Work Smart Business

by Jason Linett

  His testimonial was the asset. The leveraging came from asking, “Who needs this?”

  Assets are things you can create yourself. Are there questions you frequently get asked? Make a video or a special page on your website specific to that question. Is there a checklist you could create that serves a benefit to your customer, yet clearly identifies you as an expert in your field? I was once shopping for car loans and found many of the companies were offering the same rates. Which bank did I do business with? The one that provided a checklist of necessary documents and car-buying-tips for people who are self-employed.

  It’s time for you to get started. Content marketing is the method of sharing media, such as articles, helpful documents, videos, podcasts, or whatever medium is your preference. In addition to serving as a benefit to the growth of your business, you can reclaim your time by becoming respectfully self-referential in your business. My students can go back and revisit videos from a course. My hypnosis clients get videos and audios reminding them of self-hypnosis techniques. My corporate speaking clients get helpful event planning documents that streamline our working experience. My personal rule for automation is that I’m only allowed to physically remove myself from the running of my business by way of technology if it’s improving the customer’s experience.

  These items can be self-published on your own website. Once created, congratulations! You’ve got an asset! Ask yourself “Who needs to see this?” Where are the decision-makers that need to discover what you’ve produced?

  Whether it’s something you’ve created or another asset like a testimonial or news appearance, realize that sometimes things take on a life of their own. There’s a video of me speaking at a Rotary event that is still floating around the internet from almost ten years ago. That video keeps my phone ringing through organic web traffic. I also direct people to check the link as a mechanism to “meet me before you come to my office.”

  One of my micro-niche markets are people who already do hypnosis. As much as I have new students coming from the general public who wish to learn more, my classes are often full of people who have already been trained in the work and are seeking refinement to get better results with their clients. I produce a podcast for these people called Work Smart Hypnosis . Well that’s a familiar title, isn’t it? Each recorded session serves as an asset I can then leverage into more people attending my training events.

  I must stress that the formula that makes this work is that my #1 goal for the program is to provide a high-value free program for this community. I’m either teaching specific methods or capturing a long-form conversation with leaders in the industry. For a program that’s usually an hour in length, less than two minutes of the entire program features a specific promotion. Rather than ask, “What can I sell my audience,” my focus is, “What can I give my audience.” The side effect is reciprocity. People will find such great benefit from the free resource you share with them that they’ll be motivated to want more. Reciprocity is Dr. Robert Cialdini’s first principle of persuasion in the classic book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion . Be genuine as you create a valuable asset that you can either purposefully leverage in your business or can use as an organic piece for people to discover you.

  You might ask if two minutes of promotion during an hour-long program is enough. A one-hour, prime-time program on network television will feature about fifteen minutes of commercials. This value-first strategy of leveraging assets pays off as my classes are filled, my products sell online, and I’m invited to speak around the world.

  I want you to get started. Several action steps are coming your way. Consider testimonials you already have. Do you have special skills? Have you appeared in the news? These are the assets you already own. If you haven’t done these things, what can you do to get interviewed, get that feedback, and make these assets appear?

  I capture everything. If I’m teaching, the video camera is rolling. If I’m speaking, what other audience should see a video of that talk? If I’m being interviewed, my focus is shared between delivering the information I’m being asked about and considering what bigger audience needs to hear the message? The benefit to the interviewer is that you’re helping bring a larger audience to their program.

  Leverage testimonials. Leverage success stories. You can even leverage recent news as a reason to consider working with your business. It’s also fine to recycle old content. I have videos online that are older than my children that will help pay their way through college.

  Assets also empower you to “show” rather than just “tell.” Let people see the value you and your business truly represent. Don’t just tell them you’re good at what you do. As Steve Martin once said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

  WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:

  ☞ There’s a popular marketing term called a “swipe file” where you save images of magazine headlines, emulate direct-mail pieces you receive at home, or match the style of a recent presentation. Don’t mimic or copy someone’s work, though. Consider their piece a model for inspiration. You could do this. I’d also encourage you to build a master list of your own personal swipe file. Compile your business’ testimonials in one place. Make sure you save any articles or media appearances of your business. Make it easy to access these assets in seconds.

  ☞ Play the game of exploring the micro-niche categories you can target. Do some market research to figure out who are the decision-makers in that industry. Where do these people gather? Review your assets to decide which pieces offer the best leverage to bridge a connection between you and your audience.

  ☞ “If you’re not creating, you’re waiting.” In addition to compiling your current assets and deciding how you’re going to leverage them, get started producing your own content to demonstrate the expertise you clearly have. Show, rather than tell.

  .

  PRINT MONEY

  Imagine being able to click a few buttons and turn on the ability to instantly earn more money. While this might sound like the false promise of a pop-up ad when browsing the web, you’re about to learn how to make this a reality.

