponing my work are not an issue in any area of my life. And when I do exactly what I said I would do I reward my progress with a pat on the back and a favorite film. I certainly hope you will use my experiences and examples to eliminate procrastination and get the job done.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future. And be sure to check out my Really Simple Online Courses training course.

How to Manage Your Time More Effectively

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Manage Your Time and Change Your Life

We all have the same twenty-four hours each day, so why do some people manage time more effectively than others? Let’s explore this concept more fully to understand how it works and to make a plan of action that will work. Once you are able to manage your time it will change your life forever.

I find that as I get older I have become much more patient when it comes to my time. If I have to wait in line I use that time to check email on my phone, to email someone waiting to hear back from me, or to engage in conversation with another person waiting in line with me. I might even use those minutes to daydream about some aspect of my life I have been pondering.

In the mornings, I begin writing as early as possible, which is typically around six-thirty or seven. I maintain what I have always referred to as a “dynamic” to-do list, which means that on an ongoing basis I am completing, deleting, or delegating tasks that I have decided to work on. There may even be more personal items on this to-do list than one associated with my business because it works best if I keep everything together. As an item on the list is completed I make a check mark next to it, when it is delegated to someone else I draw an arrow, and if I change my mind about a task or it no longer is needed I simply draw a line through it. All of this is kept on a mini legal pad, about five by seven inches. When I finish a page I tear it off and add it to the back of the notepad so that I may look back at any date and see what I was doing.

I also keep a wall calendar with my most important appointments written in red, blue, or green. I won’t explain too much about the need for color coding, but I do like to manage time by planning out activities with family and friends before I add any business appointments. You will find that you can better manage your time when you get your priorities straight first. This also adds joy to my life and that is always an excellent thing.

In the late afternoon and evening my energy level is much lower than it is during the morning hours, so that’s the time I schedule activities and tasks that require less alertness and brain power on my part. Medical appointments, seeing movies and play, shopping, and time relaxing with family and friends all take precedence during these hours.

After maintaining this type of time management schedule for several years I am confident that it is the most effective way for you to manage your time. I’ve said for a long time that I always feel like I have plenty of time to exactly what I want and need to do both personally and professionally, and I would love for you to feel this way as well.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future. Be sure to take a look at my Really Simple Content Marketing training course to help get you started on how to think like a publisher.

Making the Most of Your Biological Prime Time Hours

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Figuring Out Your Biological Prime Time

During the twenty years that I worked as a classroom teacher people would regularly comment to me about my being a “morning” person. To them it was obvious that I was enthusiastic and energetic first thing in the morning, (I don’t usually drink coffee or other caffeinated beverages, so this was all natural) but I did not see it that way. Instead, I believed that I was simply a person who had chosen a career that required me to be alert and on task by seven or even earlier each weekday morning. I dreamed of sleeping in until nine or ten, but even on the weekends I had to be up bright and early to do my real estate work.

Fast forward to 2006, when I left my teaching position and gave away my real estate clients. Now I was an entrepreneur and could choose the hours I worked each day. But guess what? To my surprise I found it almost impossible to sleep past eight in the mornings unless I had been up late the night before or wasn’t feeling well. Since both of those scenarios are rare for me, it’s up with the chickens for me each day for eleven years now.

For a period of about three hours, somewhere between about six thirty or seven and ten or eleven I accomplish more than I used to by working eight to ten hours in my previous life. I believe these morning work hours are my “prime time” and that my brain is ready to conquer the world with my writing, ideas, and creations. I took this phrase from the world of “prime time” television, where the regularly occurring time at which a television or radio audience is expected to be greatest is typically the hours between eight and eleven in the evenings. And it turns out that the study of “biological prime time hours” is a fascinating one with lots of case studies that make sense.

Also, I absolutely love the work I am involved in as an online entrepreneur, and that makes a huge difference as well. Whether I am writing articles, blog posts, and short reports, or creating information products, I’m anxious to get started and enthusiastic about completing each task or project.

