we are hello everyone we’re going to get
started in a couple minutes I’m really
excited to do this webinar with you guys
going to be talking about how I work
some some tips and how to shorten down
your work week and get more stuff done I
notice there’s a number of people here
who just joined us a couple number of
people are still going to be joining us
on the call I’m curious we have a couple
minutes before we have to get started
those of you who are tuned in and who
are on Twitter you can ask questions
with the hashtag ask Evan and we’re also
going to be keeping an eye on the chat
room here so there’s an opportunity to
write in some messages I guess I want to
know what some of your big challenges
are if you guys have a few minutes right
now before we get started feel free to
leave a message using the ask Evan
hashtag or in the chat room itself and
what is your biggest challenge your own
productivity what’s the biggest problem
you’re facing right now with you’re
crunched work week and and hopefully I
can try to address some of these things
when we go through the presentation
itself so i’m going to keep an eye on
the twitter feed as well as the chat
room here and and we’ll see what kinda
questions come up i love to tailor it to
you guys and I’m excited this is this is
one of the topics that always gets me
excited to talk about I know
productivity is such a big important
issue for a lot of entrepreneurs so
we’re going to start it in one to two
minutes and again if you just want to
leave some questions using the ask Evan
ashtag or through the chat I’m going to
check those out as we go along we’re
going to start etching them for you
the number of people already starting to
write in with some questions so it’s
great yes one quick mention if you
cannot if you’re having problems seeing
the messaging here you seen the
presentation we have a phone number that
you can call them as well if you’re the
audios breaking up you have a hard time
hearing you can call in the message is
just been posted in the chat room all
right so we’re going to get started
welcome everybody one of my favorite
topics how I work an uncommon guys to
outsourcing masterminding going
paperless work in 20 hours a week and
rapid business growth it’s awesome to
see everybody here in the chat window
and again if you have questions what
semesta come up using the hashtags ask
Evan so let’s get started I know
productivity is one of the biggest
issues facing a lot of entrepreneurs
we’re all working crazy number of hours
1800 hour work week trying to get our
business off the ground and we’re like
just woman here who’s truly down as her
computer and I was the same way with my
first business it was a software company
and I was putting in crazy hours and
often we don’t make any changes until
something breaks and for me with whips
my girlfriend at the time he had her own
business and remember we worked all day
we worked all nice and we we made an
agreement with each other that we had to
be finished work by 11 o’clock at night
that would just spend a little bit of
time together and we thought that was
normal but that crazy right that
discrete doesn’t works all day and all
night and only has a little bit of time
at the end to be able to spend time with
your you know your loved one so
eventually things change for me wasn’t a
huge you know slip second break and ice
learn some techniques that I wanted
see guys things that I’ve learned over
the years but hopefully how you guys can
implement really crispy for your
business a little bit about and almost
de guys already know where is uh where
is he yeah I’ll fix it please shouldn’t
be muted is he dialed in oh I’m noticing
a couple of comments here Robert hard
time hearing me it’s back now I’m guys
okay you can hear me perfect I don’t
know where I lost you but we’re going to
keep going on so I’m excited to do this
presentation today it’s in partnership
with Microsoft and I’m really excited
because when I had my first business
again I was 19 as a software business
and and I struggled to get things going
i was pulling out 300 bucks a month and
that’s not enough you know and i was at
the breaking point where i had to figure
out what i’m going to do you know should
I keep going should i quit and one of
the things that changed my business
around was realizing i’m not the first
guy to try to sell software before and I
modeled the strategies of Bill Gates
from Microsoft and dot helped save my
business and eventually allow us to
build it up and sell it and so I’ve
always been grateful to Microsoft for
our guests the opportunity to copy their
strategies and make them work for me and
so it’s a bit of a full circle moment
here to be working with Microsoft in
partnership on this call so again
questions as they come up feel free to
either put them in the chat
though or at the bottom we have a
hashtag ask Evan that you can use on
Twitter and I’ll be answering them as we
go along so have it let’s get started I
want to talk about five habits that can
dramatically change how you work in your
business these habits are all centered
around the idea that you shouldn’t be
doing most of the work that you’re
currently doing and there’s a number of
ways to break that down but really at
least eighty percent of the of the stuff
that you’re doing right now you
shouldn’t be doing either you shouldn’t
be doing it at all or tools can help you
do it or people can help you do it but
it shouldn’t be you doing it we’re going
to break down how that can actually help
you the first one is eliminate so look
at all the tasks that you have that you
do on a regular basis daily weekly
monthly a lot of those can just be
flat-out eliminated you got to think
where is your time best spent and as an
entrepreneur we’re offering doing
everything right with a janitor all the
way up to the CEO and you need to make
sure that you have time I call it CEO
time to spend on growing your business
and that means you can’t do some of the
other tasks so look at the fact that
you’re currently doing it and strike off
at least twenty percent of them because
they’re not adding value to your
business as much as other ones are and
you’re going to have some small losses
you’ve got to stop doing a lot of a lot
of the past you doing with your company
an example I run master my groups here
in Toronto their foreign entrepreneurs
we get together once a month talk about
her businesses try to help each other
out I used to keep detailed notes
meeting notes and sentence everybody
after to say here’s what we talked about
and one month I was really busy and I
forgot to do it and nobody cared and I
was like I’m doing all this work you
know taking these detailed notes and
send in to everybody and nobody cared
that you know I didn’t do it for that
month and so I stopped doing it and no
and still nobody cared and so there’s a
lot of these types of tasks that we have
in our day-to-day lives as entrepreneurs
that we feel is important but is not
actually important and so that’s what I
want you to focus on in the lemonade
Nexus chunk Chuck is a huge time saver
and the idea here is any tasks that are
similar to each other you want to do at
the same time so anything that you do
once a like every time anything you do
multiple times a day you want to try to
do once a day multiple times a week once
a week and also times a month once a
month so examples email a lot of us get
bogged down by email right and if an
email comes in you stop whatever else
you were doing answer the email and then
get back in the flow of what you’re
doing before can take you 15 20 minutes
it’s a huge productivity suck so with
email try to do it once a day try to
find a dedicated time dr. you do your
email and then you spend your time doing
all the other more important tasks
during the rest of the day don’t try to
multitask because it will massively
decrease your productivity what I is I
have three focused 90 minute chunks per
day nine minutes I chose because that
seems to be the amount of time that you
could focus your brain on on in its peak
on a certain activity after 90 minutes
you start to lose focus and so I do 90
minutes to keep my brain active lets me
stay focused my typical day I’ve
outlined here the morning is my personal
time I’ll start using at one o’clock
will do email to 30 is my CEO time for
the quick break or 15 project work and
then I’m done so there’s three focused
90 minute chunks per day that doesn’t
necessarily have to be you you know you
could do for chunks or five chunks but
the idea of chunking your time together
will massively increase your
productivity take your chunks try to
figure out what you’re going to do every
day so for me i’ll start the email in
the afternoon different days i have
different things so wednesdays now or my
video days so i’ll do things like this
which is a webinar for you guys or film
videos for my youtube thursdays will be
my meetings so i’ll meet people on
thursdays phone calls get-togethers and
what it also does is put you in that
mindset so if i know i’m going to do
videos for the day then I’m ready to go
on my
video you know mindset if I know I don’t
have to meet anybody for the day they
don’t have to get dressed up I can go to
work you know dress down if I want and
it allows you to get set up for the day
and do everything back to back to back
instead of switching gears constantly
