by Jason Linett
An editorial calendar can become a game-changer for you. In my business, I know what podcasts I’m publishing and what programs I’m promoting several weeks in advance. This keeps my communication clear and my message focused. It also allows me to balance the art of providing value to my audience more than just making sales offers.
Embrace your ability to print money to experience a shift in your financial strategies. My view of business or personal expenses is now correlated with the income of coaching sessions, keynote presentations, and product sales. The cost of our mortgage or medical insurance for my family may be a financial burden, yet it equates to one day of clients in my office or perhaps the income from one student attending a course. One day of clients or one student completely finances these necessities. Thankfully, I’m in my office more than once a month, and my classes have a nice attendance, so these expenses are less of a burden.
Be warned: don’t spend money you haven’t yet earned. Unrealized value is money that doesn’t yet exist. People talk about the value they hold in their homes, their cars, or even stocks, yet the value doesn’t truly exist until someone is willing to purchase them from you.
In the 1990s, Jim Carrey played a character in a sketch on the comedy show In Living Color . The bit was poking fun at the popular television psychics at the time. Jim Carrey’s character gave an excited testimonial, “My psychic told me I’d win the lottery and quit my job. Today, I quit my job. I’m halfway there!”
Don’t spend money you don’t yet have, though do embrace earning potential. Even better, make it a game.
I mentioned the goal of increasing the size of my office. Rather than the single room suite, I needed multiple rooms for staff plus a classroom. This move would result in doubling my rent. I installed a mental rule to justify the move: “I have to put on an event every month that, from that single effort, will cover all the expenses of the office space. The admission from just a single day or evening’s event should finance the rent, power, and internet expense.” My business was already thriving enough to support the higher rent, though I applied the “Print Money” principle to scale up my business year-after-year.
Realize you can “Print Money” to print even more money. In addition to putting on these events, the cameras are rolling. They become my products. One strategy to quantify and qualify a higher expense eventually tripled my annual income.
Let this be a trailer for the upcoming chapter “Design Systems.” Every experiment you run in your business is an audition to learn what works best, so you can later duplicate your methods. You can now turn on these machines or “systems” in your business at will. If a random unexpected expense occurs, you will experience less stress knowing exactly how to “Print Money” so you can move on with your life.
Years ago, my websites were briefly shut down because the company hosting my sites got hacked. The code of my sites was breached with viruses and malware, so Google did the appropriate thing and hid my websites from search results. That was appropriate for them. It was horrible for me! Most of my clients were discovering me on the web. If my websites weren’t appearing online, this could have shut down my business.
My team began to scrub the websites and migrate them to another host. Meanwhile, I got out into the community, networking and giving presentations on what I do. I ran the “Print Money” principle by falling back on systems I previously found to work. There was no lapse in business. Business only got better as the web issue was resolved.
People buy from people. Create an open line of communication through articles, updating websites, sending out emails, and even posting the occasional selfie video on social media. Provide more value than what you ask in return, so when you do ask for a sale, the reciprocity relationship is already in motion. Give, give, give, give, get.
Let these stories inspire you to take action. Keep an ongoing list in the Notes app of your phone of ideas you are ready to implement. Track your assets and brainstorm how to leverage them.
There’s no such thing as finding the time. There’s only making the time. Schedule time to design your systems and create the material necessary to supercharge your business.
There’s money on the table waiting to be picked up. Yes, you can print it yourself.
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ There’s no such thing as finding the time. There’s only making the time. Schedule time to look at your calendar and plan ahead for timed strategies to print money. Give yourself a specific deadline to create the assets necessary to leverage into income.
☞ Experiment with changing your offers. If you only ever do a promotion themed around a discount, you may accidentally train your audience to wait until you offer a discount before they buy. I won’t shop at Bed Bath & Beyond unless I have one of those big blue “20% off one item” coupons they mail to my home every month. Test your market by making an offer that comes with the bonus of added value. This could be an additional training, an extra live session, or, perhaps, a personalized coaching call.
☞ Continue your “personal swipe file” action step from the “Create Assets and Leverage Them” chapter. I keep an ongoing list of opportunities in the Notes app on my phone, so these strategies are in the chamber ready to be fired off at the appropriate time. In addition to tracking your assets, track how you’re going to put them to use.
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BUILD RITUALS
A small shift in thinking can create massive results when it comes to creating new habits. We’re about to explore a subtle mindset adjustment to lock in new behaviors at a deeper level of consciousness. Just like a muscle in the body that can grow stronger through consistent effort, you’re going to learn to train your brain like a muscle to grow stronger and hold onto new habits.
I’ll share with you the personal discoveries I’ve made to draw lines between my family life and work life. You’re going to discover the most valuable asset in your life, and how to best put it to use. Here’s a preview: it’s not money. I’ll share with you how I became a morning person to inspire incredible momentum to jumpstart my day, plus the most valuable lesson we can learn from video games.