Have you thought about your biological “prime time” hours each day? Sam Carpenter coined this phrase in 2009 in his popular and well-received book, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. It is my sincere belief that knowing which hours of the day are your best can be crucial to your success. I recommend that you give this some serious thought to figure out what works best for you in terms of writing and creating for your business. If you have a job or career that precludes you from working on your business during these hours, like I did when I was a classroom teacher, then take full advantage of your days off to make up for it.

Also, over the years I have made an effort to get a “second wind” and work for another three or four hours later in the day. Sometimes I am successful with this, but the work I do at this time is never quite as good as what I can accomplish early in the morning. I thought that by napping for sixty or ninety minutes in the early afternoon or evening I might wake up refreshed and ready to work, but if anything this works against me. So I went back to the drawing board and figured out that if I go for a walk or do some other exercise for about thirty minutes I am able to have a second round of prime time. Perhaps it’s the blood rushing to my brain that makes this so. I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic of discovering and maximizing your biological prime time.

How to Write Short Reports

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If you search for information on how to write short reports, you will unearth a myriad of examples and opinions prepared by people from many walks of life. Instead of sifting through all that has already been written on this topic, I prefer to explain exactly what I have done since 2006 that has helped me to build a massive online business as an entrepreneur on the internet by writing, marketing, and selling short reports.

My definition of a short report is a simple one. Short reports are comprised of content on a specific topic and may be based on original writing from the author/publisher, PLR (Private Label Rights) content, curated content from a variety of acknowledged sources, or content from guest authors and contributors. The purpose of a short report is to provide readers with a summary and overview of a topic in order to form opinions, impart knowledge, and lead to further discussion and study. They typically range in length from several thousand to more than twenty thousand words, though this is entirely left to the discretion of the author and/or the publisher.

In the world of information, a short report makes it possible to share information more readily and in a condensed form so that all parties have the opportunities to come to conclusions and make decisions without having to do massive research on their own beforehand.

Over the years I have published many short reports on topics related to online entrepreneurship. If you go to my main marketing site at ConnieRagenGreen.com you will see “Short Reports” and “More Short Reports” in the Menu Bar at the top. Those will give you an idea of what you can create to give away. Even those those short reports are free, I continue to earn income from them because of the links I include within the reports themselves and in the Resources section at the end. Knowing how to write short reports opens the door to passive and residual income opportunities.

My recommendation is that you start small by creating a five to ten page short report. Use a combination of your own original writing and some PLR, curated, or guest articles. Get into the practice of adding a Table of Contents, a Resources section, and About the Author.

My very best recommendations for PLR (Private Label Rights) content:

Alice Seba and Melody Spier: http://ConnieLoves.me/freePLR

Alice Seba: http://ConnieLoves.me/AliceDIY

Ronnie Nijmeh: http://ConnieLoves.me/SelfHelpPLR

Nicole Dean and Melissa Ingold: http://CoachingStickyGlue.com

Sue Fleckenstein – http://ConnieLoves.me/SuePLR

Use your new short report as a free giveaway to build your list, a simple product, or as a bonus for another product or course you have available. The time you spend working on learning how to write short reports will serve you and your prospects for years to come.

Your Productivity Plan as an Entrepreneur

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Do You Have a Productivity Plan?

When I came online over a decade ago I soon realized that I was a natural when it came to time management and productivity. I’ve written a bestselling book on this topic (Time Management Strategies for Entrepreneurs), as well as mentored more than three hundred twenty-five entrepreneurs on how to increase their work output to increase their bottom line by implementing a productivity plan.

I thought that I would share with you the five activities I do each morning before I do anything else.

Productivity Plan (You Decide What Time Each Day)

1) Write from five hundred to a thousand words. Sometimes this is for a new book and others it’s for my blog(s). This is what I wrote and published at the beginning of this year (2017):

http://hugeprofitstinylist.com/think-like-a-publisher/

http://connieragengreen.com/repurposing-content/

Each of these articles was also published on Medium and on LinkedIn for increased visibility. At this point I am publishing about five articles each week on one or the other of my two blogs.

2) Write and send an email to my community. Over the years I have sent thousands of email messages to my community. It is the way to stay in touch with those who trust you to provide them with the latest information about the topic or topics they are interested in learning more about.