which will force you to lose your
productivity I try as much as it
possible to build a no crisis business
so I try not to react to things that are
coming in and try to make everything a
proactive decision and that’s also
involves working with clients who are
not emergency clients what happen to do
is you’re going to lose some things
you’re not going to about a thousand and
you have to recognize that it’s okay to
lose some things because it going for
the greater good so here’s an example of
one this is a TV show that they wanted
me to you know guests begun to be great
opportunity for me but they wanted to do
monday mornings and i can’t do the
mornings so the mornings i had as my
family time and so i wrote back saying I
couldn’t do monday mornings I have other
commitments do some other days and they
said no and so here’s the situation
where we couldn’t get our schedules to
sink and I lost that opportunity but for
me having that family time or whatever
else i have scheduled in is really
important and don’t want to lose my
schedule because that allows me to be
ultra productive so while i’m losing out
on some minor things I focused my time
that I do have on building up great
things so I’m losing out on minor things
like going for the big gains and here
are some examples of things that I’ve
done in the past couple years I built my
own house from scratch I created a line
of famous onto the trading cards I do a
lot of salsa dancing 20 to 25 hours a
week so just as much time dancing as I
do on my business I woke up some
branding clients like Telus and
Microsoft and we partnered up with guys
like Donald Trump and Zig Ziglar and
Michael Gerber and the list goes on and
that’s not to impress you but to impress
upon you that it’s possible that by
focusing your time and not saying yes to
every single potential opportunity
you’re able to go after the bigger wins
and you have to be able to accept that
you’re not going to get everything you
lose some minor one I’m going to break
down quickly the day so if i do email
that includes everything that relates to
the email so it’s not just answering
email but a lot of times is email with
attachment you have to go through or
proposals you have to go through I
include that in my time not everybody
gets a response within that day so you
know you have to figure out who you’re
going to respond to in that day and you
can also have your team responsible for
having good customer service one of the
biggest you know rejections I guess I
get from this comment as well I want to
have a fast customer service experience
my audience which is great you want to
have that be customers but doesn’t
necessarily have to be you who’s doing
it if you spend all your day on email
you’re not going to be able to manage to
get anything else done besides email CEO
time this is working on your business
you have to make time for this this is
big picture how I’m going to grow my
business if you don’t do this then
you’re always going to be caught on the
treadmill just running running running
running and nothing is happening or it’s
very slow growth so you have to make
sure you carve out the time and respect
it it’s your most important time of the
day you have to make sure you have time
for it and not let other things get in
the way in general it’s easier to do
earlier in the day the things that
happen early in a day or more likely get
done and you also typically have more
mental energy diesel helped you get
through it but you have to make sure you
have time for that I have a break
15-minute breaks just in a way I also
found this picture online of this baby
and I needed to find a way to use it
somehow in a presentation but just do
something else you know switch gears get
outside walk around just take 15 minutes
off in between so you’re not going to
fry your brain out in between tasks then
in the last junk is project work so this
is working in the business tasks that
still require my involvement so it might
be you know doing some videos or you
know doing this kind of webinar
presentation things that require me
to be in the business but it’s not
necessarily the big picture CEO stuff it
should still be high level should still
be something that you can’t delegate to
your team you know if I promise it with
this webinar and then I send somebody
from my team you guys probably won’t be
too happy with me so it still requires
me to be there but it’s still pretty
high level stuff here’s the exception
slow you know when you’re really feeling
it you’re really feeling the work you’re
in the moment you’re in the zone time
can fly by if you’re really feeling it
in the you’re in that zone then i
recommend keep going and I bust through
whatever other commitments that I had
the trick here is not to fool yourself
you don’t want to say oh I’m really in
the flow on these emails so I have to
keep going doing my emails you know
you’d like to think that you’re always
in the flow but it doesn’t happen that
often it’s not happen to you every day
or if it is and congratulations because
it doesn’t happen to me every day
there’s only sometimes when I’m really
in the flow and I’m working on something
and I don’t want to give it up and so
keep going with it but otherwise I stick
to my pretty rigid schedule and it works
number two don’t answer the phone all
unscheduled phone calls is other
people’s agenda for your time I never
answer the phone unless it’s a scheduled
call and usually I’m the one doing the
calling it’s it’s the fastest way that
you can lose track of your time people
call up you have to be up there you’ll
answer the phone you got to do whatever
tasks they want you to do and then
you’ve lost focus and whatever you’re
doing before this is the back of my
business card my phone number is not on
my business card most people don’t know
my phone number and it almost never
rings because again most people don’t
know it so I have my email and have my
Twitter on my business card but not my
phone number now again it doesn’t mean
that your team can answer the phone if
the phone is an important part of your
business your team can still be
responsive in answering the phone but it
doesn’t have to be you doing everything
scheduled calls and meetings so I have
one one day a week where I have my
meetings at least three hours open I
always do the calling and I’m always on
time when people call me I find that
they’re not always on time and if there
are 10 15 minutes late what are you
doing for those 10 15 minutes nothing
you know you’re checking facebook they
could be calling at any minute you can’t
dive into anything super productive so I
always on the one who’s doing the column
and I’m always on time so you have to
respect that if you’re going to be doing
the calling make sure you are always on
time for meetings as much as possible i
had people come to me and I check them
together so a lot of the means i have is
at the starbucks at the bottom of my
office building and you’ll do back to
back to back to back meetings and so
it’s super convenient for me and you’re
also in that zone of meeting people and
being more outgoing than maybe usually
than usually are I people to help me
with this called time trade and this is
a cool tool that shows open spots in
your hook so you can load your outlook
calendar and say you know i have
thursday afternoons open or monday
afternoons or whatever spots you want to
sign and they can just pick it off and
then it’s automatically update you as a
calendar for you so it eliminates all
the back and forth between does this day
work is this they work I would hear have
out there and it also reminds them a day
before so the book and meeting us three
weeks out at least before I found that
people often forgot about it and then I
might go to the meeting and they weren’t
there or I’d have to remind them a day
before Jay hey we still on for tomorrow
so this tool automatic will then remind
them the day before say a reminder your
meeting Evan tomorrow here’s the place
it also allows them to leave cut some
instructions so if you want to put in
I’ll put in for something like you know
why we meeting just so that if we’re
meeting in three weeks you can leave a
little note to remind myself so when I
go downstairs and meet you at the
starbucks i remember why we’re having
our meeting so you can example i have
two one is in person meeting that’s up
to 60 minutes the second is the phone
call for up to 30 minutes and i’ll send
them this link and they can check
availability
take it whatever time they want that
works for them and if this is a phone
number for example you know what number
am I going to call you at and what are
we discussing so again it makes it super
easy to set up times in my calendar it’s
free for 30 days cost forty bucks for
the year there’s a website and check it
out I’m not affiliated with time trade
at all I just love their products number
three automates almost everything else
so we’ve looked at eliminate now I want
to get to automate and the last one is
going to be delegating automate is
important there’s a lot of tasks that
you are doing that can be solved through
technology and as much as possible you
want to look at ways to do that in our
company anytime I’m doing something more
than two or three times a look for tools
to help me do it either off-the-shelf
tools that already exist ideally or will
custom code and create our own tools to
