If you are looking for more time in your day, then look no further than today’s article. One of the most important gifts you can give to yourself is the gift of learning how to manage your inbox.  It’s a time-saver….

In-box Stress

You know what “in-box stress” is, don’t you?  It’s that horrid feeling you have when you turn on your computer in the morning and groan at your overloaded in-box. 

Email Overwhelm

Back in the ‘old days’ all we had to manage was the telephones and the post.  These days we have email as well.  If you’re one of those people struggling to cope with the deluge you get sent each day, you’re not alone.   We all get way more e-mail than we can fully act on. The in-box gets bigger and bigger and rapidly spins out of control leading to email overwhelm and stress.

Letting The Inbox Rule Us

The real problem is not with reading email but rather with doing the tasks that come from the email.  Having to take action on each email eats a massive chunk of our day.   If you’re anything like most people, then you don’t have a natural way to prioritize your reactions to your email.  Instead you just try and do it all there and then – acting on each email as it comes in.  Not only can we not keep up that way, but all our important work does not even get done – we end up prioritizing the email over everything else – simply because we are letting our inbox rule us.

Taking Charge of The Inbox

Simple! Don’t read the messages as they come in.  Read them periodically, no more than every hour or so. Or perhaps even just once or twice a day.  Research shows that it takes several minutes to recover from each work interruption, and that’s what scattered email reading leads to.  Now for a big tip, turn off the email notifications!  That way you stop jumping each time a new email pings in.

The next step is this: don’t take significant actions on emails when you first read them – unless they are truly urgent. Instead, put those actions on your to-do list.

As you read through your batch of emails, task each one that needs action onto your to-do list.  Prioritize them as you would any other task.  This way you treat your email no more or no less importantly than the other tasks in your day.  I suggest writing your task list first, then checking your in-box, adding your email tasks to the list and then prioritising the entire list. That way your e-mail doesn’t rule you – you rule your email.

The End of In-box Stress

Converting emails to tasks is a powerful practice.  It gifts you time  – as you are not bogged down doing e-mail actions prematurely, you’ll get through your email much faster.  Conversion to tasks also stops email from completely hijacking your workday!

Before you were answering emails and taking action just because it was at the top of your in-box.  Now you’re putting the email action onto your single task-list and working from your priorities. As a result, the most important tasks get completed first, rather than the other way round….

Converting emails to tasks takes away the stress from managing your inbox. As the email tasks are now on one list, this means you can empty your in-box easily.  Your task-list holds all your actions so you can empty and file the inbox daily.

The freedom of an empty inbox is such a relief.  It takes away stress and gives you more time to get on with your important tasks.  Why don’t you make a start right now into tasking your email actions onto your to-do list and enjoy the extra time it gives you…..

• When you are doing a presentation you must stick to time
• At a multi speaker event if you over run, the promoter will not be happy.
• The speakers after you won’t like it either
• You can perfect your presentation timing by practice, practice, practice
• If you haven’t started to close by about 60-70minutes your close rate will start to fall off rapidly.

One of the most common excuses I hear from my clients when they are stalling on doing the things they know they should do is “I don’t have the time”.

If you have ever said to yourself “I just don’t have the time to get these things done that I know I should be doing” then you should consider outsourcing.

This has allowed us to grow our business by implementing marketing strategies that we alsways knew we should have, make changes to our web sites that we always knew we should have – all these things that are on the “To Do” list but don’t quite get done you can usually outsource.

There are loads of web sites out there where you can post a job and people will bid to help you with that job.

So whether its help with writing copy, getting your book written or getting your newsletters written – there are so many strategies that you can use as a speaker to draw more attention to your business and build a relationship with your list that you don’t necessarily need to do yourself.

Some Outsourcing sites I recommend are:

• www.Rentacoder.com
• www.Elance.com
• www.Odesk.com

Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Audience Part 3

There Are 4 Key Questions You Must Ask Yourself Before You Settle On a Niche For Your Speaking.

In the last blog article we asked are the people in your niche willing to spend money on your topic?

This week, the third key question to ask yourself before you settle on a niche is….

Can You Easily Access Them?

This is a key factor in whether it will be easy or difficult to grow your speaking business.  Speaking is generally a face to face business so it makes sense that groups who already gather together are the easiest to access.

Here’s an example:

Easy To Access:

• Meet regularly
• Meet locally
• Meet in groups bigger than 30
• Have regular speakers

Difficult To Access

• Don’t meet face to face
• Meet virtually, if at all
• Are mixed in among other types of people in large groups

Once you start thinking along these lines, it’s a no-brainer to think of groups you can easily access.  Here are some examples of easy to access groups:

• Business owners at Chambers of Commerce
• Women entrepreneurs at networking breakfasts
• Singles at speed-dating
• Health conscious types at expos
• Young couples at home renovations expos
• Real estate investors at investment clubs

You get the idea?