3) Go over my daily, weekly, and overall goals for my life and business. Your goals must be specific and in written form for best results. Also, reviewing them lets you know when you need to change or at least alter them. This piece of your productivity plan is crucial!

4) Read at least twenty pages from a book that will increase my knowledge and understanding of
business and the world around me.

Today I’m reading “Be the Elephant: Build a Bigger, Better Business” by Steve Kaplan.

See my 2017 Reading List at:

http://hugeProfitsTinyList.com/reading-list/

Also, my bestselling book The Transformational Entrepreneur: Creating a Life of Dedication and Service is a free download today. Click the title to go there directly.

5) Work on a new product or course or event. Today I’m making additions to my next live event in Los Angeles during the first week of March. Check it out at:

http://weekendmarketerLive.com
(Code LIVE brings it down to $99)

So, how can you do this five activities in conjunction with your own productivity plan?

I recommend using a professional Planner like the ones I purchase from Nicole Dean and Melissa Ingold at Coaching Sticky Glue. The topics include:

* LinkedIn Planner
* Passive Income Planner
* Email Follow-Up Planner: Turn Leads into Clients
in 7 Days
* Your Amazon Author Page Monetization Planner
* How to Host an Off the Charts Book Signing Event
* Book Brainstorming Planner
* Cash Calendar: Your 12 Month Marketing Profit Plan!
* Your Keynote + Presentation Speech Planner
* Your Story. Your Brand: Embrace your Unique Story
to Create a One-of-a-Kind Business

…and many more.

Right now they are only $20 each at:

http://connieLoves.me/CGPlanner
(Use Code 2017 to Bring Them Down to $20)

And f you don’t yet know the Coaching Sticky Glue folks, start with a free download at:

http://coachingStickyGlue.com/

There are twenty in all, and if you’d like my recommendation I would say to purchase the one on “Your Story” and the one on “Passive Income”. Then your 2017 will be off to a fantastic start. Your Productivity Plan is only as powerful as you set it up to be, and as an online entrepreneurs you can achieve great things simply by increasing your productivity.

Promote Your Live Streaming Show

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Tips And Ideas To Promote Your Live Streaming Shows

It may seem counterintuitive but in order for your marketing efforts to work and to achieve your goals, you have to make sure that your audience knows about them. You have to essentially promote your marketing channels. The good news is that you’re probably already using many of these promotional tactics and leveraging them for your live streaming broadcast will be easy. Here are some things to think about before you promote your live streaming show.

Use your Tweet It

Both Periscope and Meerkat use your Twitter profile and this makes it easy to leverage this social media channel to promote your periscope. To maximize the connection, update your profile with the date and time of your broadcast. (This also helps you stay consistent with your shows).

For example, if you have a show every Friday at noon, then you can add that to your profile. Additionally, you might share a Tweet the day of your show to tell followers what you’re talking about. And of course, once you’re live, Twitter will automatically announce your broadcast to your followers. Consider also tweeting during the broadcast and afterwards as well.

Countdown On Your Blog

There are scheduling apps that you can use to schedule a countdown to your next live streaming broadcast. You can publish the countdown on your blog as part of your sidebar. You might also schedule your own countdown posts on social media. Schedule tweets and Facebook posts to gradually countdown to your show. For example, “Going live in one hour.”

Tell Your List

Announce your live stream broadcast in your e-newsletter. Tell people what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Tell them what they have to gain and how they can get involved. And be sure to let them know that they can share the good news with their friends and family. Invite them to share and to check out your new show. When they show up, welcome them and engage. They’ll be more likely to tell others and spread the word.

Announce your next Scope on Facebook and on your blog too. The bottom line is that any marketing channel or tactic that you’re using can become a tool to promote your live streaming shows. If you have an affiliate program, let them know about your new program. You might even invite a few top affiliates to be interviewed on your show. Tell your customers and consider inviting them to participate in a show as well. The more you can get your existing community involved, the larger your live streaming audience can grow. They’ll help spread the word when you promote your live streaming show.