I don’t want you to focus on creating better habits. I want you to “Build Rituals. ”
It may be just a reframing of familiar words, yet your mind and body will process your actions differently as you view them as rituals.
Rituals are empowering. Rituals are things we hold sacred. Some people are always in church on a Sunday morning. That’s their ritual. Some are always at the bus stop waiting for their kids to come home from school. That’s their ritual. Others are glued to the television when a new episode of their favorite show launches. That’s a ritual.
I maintain a ritual of waking up early, checking in with my virtual staff around the world, and then hitting the gym early in the morning. The metaphors that come from strength training are inspiring. After physical training, the body enters a recovery phase. After recovery, there’s a phase called “supercompensation.” That’s just an awesome word, isn’t it? This is the phase where the body is responding to the training and recovery and is making the judgment that the body needs to adjust to support the effort. Your body compensates in response to the continued effort of lifting heavier things. And that’s just super.
Neurological strength increases, and muscles physically grow larger in size, provided the appropriate nutrition is present to support the growth. It doesn’t happen overnight. Strength is something that builds over time. Strength is a skill .
While we’re on this topic, I developed an embarrassing habit several years ago. It wasn’t the typical bad habit. I’ve never been a smoker, I cut alcohol out of my life a few years ago, and even when I was obese in my teenage years, I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. My bad habit? I kept hurting myself. I would pick up something heavy like a suitcase or piece of furniture with the kind of poor technique that would make a physical therapist cringe. My back muscles would end up twisted and sprained. I’d be in bed in
pain for several days.
I visited doctor after doctor trying to discover what was wrong with my back. They couldn’t find anything specifically wrong with the muscles, nerves, or bones. What was the real issue? I was weak and clumsy. My first trip to a physical therapist didn’t involve the stretching and exercise I expected. Instead, I received training on how to “pick up things like a human.” She recommended a few strength training exercises, and I transformed my occasional habit of going to the gym into a five-or-six-times-a-week ritual I’ve maintained for years. The back pain disappeared as my strength grew.
For anyone looking to gain the insights on how to improve the composition of your body through strength-training, I’d highly recommend the books Bigger Leaner Stronger or Thinner Leaner Stronger by Michael Matthews. His work was the foundation to take control of my own health .
Model this story, even if physical strength is not your goal of reading this book. I recognized a challenge, found a possible solution, and kept at the new strategy until I got the desired result. Success may not always be an instant result. It’s the effort over time that may build an empire. Treat these efforts as if they had the importance of being a ritual, and you’ll easily lock them in as part of your life.
To wrap up the connections between building a business and strength, other lessons soon emerged. Strength increases over time. You don’t hit personal records every day. Consistency over time and patience will produce the greatest results. Even a runner will only gradually increase their training distance to eventually run a full marathon. Gradually increase the burden so as to not overload yourself too quickly, and endurance will naturally grow. The discipline I’ve built building my strength has spilled into other parts of my life.
A friend of mine once said, “The way you are here is the way you are everywhere else.” Is the back of your car a disaster? Are there piles of papers on your office desk? Are there hundreds of emails you haven’t yet responded to? It’s likely these are symptoms of larger issues you may be facing in life.
One small change can trigger massive results in other parts of your life. I tripled my business in the time since I got in better physical shape. Decide now to purposefully and consciously shift your life in a new direction. Build effective rituals in your life and treat those behaviors as if they were sacred. This discipline will likely spill into other parts of your life.
Everything comes down to testing. Try out different schedules and behaviors; you’ll find the rituals that best align with you. I organize my day now by “modes” to keep on track, harness momentum, and leave the workday easily to be home with my family.
I intentionally operate what I’ve nicknamed a three-ring-circus business lifestyle. A workweek may include contracts for a speaking engagement, coaching an executive client, or producing training content for my online communities. It would be impossible to balance this without establishing rituals to keep up with it all. This includes when I respond to emails, how I schedule phone calls and interviews, and brainstorm new projects.
I’ve made it a ritual to schedule time to design new projects, enter new markets, and scale up my business. Be sure there’s time to work ON your business, not just IN your business. Thank you to Michael Gerber for his classic book, The E-Myth Revisited , a must-read for any business owner. In the upcoming “Scale Up” chapter you’ll learn to avoid only working in the patterns of “more of the same.” Your business may plateau if you’re only doing the same things over and over. Hold yourself accountable to create rituals to go after growth.
There’s no such thing as finding the time. There’s only making the time. Are there new skills you need to acquire? Is there an advanced title or certification you need in your industry? I’ve made personal development a ritual. Schedule time for yourself to grow as a person.
Are there communities you need to join? Are there local business organizations you would benefit from by being a member? Lock these times in your calendar as if they’re a ritual.