be able to help us do it those much as
possible you want to automate those
tasks again number one is eliminate you
don’t want to automate a task that
should be eliminated eliminate first
then work on automation so there’s a few
pool tools at Aqaba and hopefully they
give you some some ideas for what you do
for your business the first is called
OneNote and this is a tool that
microsoft offers and what’s really cool
about it the thing that first brought me
to this kind of service was that it
integrates with a special kind of scan
or call the scansnap and what it does is
it scans all your receipts all your
documents all your contracts all your
government paperwork saves it as a PDF
that do full text search on and you can
throw away the actual paper so i’m
running a paperless office which is
amazing you don’t open up your drawers
and see tons of clutter and things that
you need to you know file away
everything is automatically done online
it saves it on my computer and it also
saves it remotely so if you need to get
access to it from a different device
or from a different computer unable to
do it it’s great that it’s full-text
searchable so if you ever need to find
something you could just start putting
in keywords instead of is if I need to
find some receipt or some document
you’ve got to you know go through your
shoebox or your drawer your filing
system it’s just so much faster so this
is what got me hooked at the start and
it’s a bunch of difference game times
that you can use as well they’re
different sizes but then there’s a lot
of cool ways that you can use you can
use one note to grow your business as
well i’m going to share a couple of them
today so the next one is for meetings
and again the cool thing about OneNote
is that if you have it installed on your
different computers and devices
everything is automatically updated
across all the devices as well as on the
web so for me my business I have a cell
phone I have an iPad I have a computer
at my office a desktop and then I have a
laptop that i use and i’m traveling and
when I’m at home you can install one
note and any time you update anything on
any year devices it automatically makes
changes across all your computers so if
I’m traveling I make a note update on
one of my one notes I come back to the
office that’s already been updated there
as well so one way I love doing it is
with my team members on my in my company
so we’re virtual company I have a
physical office but nobody works here
except me I have eight people on my team
and I try to meet with them once a month
to catch up how are things going where
they like what don’t they like what are
the next projects that we’re working on
what are the priorities for the next
month and for each person on my team I
have a one-note file and we can share
whatever we’re working on I can keep
that updated and then if I’m meeting
them you know when I’m at the office or
meaning them when I’m at my house and
automatically have that document updated
so think of it as a note-taking tool
that is automatically updated across
all of your devices wherever you are
it’s also stored on the web so you can
log in and get access to it even if
you’re not on your own computer the last
way that I really like it for is for
traveling and this is more the personal
side but I guess there’s also related to
business whatever I’m child I like to
travel a lot like to take you know
cruises and go see different places I’ll
always do research on the different
places that I’m going to and I can open
up a file in OneNote and create a new
folder that you know might be you know
2013 Europe cruise and in each one set a
different note for each place that I’m
going to go to and I’ll do all that work
on my laptop or on my desktop and save
it and I can put maps on each place that
I’m going to and different places I want
to check out then when I actually get to
the city I can load up my iPad or my
phone load up one note and all the
resources are right there so have the
map of the city I know where I’m going
different restaurants or stores to check
out it’s all there you know within my
hand and so it’s such an awesome tool to
use the traveling and if I make a change
on the fly there when I go back to my
computer is automatically updated
there’s so many cool different ways to
use this and its really thinking about
it as an external brain for yourself
anything you want to remember you can
just shove into OneNote and then it’ll
you know always be there waiting for you
when you need to get access to it so I
can go on and on and on but we’ll stop
there for a second to move on to a new
tool this one is called SkyDrive and
SkyDrive is a great way to backup your
files and share files with your team
members so I give you ever lost your
files in your computer that takes up how
much time to go into and try to restore
the files or maybe everything’s gone
it’s such a such a such a waste such a
waste of time when you lose your files
and so a skydrive cool thing about this
again you can have it across all your
devices so I have it on my office
computer after on my home computer and
then I my
portable devices too and it’s a folder
that is shared so if I have a file that
I’m working on at home and i know i need
to go finish it up at the office i’ll
just save it you can save it in your
SkyDrive folder when you get to the
office it’s already there updated ready
for you to work on again so if you’re
working on an excel file or word file or
whatever it is put in your SkyDrive
folder and it’s automatically going to
be there now I also use it as backup for
my whole computer so all of my files are
in are in the Sky Drive so then if I
ever switch computers all I’d have to do
is install SkyDrive and all of my files
automatically get dumped into there so
you have access to it from your
computers and you can also log in
remotely so if you’re at your friend’s
house or you know clients of sight you
can log in and get access to our or file
that you need so very very cool it saves
a lot of time the other thing you can do
with it is share files with your team so
instead i have a people my team nobody
works here in Toronto with me and we
have to share files right we’re working
on proposals projects whatever it is and
so their files that we need to share
between each other and email such a
hassle to go back and forth because
you’re suing this conversions hitting
each other so you can set up a shared
Sky Drive folder so with each of my
staff members I have a shared folder
with them and we put all the files that
we need to use you know in that folder
and so I can always update it they can
update it and we both have simple access
to it if I make a change it
automatically updates it on my staff’s
computer and vice versa so a great
time-saving trick to really get stuff
done I also use it on the personal side
so I have a shared folder with my
parents for example and if I take
pictures of my son and I want to send it
to them instead of having to shrink the
files and put them in an email or send
them you know the another website I can
just pop them into the sky drive folder
they can automatically download from
their computer and they have it ready to
go and they can you know do whatever
grandparents do with their pictures the
last really cool thing about it that I
love is you can get previous versions
so if for example you deleted a file or
you made a change it you didn’t want to
change you can always log in to the web
version + download the previous version
so this happened to me recently where my
marketing manager I asked her to make a
change to a file and she updated tons of
files instead of just one and I needed
the older versions of those files back
you know I didn’t have a local copy so
you could just log in and say restore
previous version and you have it back
there with you so it’s great when you’re
working in the team environment where
you have people you know accessing the
same file maybe making changes that you
don’t want to make or if you
accidentally delete it you can always go
back need access to it that’s all done
online so pretty cool tool and the last
one in terms of automation tools I want
to talk about is link and link is a cool
way to be able to connect with people on
your team or do webinars like this we’re
actually all using link right now this
is a newer tool that I’m just getting
familiar with myself but it’s also
really funky am looking forward to
diving deeper into it so there’s a
couple ways to use it one is webinars
like this so you know we want to have
people come in and be able to ask
questions and get involved and look at a
presentation so I’m the main presenter
you guys can all watch we’re recording
it so we can have a copy later that we
can upload to youtube or share in our
sky drive folder so that’s that’s a cool
way to do it for webinars and video
conferencing the others just to have
meetings with your team again I have a
monthly meeting with everybody on my
team and I have my OneNote file open
ready to kind of keep my notes but it’s
also nice to see them right so it’s not
just you know chatting and so you can
set up a link meeting between both of
you you can see each other you could
talk away we’ll share your screen
whatever you need to do to have an
effective meeting and really bring
people together who who are offline and
otherwise unable to connect so cool tool
that that we’re all using now that tag