Easy to identify, but difficult to get together groups include:

• Mothers (limited time)
• Teachers (have to get through gate-keepers)
• CEO’s (limited time and hard to get through gatekeepers)
• Agoraphobics (obvious reasons!!!)

What If They Can’t Get Together?

One of my clients runs a speaking business called www.SecretsOfASuperMum.com.  She’s a great speaker but does most of her speaking on teleseminars rather than live because it’s difficult for her to get her clients away from their children for any length of time.  So remember to be flexible.

2 final questions to ask yourself if your niche is easy to identify and market to:

1. Does someone already have a list of them (think of potential JV’s)
2. Does someone have these clients before me?

So get clear on how easy this niche are to access.  If it’s easy- they have lots of votes in their favour!

Here is the first of 4 Key Questions You Must Ask Yourself Before You Settle On a Niche For Your Speaking. 

Are other people interested in this topic?

First thing to determine is whether people are actually looking for information related to your topic, or buying products or services in this niche.  You will be surprised what people are interested in and focussed on.

So step one is to determine whether other people are as interested in the topic as you are.  How do you do this?  A few strategies you could try:

  a. Specialty Magazines: Visit one of the larger newsagents or bookshops in your area and have a look at the specialty magazines available.  Most magazines make their money from advertising revenue.  So if there is a magazine on your topic that has been around for a while, it is a fair bet people are looking for information on your topic- and are willing to pay!

  b. Google keyword tool: You can go to Google and search for their keyword tool and get some great information for free.  There you can see exactly how many people are using Google to search on a particular subject.

It’s at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Remember- if there are a lot of people as passionate as you are about you are about your topic, chances are you have a good niche on your hands.

For more information on how to select your niche, get your FREE copy of the Shift Presentation Profits Blueprint at www.ShiftSpeakerTraining.com/blueprint

Attention: Coaches, Consultants, Authors, Speakers, and Other Solo-preneurs

Register Now for this FREE Webinar Series where I will reveal how I started with absolutely no database, and grew a successful 7 figure speaking business in my first year

“The ABCs of Growing Your Business Through Speaking”

Join me on these webinars, where I will reveal the EXACT steps I took to create a lifestyle business from my passion and to skyrocket my income to multiple 7-figures in the first year. (And just in case you’re thinking “I couldn’t do that”- discover how many of my clients have done the same- and how you could too…)

In this FREE webinar series I will reveal:

• NEW and easy ways to use SPEAKING and the INFORMATION PRODUCTS to create a business that you LOVE!
• The ABCs of a successful speaking business. Each webinar will focus on a different aspect of your business success.
• How to create an ELEGANT BUSINESS MODEL as a back-end to your speaking so that you can STOP trading your time for money, and get your knowledge working for you.
• How to STOP selling one-to-one and START selling one to hundreds… or even thousands! (This leverage is your KEY to super-fast income growth despite the “tough times”.)
• BRAND NEW strategies and secrets that I’ve just uncovered to grow my business FASTER and attract wealth easier than ever before. (And believe me, your mindset is just as important as your marketing and sales.)

These calls are a sneak preview of my “Shift Presentation Profits” LIVE TRAININGS happening in both March in Melbourne, Australia and November in London, UK.

Take my word for it… you DON’T want to miss this FREE webinar series.

Click here to get registered immediately

FIRST CALL ON OCTOBER THE 22ND

Calls will be once a month, commencing on the 22nd of October, 2009.

Create a great opt-in page to build your community using these great tips:

1. Have a nice bold headline at the top with a benefit driven statement
2. On the left, underneath the headline, a video of you discussing your free gift
3. On the right, an opt-in box so people can join your database and receive your free gift
4. A series of “blind” bullet points that describe your free gift without giving too much away
5. Another opt-in box at the bottom to capture people’s details

I recommend driving all your traffic to this page, give it out as your web site at speaking gigs and on teleseminars.

Cheers,

Joanna

I’m always asked “how do I get more gigs?”  Well the problem for most speakers is not that they aren’t decent speakers.  It’s that no-one knows they exist!  Which is why, for better or for worse you have to work at increasing two fundamentals:

1. Your Celebrity
2. Your Credibility

Help people get to know you! You should film every engagement you do and edit together a “showreel” a bit like this.  It should show off some teaching, some fun, some audience involvement and maybe some testimonials too.

That way promoters can see your style and feel good about having you speak at their event.

Cheers,