Is your work/life balance suffering? Block off time in your calendar to take your kids to the park, the library, or out for an adventure. Schedule a date night with your loved one or lock off time in advance for a vacation. Let these become rituals that cannot be canceled.
People make it a ritual to attend a live event. You’ve purchased top-dollar tickets to a concert and, assuming there isn’t a major natural disaster, you’ve locked the event in your life as if it were a ritual. It’s different if you were just thinking of seeing a movie in the theater. If, suddenly, the weather turned and it started to rain, you might decide to wait a few months to stream the movie at home, instead .
Rituals can also be small things. The time you brush your teeth each day is a ritual. So is where you charge your mobile phone. If you can do these things consistently, realize how easy it’s going to be to create other rituals that will improve your quality of life.
Take a moment to think big. Let’s go after some massive goals here. Do you want to write a book? Are you ready to launch an online training program? Is there a renovation project at home you’d like to finance? Is there a major health goal you’d like to achieve? Start with the end in mind, and reverse-engineer the rituals necessary to make it happen.
Speaking of money, there’s familiar advice for someone in their first paying job. It’s recommended they start saving for their future, perhaps with a savings account or retirement savings program. This is often called “pay yourself first.” Take a small percentage of your income and automatically set it aside. We’ll always have liabilities, bills, and taxes, and we’ll always have to pay for food, water, and power.
If you make it a priority to pay yourself first you often still make ends meet. Live as if that 10% of your income wasn’t yours to spend. We make unconscious adjustments to create balance. Maybe you wait for the movie to stream online rather than drop twenty dollars to see it in the theater, especially with that rainstorm I previously mentioned. Perhaps you make your coffee from home rather than give the coffee shop six dollars for a cup. You might pack your lunch some days rather than give the restaurant near your work eighteen dollars for a salad.
By setting the money aside, you’re vowing to live as if that money wasn’t yours to spend. Pay yourself first. It will produce huge dividends in your future. Pennies invested now could become thousands of dollars over time.
Financial strategy is a part of the WORK SMART mindset. Just realize the most valuable asset you have isn’t money. It’s time. Time is something that if you don’t spend it wisely, you don’t get to enjoy it in the future. Pay yourself first with your own time. Make this a ritual as early as today. Make time for yourself, your family, and your business.
To WORK SMART is to work with intention, purpose, and focus. Embrace the philosophy that there is no failure, there’s only feedback. Harness the learning that you receive along the way, even if it does come with occasional difficulty.
Perhaps you’re familiar with a classic story that truly epitomizes the value of learning from the trials and tribulations of life.
A young woman found herself in an uncomfortable situation: she was kidnapped. As much as she tried, she could not get free from her captor. Her lover, a young man, began a journey to save her. Every time he got just that little bit closer to saving her, he would discover a note that read “the princess is in another castle.” This young man, a plumber by trade, was traveling with his brother. Not just regular brothers, it turns out, but Super Mario Brothers. Along their journey, if Luigi fell down a hole, the video game player knew to jump over the hole. If Mario died in a freak accident by walking into a flying turtle with wings, the video game player knew to stomp on the turtle and use its shell as a flying projectile to knock out the other turtles and Goombas. If the gamer were dedicated to the ritual of continuing the adventure, Mario and Princess Peach would be happily reunited at the end of the video game. Only for the Princess to find herself in a similar pickle the next time Nintendo released a game system, of
course.
The lesson of this story is to enjoy the journey getting to your end goal. The journey is where you will spend the most time, so make use of every bit of learning you pick up along the way. Let it become a ritual to become tenacious at finding the best rituals to actualize your goal.
Have you ever watched a reality competition talent show? Suspense builds over several weeks as the viewers at home call or text in their votes. By the time the winner is announced, the television end-credits are already rolling. The winner is declared, and there’s nowhere for the television program to go. It’s the ritual of getting swept up in the melodrama of the competition that keeps us watching for more.
WORK SMART in your business by designing your own rituals. You can model what others have found to be successful, as there’s a modern trend of asking what someone’s morning rituals are.
I’m now a morning person. I wasn’t always one, yet I created a morning ritual that changed my life. I used to believe I was a zombie until noon. I realized I needed more hours of productivity in my business in the early days. Rather than just hoping to tolerate the mornings, I shifted my thinking to reclaim the morning as my sacred, ritualistic time. Be specific to be terrific. If you can clearly define your rituals, the self-ratifying study of what works for you may take on the benefits of self-hypnosis. At night, before I go to sleep, I decide if my morning needs to focus on creation or momentum. If I’m in a creation-mode in my business, my morning includes the music from the “Breakfast Machine Suite,” a piece written by Danny Elfman as featured in the movie Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure . (I wish I were making this up. Go find the song right now, it’s an incredible piece of composition.) If my mode will be momentum, it’s If I Had a Million Dollars by the Canadian rock group, The Barenaked Ladies.