can also save you a lot of time
so next that’s automate the next step is
outsourced so delegate so we’ve
eliminated a lot of paths we don’t need
to do we’ve automated as much as we can
to technology and now it’s time to
delegate and this is a hard one for a
lot of entrepreneurs you have to give up
control at some point you can’t do
everything yourself and especially the
low level tasks that prevent you from
making the kind of money and providing
the kind of value that you should be
making and providing the number of
different ways to do it I’m going to
touch on a few quickly the first is
fiscal and university interns so if
you’re on a budget this is a great way
to go one of the first people I brought
in on my team was his neighbor her name
was Maria she started as a high school
in turn they do it for free they do it
for course credit goes with the school
schedule on the university level they
usually pay but have a higher skill
level here they’re coming to you to
learn you have to make sure you’re
giving them some training you gives them
some opportunities there is some
hand-holding but it’s a lot cheaper than
going out and getting a full-time
staffer foreign language engines this is
a picture of a dese who’s now in charge
of my operations at my business it’s a
free program English is their second
language so that’s one thing to think
about you may not want them in that
communications are all at the beginning
but if you have a technology roll or
something skill-based they can they can
get involved in and they’re they’re
looking for exposure to the work
environment so you know these came here
from Holland and worked for me I think
for buddy a year on that program and
then I hired him to join the team and
that was I don’t know eight years ago
something like that so a great way to be
able to get skilled people tonight at
home mom’s part-timers so these are a
great untapped resource a lot of
stay-at-home moms are really highly
skilled but are often bored there’s a
lot of down time as well being a
stay-at-home mom looking for ways to
make extra money on the resume they
don’t want to
show a gap so you know be able to say
they work that your company is great the
one thing is they do need flexible hours
so it may not be available exactly from
nine to five but if you can afford to be
flexible they’re great attention
resource and it’s understanding at the
start that you don’t need to hire
somebody full time the first person I
hired was for one hour day that’s all it
was one hour a day to do some database
work and that freed up just over an hour
day because he was better than me of my
time to really focus on higher little
projects so you know if you’re just
getting started you don’t have a team
yet you don’t have to thinking about the
huge outlay of cash the full time
employee will be think about hiring
somebody for an hour a day or two hours
a day or a couple hours a week just to
free up your time to focus on bigger
level projects try to get that CEO time
in another one is community leaders of
fans this is a picture of GT who has
been with us since 2010 and we have a
forums community on our website where
entrepreneurs come and they post you
know their questions and their problems
we all try to help each other out and at
the start I ran it but it became too
taxing on my time and so I connected
with GT who was one of our most active
forum members and asked him if you
wanted to do a joint venture so we
partner up on the farms now and he
manages a lot of the day-to-day stuff on
it I’m still involved in answering
questions and posting but he basically
runs it and so you can look for
opportunities to partner up with your
community leaders with fans people who
like your business even potentially
customers sometimes they’ll do it for
free or really low cost sometimes all
they wanted some recognition or you can
give them you know paid salary or some
kind of joint venture opportunity but
we’re looking for creative ways to be
able to delegate some of the tasks that
we’re facing know we’re getting crunched
down with and hopefully they don’t cost
us a lot of money to do it 11 resource I
love using is called odesk and this is
basically a community
of people around the world who want to
work remotely and so I have a few people
on my team from Odessa doing specific
tasks here are the main things that they
do so you can look at it web development
software development writing admin
design sales and marketing customer
service those kinds of tasks for they
don’t have to be you know right in front
of you in the office is a great way to
be able to do it with each of you
potentially higher you get to see a
picture of them you get to see how much
they cost you get to see feedback from
other projects it’s kind of like eBay
there’s a rating system so here’s a
person you know who’s had some good
feedbacks see how many hours his work
coming contracts you can make them take
tests so if you’re trying to hire a
programmer and you don’t know anything
about programming yourself you can look
to see if they passed any of the
important programming tests to get a
sense of what their skill level is so
it’s a great way to be able to find
people and again they work all remotely
this is part of the big brother so up to
you if you want to use it or not but
what it will do is it tracks their
screen and and their mouse clicks so you
can log in and see what they’re doing
for you what documents are opening and
that bar on the left where it shows
those kind of green bars shows how
active they are with their keystrokes
and their mouse clicks now they know
that it’s being recorded so it’s not a
surprise to them but if you ever want to
dig down and see how the time is being
spent and what they’re doing odesk is
the ability to do it those are cool
tools 99designs and this is great for
any kind of graphic work that you want
to do so logo design business cards
designed website design you basically
put in your your project so you know I
want to create a new website and a
budget and the cool thing about this is
you only pay for finished product so a
lot of times with graphic designers
you’re hiring them based on the past
experience but you don’t know what
they’re going to give you we’re here
these guys are actually out doing the
work to create your logo or your website
and will show you examples
of what yours will actually look like
and you only pay for the winning design
so some of the ones that I’ve done make
a website Heather make a logo in
PowerPoint design create an infographic
and you can see some of them are more
popular than others so on the power
point 1 and logo I had 94 different
people create entries for me and here is
we’re going to see you pick your top one
so this is for PowerPoint design that I
needed and you can see you know there’s
a whole array it gets at different
choices you can leave comments for them
to say I really like what you’ve done
but you know can you make it red instead
of orange or I don’t like how that
mountain looks can you change it around
and they’ll make changes on the fly for
you then you can send your top eight
choices to your friends and get their
feedback to say you know which one did
you like help me pick a winner so a very
cool system anytime you’re doing
anything related to design work tool
fiber this you can yeah you can lose
your time on this it’s things people
will do for five bucks and so some of
them are serious and business or click
on the business category here some of
them are funny and joke like so you can
have somebody you know pay five bucks to
in the voice of Sean Connery wish your
best friend the happy birthday or in the
voice of Mickey Mouse I’ll call up and
wishes son happy birthday there’s a
whole bunch of weird things that people
will do for five bucks again you may not
want to check out the site because this
is about productivity and you may lose
all your productivity going here but
we’re focused on the business 11 that
I’ve use as an example trend transcribe
audio so I’ll do some videos on YouTube
and if I want the audio transcribed
there’s somebody here who will do it and
so they’ll transcribe up to 16 minutes
of audio for five bucks that’s a pretty
good deal takes them about seven days to
do it things to look for at the top you
see their top rated seller you can look
at their feedback so that second arrow
shows you know they’ve done 223 ad
positive reviews and 0 negative reviews
and at the bottom shows some other
feedback so just like any other you know
rating system you want to make sure
you’re working with people who have good
feet I can have done it before I mean I
guess you only have five bucks but you
don’t want to waste your time going down
the road with somebody who’s not going
to deliver so some of the stuff that
I’ve done some Facebook posts so here is
one where they would put your name on a
cappuccino cup and put your website in a
crossword puzzle so that cost five bucks
and I could post it on Facebook and you
know people like it and comment on it
and some other ones that I’ve done I’ll
hold up a sign in New York City I’ll
write your website in the plate of pasta
I’ll write your name on my shoe or my
foot the kid on the bottom left where’s
that t-shirt around all week with
whatever website you want and he takes a
picture and he’ll put any website that
his mom will approve so I give him five