  From the start, I trust you’ll understand that the “Print Money” chapter header is a metaphor. I hope it’s obvious to you that I don’t endorse counterfeiting money. Instead, you’re about to discover a philosophy that realizes that business prospects are abundant. There is no scarcity of opportunity, there’s only a scarcity of thinking. You just have to make them happen.

  Do you have a credit card bill you want to pay off? Model the stories in this chapter to simply take care of it. Did a tax bill just arrive that you didn’t expect? Dissolve the stress and anxiety by running a few business systems to pay it off easily. Is there a silly purchase you’ve somehow justified to yourself because you just want it? I’m going to share with you the principles to make the money appear to cover the cost.

  You’re also going to learn the importance of financial responsibility. It’s important to only spend the money you have, rather than spending the money you don’t have. The arc of business spending I recommend is moving from no-cost to low-cost strategies. The combined efforts of my email automation systems, podcast editors, and web designers are well over $1,000/month these days, but I wasn’t spending that when I started the business. My business can now easily handle the expense. Start with what you have and grow from there.

  Let’s talk about jumping to the front of the line at amusement park rides.

  My wife and I love roller coasters. Our kids love theme parks. Living in the Northern Virginia area, the Six Flags America park is less than an hour’s drive away. The cost of season passes for the family turns out to be less than visiting the park three or four times a year. It was an easy decision to purchase season passes for the family and visit the park several times a year.

  The challenge I’m about to present to you is perhaps the epitome of a “first world problem.” Sometimes the best problems in life are the problems we create ourselves. If the conflict
I’m about to explain was the biggest issue my family was facing at the time, clearly, things were going all right. I know what you’re about to read is ridiculous. This story illustrates that, sometimes, a small investment of money can pay a massive result. Please let this experience inspire much better investments in your life and your business.

  Again, my wife and I loved riding roller coasters. However, our children were not yet old enough or tall enough to ride the “big rides.” In the mix of watching the theme park shows, riding the family rides together, and visiting the children’s play area, she and I would take turns hanging out with the kids or riding a roller coaster by ourselves. The theme park was small enough that it was easy to trade off to ride the bigger rides, and then meet back up with the family. Easy. However, the summer season kicked into full gear, the lines were getting longer, and this strategy wasn’t working anymore. Life is rough sometimes, isn’t it?

  Like most parks, there is an option to upgrade your season’s membership with a “skip-the-line” pass. It’s not exactly “cutting in line” as the feature allows you to reserve a spot in line without having to stand and wait. You receive a special watch or app to “check-in” for a ride, and the device buzzes when it’s your turn to board the ride. It was absolutely a frivolous option that originally seemed completely unnecessary for an extra $200 a year. We wanted to have more family time together at the parks while getting our roller coaster fix. Buying the “Flash Pass” option presented a solution .

  Pause the story. I’ve heard people in the marketing world tell similar tales of buying incredible cars with cash. Purchasing their homes from a single email campaign. Financing their children’s college education with a product launch. We’re talking roller coasters. I’ve got sexier stories, yet this one most colorfully illustrates the “Print Money” principle. This chapter could have been about how my wife and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary in Italy financed by a single speaking engagement. Instead, we’re talking about not having to sweat in line in the summer heat at a theme park ride themed around Superman.

  We had the money. It was just a question of whether or not to spend it. Instead, I decided to turn it into a game. I ran an online promotion for one of my programs that typically sells for $600. Through two targeted emails, I added a valuable bonus to open up twelve spots at a special rate of $500. If I was to only sell one unit of the program, the theme park expense was going to be covered for both my wife and I without touching our savings or regular funds.

  I didn’t sell one. I sold out the dozen within one day, profiting $6,000 thanks to ten minutes of effort crafting an email to offer a special to my audience. The passes were purchased with more than $5,000 remaining for more important life expenses like food, water, and shelter. You know, the important stuff .

  This is a strategy I employ on a regular basis. Harness the assets you already have, such as your products or services, and leverage them into quick income. The classic options for a promotion are to either discount, add more value, or, perhaps, blend discount and value together.

  It should go without saying that your business strategies must come from a place of honesty and integrity. I insist you only model these principles if you are truly serving your audience and your customers. The people who purchased the program I described above received a step-by-step system to help them better serve their clients and grow their business. Many of the buyers of this specific program have used it to launch their businesses and help hundreds of people on their own. Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of a sale where it was clear the seller viewed you as a potential dollar sign rather than a living, breathing human. Add value to people’s lives rather than just taking their money. I urge you to only use your marketing powers for good.