Planning a Successful Product Launch

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Planning Your Product Launch

Hardly anything is more stressful than planning a new product launch. But, if you are prepared, do your research, and plan everything out to the letter when things pop up you’ll be ready for it. If you’re ready to work smart, you can have a very successful launch without feeling too overwhelmed.

Do Your Research for Your Product Launch

Like with most things, research has to come first. You need to know everything you can about your customers such as:

Who They Are: Create an ideal customer avatar to help guide everything you do in creating products and in marketing products. Spend time getting to know your audience.

What Their Pain Points Are: You probably already have a product, but if not, try writing down three pain points and then figuring out how you can solve each one. Pick the best one and make one product for one pain point.

Where They Are: Knowing where your audience hangs out can help you devise your marketing plan because this information will inform where you spend advertising money and time.

Why They Need Your Product: This goes back to the pain points, but this is a little different because you should write a sentence that phrases how your product benefits your customer. For example, “My customers need my product because they like to save time.”

Once you’ve done your research, you can focus on creating the message. It should be directed toward your audience in such a way that they’ll really want what you the solution or benefits you promise them.

Craft Messaging

Everything always starts with your audience. When you truly target your audience with the message, you’ll use words they like to use, bring to mind the thoughts you want them to think, and the feelings you want them to feel. That can only happen if you do your due diligence and learn as much as you can about your audience on a continuous basis.

Problems/ Pain Points & Solutions – Focus on problems and pain point you solve with your offer, in order to create the best message. Your audience wants to know what the benefits are, who you are, why you’re the best person to help them, and how you’re going to do it. Look at this sales page. You can click the image to go to the site directly. This is a good example of knowing your audience’s pain points and solving a problem for them. Plus, the sales page addresses objections, shows science, and more.
Make Your Message Compelling – One way to get free marketing from others is to make your messages so interesting and compelling that people not only sign up for your offers but they share them with others. The best way to do that is to touch your audience’s emotions. Tapping into what makes them feel is as easy as figuring out the benefits of your offerings for your audience and telling them what they are.
- Speak Your Audience’s Language – Learn to speak using the words and terms your audience understands. You want to use their language. When you speak to them in this way, they’ll respond better and trust you more.
- Write Down Your Purpose – Some people call this a mission statement or a purpose statement. It should be one to three sentences, no more than a paragraph, that will explain what you are doing, why you are doing it and who will benefit.
- Know the Goal of the Message – When you create a message it should support the mission, the reason for doing it. The goal of the message may be to, get customers to sign up or buy a product. Sometimes there are multiple goals; however, they always support the purpose of creating the item. When you include the goal, people are more likely to take action.
- Outline Your Messages – Now it’s time to outline the message. Mapping out the message before you get down to writing, or send it to a writer, will go far in helping you stay on topic, create intriguing messages that get customers to take the actions that give you the the results you want.
- Finally, remember that every single message you send, whether it’s a blog post, a Tweet, or a Facebook Live message, stay on topic and convince readers that this one point is what’s important right now. That way each message stands on its own. Since each work with your mission statement, they all reinforce your branding efforts.This will help to make your product launch a success.

Repurposing Content to Build an Online Business

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Why Repurposing Content Just Makes Sense

When I create content of any type, and that would include written content, audio recording, and videos, it isn’t long before I begin repurposing content into other formats. I’m going to share with you here how to get started with this marketing and content creation strategy for best results in your own online business.

You may be thinking that people do not wish to be exposed to the same or similar content more than once, but I have found that not to be true at all during my decade working as an online entrepreneur. Instead, we all welcome the opportunity to revisit topics again over time, especially in a variety of formats.

You have a different learning style and preference than the next person, and if you are able to consume information in a way that is easier and more enjoyable for you to absorb then you will benefit. And if your business has grown within the last 6 months? If so, there’s a good chance that your content is going to be reaching an all new audience for the most part. Also, I’ve found that if I wait at least six months to share content with my community they are quite receptive to it.