bucks and he wore that around his school
for for a week so you know questionable
value I guess but it’s a good story and
you supporting a young entrepreneur
asked one that I want to talk about
terms of a habit is masterminding so
this is really important as
entrepreneurs we’re trying to do
everything ourselves and a lot of us
don’t have a network of people around us
to be able to help us and guide us and
give us advice and what to do and it’s
lonely and we’re always talking about
the good things with our business right
if you go to a meeting you’re always
saying oh I just landed Royal Bank is a
customer or whatever it is so is a good
stuff who you talked about the crappy
stuff with your business hudye talked
about about the fact that you’re
thinking about quitting because it’s too
hard you know friends and family may may
be supportive the lend an ear but if
they haven’t gone through it if they’re
not entrepreneurs themselves they can’t
really give you some advice on what to
do and so did you with masterminding is
you find a group of entrepreneurs who
are around the same mumble as you but
have different skill set and you get
together and you you help each other out
your meat so
in our groups who run a couple of groups
here in Toronto we meet once a month at
my office over there for three hours and
we basically go around the table and
talk about the problems we’re facing and
we try to help each other out and it
works well when will come with the
attitude of trying to try to be a
resource and try to help and also people
who have different backgrounds and skill
sets so I don’t want you know 10 people
in my group who are all salespeople I
get people who are from different
backgrounds somebody strong as sales
somebody strong an operation somebody
might be a legal background somebody
showing up marketing because we’re
limited in what we know as entrepreneurs
and you want other people around you who
can fill those blind spots and so that’s
the first point that’s really important
about it the second one is when you meet
other entrepreneurs at least for me I
find I get a natural high you know I
leave the meeting excited wanting to to
you know do more with my business and
just hanging around other entrepreneurs
you get new ideas and new energy to grow
your business because if you’re not
around other business owners regularly
if you work from home or you have an
office but you just run it by your staff
you can start to get down on yourself
and down in your company and what you’re
doing and being surrounded by other
entrepreneurs helps keep you going and
so it’s important to find some kind of
group either join one that’s already out
there create your own it can make a big
difference in helping you not only just
stay productive but give you ideas and
motivation to help you grow your
business so those are the five things
that I want to talk about today I know I
threw a whole ton of information at you
guys today we are recording this so we
are going to send out the slides to
people and the video so you can watch it
again and go in detail I want to hear
that wheel of time for questions so we
talked about having questions as they
come I know the chest still here Twitter
this stuff coming in and so we’re going
to go through and start to answer some
of these and hopefully give you
some help so ed to throw it in the chat
where how do you find the mastermind
group so I’m based in Toronto depends I
guess on where were your base it’s as
simple as doing a Google search the
challenge here is that a lot of cities
don’t have my supplying group already
set up and you may have to look at doing
it yourself so an example how I learned
about it was um a guy named Brian
Scudamore who runs one eight hundred got
junk and they went from zero to 8
million in a couple of years based out
in British Columbia and when I talked to
him is that the number one factor the
help of growth was starting mastermind
groups and they asked him how he did it
and what factors you know led to those
groups mean successful and I brought it
to my city of toronto because there was
nothing here you know there’s not
working groups there’s groups around
business coaches but there wasn’t that
mastermind group concept so you may find
something in your city that you can go
and join or you may have to look at
creating your own next question I’ll
fast turnaround signs assuming he’s
talking about the 99 designs typically
so it depends you set the time usually
looking at one week to two weeks the
longer goes doubt the more expensive it
is to bid on a project so if you’re
doing a website and you have a thousand
dollars budget you may only get a weak
to do it but if you have two thousand
dollars they may give you two weeks to
do it it’s still pretty fast you know a
lot of times work with designers can be
a long process so they definitely have
an end to the auction that that helps
question from Robert one note how do I
use it for business and personal reasons
so I talked about OneNote and how i use
it for scanning my receipts and I use
that forgets business and personal
reasons there too for my team managing
my meetings and keeping track of my
notes another cool way to use it if you
look on
personal side is returns so for example
if i buy a screwdriver at home depot
i’ll scan in the receipt and throw it
away then if i need to return the
screwdriver to find that receipt I don’t
have to go digging through you know
boxes I can just go to one note do a
search for Home Depot the receipt will
come up I can pull that up on my iPad or
on my my phone go in the home depot with
my screwdriver and show them the receipt
and they can scan it and give me a
refund so you don’t actually have to
have the physical paper copy any more do
we need those prices worst case i guess
you can also print it off and bring in a
receipt but the stores are able to
handle it so awesome awesome tools what
off wow so many questions coming in so
let’s see do we need to visit the high
schools and university websites to get
the interns so for that it’s the best
option is looking at the schools that
are around you and where I am in Toronto
there’s a school board and every
internship programs are run from the
school board and so you can tell them
you’re an employer looking to have a
high school intern work for you they
give you a form you fill it out tell
them the types of person that you want
to bring in and they will you know start
feeding you potential candidates at the
university level it’s each school has
their own way of doing things so the
best bet is to try to find whatever
universities or colleges closest to you
because the students are likely living
close to their school if it’s too far
away they’re not going to want to make
the travel to where you are so find the
closest two or three colleges
universities ocular career center see
what they have if they have an
internship program and let them know
that you exist a question from Twitter
can you give a quick opinion on link vs
google hangouts sources GoToWebinar so
i’m still pretty new to link I’m liking
it so far go to
pinar I know has caused me a lot of
problems in the past and I’ve worked
with with some clients and it’s also
expensive so you need to have you know
some some bigger dollars to pretend vast
to be able to do events with GoToWebinar
good a meeting google hangouts I’ve used
in the past that the challenge with it
is you can only have I think eight or
nine people who can be on at the same
time other people can sit in and watch
but they can’t actively participate so
you have to go outside through there
Chad or through Twitter to be able to
actually communicate with people here
with with link you can have up to a
thousand people on a specific call and
they can all participate so we’ve we’ve
muted you guys otherwise we’ve had a lot
of crazy background noise but there is
an option to basically have everybody
involved if you wanted to and everybody
could potentially be the presenter share
their screen sharing on discussions so
if you need to have more people in on on
a presentation then it makes more sense
to use a tool like link the guys from
records office saying we can unmute if
you allow Evan I don’t know it’s finally
not a good idea to hear all the sorts of
crazy noises that happen in the
background but thank you for the offer
next question do you have any blog post
or ebooks about how to start a
mastermind group I do actually have a
worksheet on it if you go to my website
Evan Carmichael calm / worksheets with a
capital W you’ll see a whole bunch of
different worksheets that we have to
help entrepreneurs that one specifically
is around creating the mastermind group
and I share how I go out looking for new
members what kind of questions we ask
the structures that I used to run the
meeting I’ll share the non-disclosure
agreements that we use the fees and
basically everything you need to run a
meeting so you could check that out I
think it’s seven bucks so it’s not not
going to break your budget as you go
through
another question have you ideas on how
to market fine art for free I’m seeing
that galleries have 500 other artists
competing needing sales this makes me
tired so that comes in from Anna thanks
for the question Anna it’s it’s hard
making a living as an artist as I’m sure
you know and the ones that I’ve seen do
the best job are not the ones who are