  The modern mortgage system makes it a little more challenging for a self-employed person to buy a home. It’s absolutely possible, yet that’s an industry mostly familiar with tracking someone’s payroll stubs from their employer. Just before we were ready to close on our home, the bank informed us they didn’t like that we had a balance of a few thousand dollars remaining on a car payment. I ran a promotion similar to the roller coaster story to rapidly erase the debt and move into our home.

  Please let this principle inspire you. Had this scenario happened to most people, they would have lost the opportunity to move into their dream home. The best-case scenario for some people would have been that they could have delayed the closing on the property to be more flush with cash, but then they’d run the risk of the sellers getting impatient and putting the house back on the market. Perhaps they’d be able to negotiate to delay the closing of the home to collect a few more paychecks. If they chose to sell the car to rid themselves of the debt, the irony of the situation would be that’d be erasing one debt to take on a bigger debt of the home. The old “rob Peter to pay Paul” story.

  Again, I must inject reality into these stories. For those of you in the start-up phases of your business, I’m not going for the boastful story of how I paid off a sports car to buy a mansion. This is the story of paying off a minivan to move into a four-bedroom townhome.

  The principle of “Print Money” teaches you to WORK SMART in your business and finances. You hold in your hands the power to instantly change your cashflow.

  Buy into the premise that you turn your income on like pushing the button of a printer. When you work from the presupposition that this is the absolute truth, you open your eyes to abundant opportunities for business success in the world around you.

  Please resist the temptation to fall into scarcity thinking with several “yeah, but…” objections. Want it to be true, expect it to be true, and you can make it true. The opportunities are abundant; you just have to seize them.

  I meet too many people who are stuck in a lifestyle living paycheck to paycheck. I once worked sixty-hours-a-week for a job that only paid me the value of forty-hours’ effort. At the end of the year, I was rewarded with less than a 5% raise. This situation is far too common. I vowed never to be stuck in that situation again, and I’ll help you avoid it, too.

  This doesn’t have to be an either/or decision. You don’t have to only be the entrepreneur or the employee. You could do both. It’s a myth that you must have multiple streams of income. It’s a myth that you have to. The reality is you absolutely should.

  It’s okay to be really successful. I still find it amusing that I have to give this disclaimer when speaking to some business groups. Earning money is not a bad thing. I meet too many people suffering from “savior syndrome,” the selfless urge to deeply discount their value or give it away for free.

  It’s a good thing to earn money. The world is a rather expensive place to live. We have to provide for our family; to have food, water, and shelter. It’s important to take the occasional vacation with your family, reinvest in your business, or, as frivolous as it may be, reserve your spot in line for a roller coaster. My clients receive 100% of my focus when we’re working together because my attention is on them, rather than a worry if my bills will be paid on time. Remove the “I need the money” mentality from your life. You’ll have a stronger ability to respectfully turn away clientele that may not be a fit for your business. There’s no need to operate from hunger. Instead, you can lead with service.

  My parents are both wedding photographers. I remember the story of a local pastor who published his pricing for officiating a wedding. The man was an incredible speaker and helped couples create a truly memorable wedding ceremony. There was one set of fees if you were a member of his congregation and a rate nearly double that if you were not. There was a brief uproar in the local community as he explained, “My kids should have the same ability to go to college as yours.”

  As you embrace your right to print money an amazing correlation occurs. The higher the buy-in for someone to make use of your services, the higher the value you receive from the clientele. Keep your ethics focused. I don’t endorse charging a ridiculously high fee to give a false s
ense of perceived value. Charge what your service is worth or, even better, charge what the value of the results will be. Typically, the more someone invests, the more they’re ready to make use of what you’re going to share with them.

  The benefit comes back to you. Reinvest in your skills. Continue your education. Provide a better product or service to your clients. Compete with yourself to improve yourself and your industry year-after-year. The more we’re all successful, the more we’re all successful. Embrace the mindset that you can print money. There’s money out there on the table and, sometimes, you just have to pick it up.

  You have assets you have not yet leveraged. There’s knowledge or a set of skills you have that others may benefit from. Maybe you know a solution to a common problem. Perhaps you have a better method than how most people do something. How do you discover markets that have not yet been tapped into?

  Listen.

  So many needs are out there waiting for a solution to be presented. Listen and discover a need you can help satisfy. You have a book waiting to be written, an online course waiting to launch, a workshop others will benefit from, or perhaps a product that will make the world better. Information has value.

  Start to think in numbers. What annual income would you like to earn? Divide that down into months, weeks, or even into individual days. Once you have this daily number, reverse-engineer the strategies you need to employ to make that happen. Many years ago, when I wished to double the size of my office, I knew this would also likely double the cost of my rent. By reverse-engineering the income necessary to handle the expense, it became easy to justify the cost.