Repurposing content is based on finding evergreen (something that will be relevant for many years to come) content and turning it into a slightly different format to share. For example, repurposing content that was originally created in a written format into audio or video content makes a lot of sense. My personal preference is to consume content while reading and listening to it simultaneously, and many people love this as well. You will want to survey your target audience to see which formats they prefer before you begin repurposing content for them.

Start by reading through your blog posts to see which ones could be put together into a short report with audio or a slide presentation. The best idea is to combine your content into something new that is also more substantial in terms of length. Then get busy repurposing this content and immediately begin distributing it to your community, both as free giveaways and as paid products and courses.

If you make a plan and a schedule for this, you will find that you have more content than you could ever get to over time. Perhaps spending two days a week in content creation and three days a week repurposing content will be the most effective strategy for you. Find a rhythm that works for you and stick with it for at least a month before evaluating what you have done.

As you can see, the idea of creating content and then repurposing it into other formats is a solid business model that can be replicated easily over the lifetime of your business.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future. Be sure to take a look at my Really Simple Content Marketing training course to help get you started on how to think like a publisher.

Why Entrepreneurs Must Think Like a Publisher

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Why Authors Must Think Like a Publisher

When I got started as an online entrepreneur over a decade ago things were very different than they are today in regards to writing and publishing. In those days authors went through traditional publishing houses to publish their books, information product creation was in its infancy, and entrepreneurship was still attached to the brick and mortar world of business. These days one person can wear all three hats, and it is very common for someone like myself to be an author, publisher, marketer, and entrepreneur. Thinking of yourself as a publisher from the very beginning will serve you well over time.

The writer as a publisher is not a new idea, and before the 1950s self-publishing was widely accepted. For a period of fifty years this strategy was looked down upon to some extent, and since about 2010 it is once again a widely accepted method for authors all over the world to become published. When you think like a publish you are in control of your destiny.

Also, when you think of yourself in these terms the future of your business opens up in a way that was not even possible years ago. For example, I created Hunter’s Moon Publishing as my own publishing house back in 2010. This immediately enabled me to have the final say over everything I wrote and wanted to publish. I was also able to help other authors and entrepreneurs to publish their books more easily.

Information products also fall into the realm of publishing. You are, in effect, teaching someone the solution to their problem in written format. Once you think of yourself as a publisher of this type of information than as simple an information marketer, your business will evolve to the next level more easily. Being a publisher is very different work than what is required and expected of a writer.

Make a list of the ideas and messages you wish to convey to your target audience over the next three months. Create an outline to work from and write down everything you will include, along with the information you will exclude. Then plan out an eBook or short report you could publish on your topic, information products that would make sense, and a full length book that could be the ultimate goal for your business. Also, don’t forget about creating an online course where you teach the content contained in your information products, reports, and book. When you think like a publisher, your horizons are broadened.

Take some time to incorporate the ideas I am presenting here into your own business. I truly believe that online entrepreneurs must take it upon themselves to elevate their status to that of a publisher so that their businesses will grow. It also changes the thinking and allows you to take full responsibility for your life and for your business. Once you begin to act and think like a publisher rather than an author and/or information product creator and marketer you will experience a new world of opportunities.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, online marketing strategist, bestselling author, and international speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and inner game mind shifts. Let’s connect to see how I may best serve you in the near future. Be sure to take a look at my Really Simple Content Marketing training course to help get you started on how to think like a publisher.

Marketing Tips

Connie Ragen Green Shares Internet Marketing Updates

Monthly Archives: January 2017

How to Eliminate Procrastination in Your Life

Eliminate Procrastination and Accomplish Your Goals

How to Manage Your Time More Effectively

Manage Your Time and Change Your Life

Making the Most of Your Biological Prime Time Hours

Figuring Out Your Biological Prime Time

How to Write Short Reports

Your Productivity Plan as an Entrepreneur

Do You Have a Productivity Plan?

Productivity Plan (You Decide What Time Each Day)

Promote Your Live Streaming Show

Planning a Successful Product Launch

Planning Your Product Launch

Repurposing Content to Build an Online Business

Why Repurposing Content Just Makes Sense

Why Entrepreneurs Must Think Like a Publisher

Why Authors Must Think Like a Publisher