out going and trying to land individual
sales and lend individual calories but
do more of the pr side of things so you
build a media list and you you know keep
a contact list of all the people who are
interested in art and report on art and
let them know your story and nothing
other things that you’re up to and
hopefully you get some stories written
about you or clips on TV words you and
they are you talking about your story a
lot of times publications and and
stations will want to do shows the
showcase entrepreneurs and what they’re
up to so this is a great way to be able
to get your name out there and then
people watching will hopefully pick up
the phone call you will go to your
website is a great way to bring in leeds
instead of you going out and forcing
trying to go and find them yourself i
know i know it’s super super challenging
for heart but it is helpful we had cost
him today just some housekeeping
questions about where where’s the email
so i think someone can run you to jump
the line there suddenly we’re doing that
as a test just to see what’s going on
but i couldn’t quite hear that question
that came in so one question is how do
you access one note from the ipad you
have to install the app or is it via the
web you could do both so you can
download an app and you can you can have
everything there at your fingertips it’s
probably easier than going to the web
version but the web version is great i
find if you’re not using your own
computer but you need access to a note
so if you’re traveling or you’re a
client’s office or a friend’s house and
you want to log in and find
and whatever note or receipt that you’ve
created you can always log into the web
version to find it but otherwise I find
it more helpful to either use a desktop
version or download download the app
let’s be what us question from Twitter
do you have any advice and how to avoid
scope creep besides I have a tighter
contract this this is a tough one when
you’re negotiating deals with your
clients it is obviously nice to have a
tighter contract but what I usually do
when I’m negotiating things with my
clients is when they start to add new
things I force something else that come
out of it so if they add something else
that they you know must have I either
look at increase in the cost or saying
you know this wasn’t part of our initial
discussion and it’s going to take me you
know X amount of time to people to do it
it’s entirely possible to do it but we
have to take something else out and so
your lease are giving them an option
you’re not saying you’ll know I won’t do
it or you know here’s how much is going
to cost to do it but you’re also given
the option to take something out and
that’s happened a lot with projects that
I’ve worked on you get into especially
the bigger projects at the beginning you
know you have this big vision for what
you want to have happen but the project
changes as you actually get into it and
it’s very common but you want to make
sure you don’t lose your shirt on it the
other thing is to buffer in extra time
or extra supplies into your contract
because you always want to make sure
your clients are happy you know you
don’t want you don’t want to leave them
with a bad taste in our mouth even
though you’re following kind of the
letter of the contract of what you said
so I would let them know that you still
want to let them know you’re doing them
a favor right like you may take on a
little bit more because you’ve left time
to buffer that in because you want to
make them happy but you let them know
that you’re doing this to help build a
relationship because you really you know
like work on this project and like
working with them don’t just give it
away they’ll let them know that you put
that extra time in
what else I’m scrolling through the
messages here question from Ed how do
you manage your team without taking it
too much of your time so this all starts
with hiring the right people some people
are very needy and need a lot of
hand-holding and some people are more
independent workers in and do tasks on
their own and so before I hire anybody
I’ll always give them some tasks that
work on and I’ll see this would be real
tacit they would probably do for me when
I hired them and I’ll see how quickly
they do it you know they take a lot of
time to do it or not what’s the quality
output that comes and how much are they
asking me for questions over and over
and over again now sometimes the
questions make sense but you want to
have a pretty clearly defined job
requirement that they can follow if they
if they write it along so the people who
are slow or who don’t deliver quality
product or who asked a million questions
are usually not the ones that that i’ll
end up hiring they may be great for
other companies but not for me so i need
people who can do their own projects
think on their feet and not require too
much work for me at the beginning when I
hire somebody it’s its work the train
and I put in that time to train but
ongoing there’s usually not much support
work that I have to do I will have our
monthly meeting that will you know do a
quick update and try to find projects
that they want to keep working on and
and see what we’re going to do for the
next month and in between the meetings
most of the e-mails back and forth will
be I guess maintenance on things that
we’re doing or new ideas that we have
but I don’t usually have to hop on the
phone or set up a link meeting or you
know do a screen capture to explain
something because we’ve gone through it
already or we do that as a monthly
meeting so it starts with you doing a
better job on the on the on the
interview process but then ongoing also
building in some kind of stir a load of
my notepad file of questions here
so that you’re making sure you get the
right people on board and you have a
system that works what else some very
simple but clever ideas here Evan all
right thank you no question they’re good
could you please survive some further
tips on elimination so again the idea
here is you’re doing more work than you
should be doing and things that you
think are important are actually not too
important and so it’s looking at what
you’re doing and the work show that
talks about this but you could do it on
your own just write down typical things
that you do in a day in a week and in
the month things that especially the
ones that recur are you doing almost
every day almost everywhere almost every
month and you want to really ask
yourself does this have to get done does
this really have it is this super
important to my business and you should
cut at least twenty percent of the
things on that list because there’s
absolutely Tassie you may think are
important but do not at the end of the
day add so much value to your business
from there you can look at automation
and delegation so you end up doing a lot
less work but it all starts with
elimination and thinking about all those
tasks and if they’re really adding value
to your business or not next question
from Michael how do you manage all your
emails so I get a lot of emails right
I’ve had almost 20 million people visit
the website and my email is on the
website and I’m the one answering it so
it’s it’s rough and I love answering
emails because its most of you guys
writing in with questions about your
business and so it’s you know gives me
part of the greatest joy of my days is
helping entrepreneurs it still is really
hard and I only have four chunks of my
time every week that I do it so you
can’t find me on Friday Saturday Sunday
and what I find really helps first again
we’re chunking so we’re eliminating
distractions when I sit
then I’m doing email that’s all I’m
doing I’m doing email and I find to buy
knowing that I have a finite time to do
it so I only have 90 minutes and to know
that you only have 90 minutes to do a
task makes you work harder and get you
more focused right if you think you have
the whole day to do something then ver
obviously it takes the whole day but if
you only have 90 minutes to do it you’re
focused and you can get it done within
those 90 minutes so find that helps the
next thing is I try to do I try to
answer the emails quickly that don’t
require much of anything else they don’t
require me to look at a document or do
anything besides respond on that email
and then you can also look at how can
you get your team involved so there’ll
be some questions that come in to me
that are related to my website or
projects are working on the back and
forward off to my team so an example
might be somebody on my newsletter
writes back I get all the responses if
you guys are on my newsletter list and
you write back to me it’s coming to me
but it might be something like you know
I didn’t get your list of your favourite
books can you please send it to me and
that involves logging into the software
tool finding the email sending the last
of them I’ll pass it off to somebody on
my team and they’ll do it for me and so
there may be some tasks you don’t
actually have to do yourself when you’re
answering the emails what’s next
question from Lynn how do you stay
focused ah focus that’s awesome question
a lot of entrepreneurs of a hard time
with it starts with figuring out what
you’re passionate about as an
entrepreneur so you know what is it that
you want to accomplish with your
business and then figuring out are the
tasks that you’re doing now align with
your long-term vision and a lot of times
we get distracted by shiny objects you
know new opportunities coming along we
have to jump on that great way to make a
lot of money you don’t want to go after
those it’s got a line with what you’re
doing and then pick two to three top
things that you’re going to focus your
time on and and have the courage to say
no to the other things until you see
these first projects through
if for whatever reason the project is
not what you thought it was going to be
and you know you’re going to switch
gears that’s fine but as entrepreneurs
we tend to take on way too much and we
do little bits of projects and we don’t
see things through and you’ll be a lot
more successful i picking two or three
main things that you’re focusing your
time on and see those through and finish
them gets into completion get the point
where you’re really happy with them and
then beyond that you know don’t worry
about the rest of it until you finish
those initial projects I know where
we’re at three o’clock were running out
of time there’s still tons of questions
coming in which is great if you guys
want it’s going to go to the last slide
here if you keep asking questions if I
didn’t get to your question now you can
use the ass or the hashtag ask Evan and
I’ll still respond later on trying to
help you guys out as much as possible so
if you take the twitter and use that ask
Evan hashtag I’ll try to get back to you
guys just a quick note I’m a judge on a
new contest that Microsoft is having its
a twin with office com you can win up to
ten thousand dollars in cash some
ultrabooks windows phones a whole bunch
of cool prizes you just have to do a
submission as to why you feel you
deserve it and some of the challenges I
guess you’re facing on the productivity
sighs and I’m one of the judges and
there’s a few other ones we’re going to
pick some winners and I’d love to see
one of you guys when some of this stuff
so thank you for joining us here today I
appreciate you taking the time out of
your busy day to do it I know you know
we’re all strapped for time so really
appreciate it again we’re going to be
recording it I’m going to send you guys
a copy and if you want to keep the
conversation going with the ice cave and
hashtag I’ll try to get back to
everybody so thank you very much guys I
really appreciate it and we’ll see you
soon
started in a couple minutes I’m really
excited to do this webinar with you guys
going to be talking about how I work
some some tips and how to shorten down
your work week and get more stuff done I
notice there’s a number of people here
who just joined us a couple number of
people are still going to be joining us
on the call I’m curious we have a couple
minutes before we have to get started
those of you who are tuned in and who
are on Twitter you can ask questions
with the hashtag ask Evan and we’re also
going to be keeping an eye on the chat
room here so there’s an opportunity to
write in some messages I guess I want to
know what some of your big challenges
are if you guys have a few minutes right
now before we get started feel free to
leave a message using the ask Evan
hashtag or in the chat room itself and
what is your biggest challenge your own
productivity what’s the biggest problem
you’re facing right now with you’re
crunched work week and and hopefully I
can try to address some of these things
when we go through the presentation
itself so i’m going to keep an eye on
the twitter feed as well as the chat
room here and and we’ll see what kinda
questions come up i love to tailor it to
you guys and I’m excited this is this is
one of the topics that always gets me
excited to talk about I know
productivity is such a big important
issue for a lot of entrepreneurs so
we’re going to start it in one to two
minutes and again if you just want to
leave some questions using the ask Evan
ashtag or through the chat I’m going to
check those out as we go along we’re
going to start etching them for you
the number of people already starting to
write in with some questions so it’s
great yes one quick mention if you
cannot if you’re having problems seeing
the messaging here you seen the
presentation we have a phone number that
you can call them as well if you’re the
audios breaking up you have a hard time
hearing you can call in the message is
just been posted in the chat room all
right so we’re going to get started
welcome everybody one of my favorite
topics how I work an uncommon guys to
outsourcing masterminding going
paperless work in 20 hours a week and
rapid business growth it’s awesome to
see everybody here in the chat window
and again if you have questions what
semesta come up using the hashtags ask
Evan so let’s get started I know
productivity is one of the biggest
issues facing a lot of entrepreneurs
we’re all working crazy number of hours
1800 hour work week trying to get our
business off the ground and we’re like
just woman here who’s truly down as her
computer and I was the same way with my
first business it was a software company
and I was putting in crazy hours and
often we don’t make any changes until
something breaks and for me with whips
my girlfriend at the time he had her own
business and remember we worked all day
we worked all nice and we we made an
agreement with each other that we had to
be finished work by 11 o’clock at night
that would just spend a little bit of
time together and we thought that was
normal but that crazy right that
discrete doesn’t works all day and all
night and only has a little bit of time
at the end to be able to spend time with
your you know your loved one so
eventually things change for me wasn’t a
huge you know slip second break and ice
learn some techniques that I wanted
see guys things that I’ve learned over
the years but hopefully how you guys can
implement really crispy for your
business a little bit about and almost
de guys already know where is uh where
is he yeah I’ll fix it please shouldn’t
be muted is he dialed in oh I’m noticing
a couple of comments here Robert hard
time hearing me it’s back now I’m guys
okay you can hear me perfect I don’t
know where I lost you but we’re going to
keep going on so I’m excited to do this
presentation today it’s in partnership
with Microsoft and I’m really excited
because when I had my first business
again I was 19 as a software business
and and I struggled to get things going
i was pulling out 300 bucks a month and
that’s not enough you know and i was at
the breaking point where i had to figure
out what i’m going to do you know should
I keep going should i quit and one of
the things that changed my business
around was realizing i’m not the first
guy to try to sell software before and I
modeled the strategies of Bill Gates
from Microsoft and dot helped save my
business and eventually allow us to
build it up and sell it and so I’ve
always been grateful to Microsoft for
our guests the opportunity to copy their
strategies and make them work for me and
so it’s a bit of a full circle moment
here to be working with Microsoft in
partnership on this call so again
questions as they come up feel free to
either put them in the chat
though or at the bottom we have a
hashtag ask Evan that you can use on
Twitter and I’ll be answering them as we
go along so have it let’s get started I
want to talk about five habits that can
dramatically change how you work in your
business these habits are all centered
around the idea that you shouldn’t be
doing most of the work that you’re
currently doing and there’s a number of
ways to break that down but really at
least eighty percent of the of the stuff
that you’re doing right now you
shouldn’t be doing either you shouldn’t
be doing it at all or tools can help you
do it or people can help you do it but
it shouldn’t be you doing it we’re going
to break down how that can actually help
you the first one is eliminate so look
at all the tasks that you have that you
do on a regular basis daily weekly
monthly a lot of those can just be
flat-out eliminated you got to think
where is your time best spent and as an
entrepreneur we’re offering doing
everything right with a janitor all the
way up to the CEO and you need to make
sure that you have time I call it CEO
time to spend on growing your business
and that means you can’t do some of the
other tasks so look at the fact that
you’re currently doing it and strike off
at least twenty percent of them because
they’re not adding value to your
business as much as other ones are and
you’re going to have some small losses
you’ve got to stop doing a lot of a lot
of the past you doing with your company
an example I run master my groups here
in Toronto their foreign entrepreneurs
we get together once a month talk about
her businesses try to help each other
out I used to keep detailed notes
meeting notes and sentence everybody
after to say here’s what we talked about
and one month I was really busy and I
forgot to do it and nobody cared and I
was like I’m doing all this work you
know taking these detailed notes and
send in to everybody and nobody cared
that you know I didn’t do it for that
month and so I stopped doing it and no
and still nobody cared and so there’s a
lot of these types of tasks that we have
in our day-to-day lives as entrepreneurs
that we feel is important but is not
actually important and so that’s what I
want you to focus on in the lemonade
Nexus chunk Chuck is a huge time saver
and the idea here is any tasks that are
similar to each other you want to do at
the same time so anything that you do
once a like every time anything you do
multiple times a day you want to try to
do once a day multiple times a week once
a week and also times a month once a
month so examples email a lot of us get
bogged down by email right and if an
email comes in you stop whatever else
you were doing answer the email and then
get back in the flow of what you’re
doing before can take you 15 20 minutes
it’s a huge productivity suck so with
email try to do it once a day try to
find a dedicated time dr. you do your
email and then you spend your time doing
all the other more important tasks
during the rest of the day don’t try to
multitask because it will massively
decrease your productivity what I is I
have three focused 90 minute chunks per
day nine minutes I chose because that
seems to be the amount of time that you
could focus your brain on on in its peak
on a certain activity after 90 minutes
you start to lose focus and so I do 90
minutes to keep my brain active lets me
stay focused my typical day I’ve
outlined here the morning is my personal
time I’ll start using at one o’clock
will do email to 30 is my CEO time for
the quick break or 15 project work and
then I’m done so there’s three focused
90 minute chunks per day that doesn’t
necessarily have to be you you know you
could do for chunks or five chunks but
the idea of chunking your time together
will massively increase your
productivity take your chunks try to
figure out what you’re going to do every
day so for me i’ll start the email in
the afternoon different days i have
different things so wednesdays now or my
video days so i’ll do things like this
which is a webinar for you guys or film
videos for my youtube thursdays will be
my meetings so i’ll meet people on
thursdays phone calls get-togethers and
what it also does is put you in that
mindset so if i know i’m going to do
videos for the day then I’m ready to go
on my
video you know mindset if I know I don’t
have to meet anybody for the day they
don’t have to get dressed up I can go to
work you know dress down if I want and
it allows you to get set up for the day
and do everything back to back to back
instead of switching gears constantly
which will force you to lose your
productivity I try as much as it
possible to build a no crisis business
so I try not to react to things that are
coming in and try to make everything a
proactive decision and that’s also
involves working with clients who are
not emergency clients what happen to do
is you’re going to lose some things
you’re not going to about a thousand and
you have to recognize that it’s okay to
lose some things because it going for
the greater good so here’s an example of
one this is a TV show that they wanted
me to you know guests begun to be great
opportunity for me but they wanted to do
monday mornings and i can’t do the
mornings so the mornings i had as my
family time and so i wrote back saying I
couldn’t do monday mornings I have other
commitments do some other days and they
said no and so here’s the situation
where we couldn’t get our schedules to
sink and I lost that opportunity but for
me having that family time or whatever
else i have scheduled in is really
important and don’t want to lose my
schedule because that allows me to be
ultra productive so while i’m losing out
on some minor things I focused my time
that I do have on building up great
things so I’m losing out on minor things
like going for the big gains and here
are some examples of things that I’ve
done in the past couple years I built my
own house from scratch I created a line
of famous onto the trading cards I do a
lot of salsa dancing 20 to 25 hours a
week so just as much time dancing as I
do on my business I woke up some
branding clients like Telus and
Microsoft and we partnered up with guys
like Donald Trump and Zig Ziglar and
Michael Gerber and the list goes on and
that’s not to impress you but to impress
upon you that it’s possible that by
focusing your time and not saying yes to
every single potential opportunity
you’re able to go after the bigger wins
and you have to be able to accept that
you’re not going to get everything you
lose some minor one I’m going to break
down quickly the day so if i do email
that includes everything that relates to
the email so it’s not just answering
email but a lot of times is email with
attachment you have to go through or
proposals you have to go through I
include that in my time not everybody
gets a response within that day so you
know you have to figure out who you’re
going to respond to in that day and you
can also have your team responsible for
having good customer service one of the
biggest you know rejections I guess I
get from this comment as well I want to
have a fast customer service experience
my audience which is great you want to
have that be customers but doesn’t
necessarily have to be you who’s doing
it if you spend all your day on email
you’re not going to be able to manage to
get anything else done besides email CEO
time this is working on your business
you have to make time for this this is
big picture how I’m going to grow my
business if you don’t do this then
you’re always going to be caught on the
treadmill just running running running
running and nothing is happening or it’s
very slow growth so you have to make
sure you carve out the time and respect
it it’s your most important time of the
day you have to make sure you have time
for it and not let other things get in
the way in general it’s easier to do
earlier in the day the things that
happen early in a day or more likely get
done and you also typically have more
mental energy diesel helped you get
through it but you have to make sure you
have time for that I have a break
15-minute breaks just in a way I also
found this picture online of this baby
and I needed to find a way to use it
somehow in a presentation but just do
something else you know switch gears get
outside walk around just take 15 minutes
off in between so you’re not going to
fry your brain out in between tasks then
in the last junk is project work so this
is working in the business tasks that
still require my involvement so it might
be you know doing some videos or you
know doing this kind of webinar
presentation things that require me
to be in the business but it’s not
necessarily the big picture CEO stuff it
should still be high level should still
be something that you can’t delegate to
your team you know if I promise it with
this webinar and then I send somebody
from my team you guys probably won’t be
too happy with me so it still requires
me to be there but it’s still pretty
high level stuff here’s the exception
slow you know when you’re really feeling
it you’re really feeling the work you’re
in the moment you’re in the zone time
can fly by if you’re really feeling it
in the you’re in that zone then i
recommend keep going and I bust through
whatever other commitments that I had
the trick here is not to fool yourself
you don’t want to say oh I’m really in
the flow on these emails so I have to
keep going doing my emails you know
you’d like to think that you’re always
in the flow but it doesn’t happen that
often it’s not happen to you every day
or if it is and congratulations because
it doesn’t happen to me every day
there’s only sometimes when I’m really
in the flow and I’m working on something
and I don’t want to give it up and so
keep going with it but otherwise I stick
to my pretty rigid schedule and it works
number two don’t answer the phone all
unscheduled phone calls is other
people’s agenda for your time I never
answer the phone unless it’s a scheduled
call and usually I’m the one doing the
calling it’s it’s the fastest way that
you can lose track of your time people
call up you have to be up there you’ll
answer the phone you got to do whatever
tasks they want you to do and then
you’ve lost focus and whatever you’re
doing before this is the back of my
business card my phone number is not on
my business card most people don’t know
my phone number and it almost never
rings because again most people don’t
know it so I have my email and have my
Twitter on my business card but not my
phone number now again it doesn’t mean
that your team can answer the phone if
the phone is an important part of your
business your team can still be
responsive in answering the phone but it
doesn’t have to be you doing everything
scheduled calls and meetings so I have
one one day a week where I have my
meetings at least three hours open I
always do the calling and I’m always on
time when people call me I find that
they’re not always on time and if there
are 10 15 minutes late what are you
doing for those 10 15 minutes nothing
you know you’re checking facebook they
could be calling at any minute you can’t
dive into anything super productive so I
always on the one who’s doing the column
and I’m always on time so you have to
respect that if you’re going to be doing
the calling make sure you are always on
time for meetings as much as possible i
had people come to me and I check them
together so a lot of the means i have is
at the starbucks at the bottom of my
office building and you’ll do back to
back to back to back meetings and so
it’s super convenient for me and you’re
also in that zone of meeting people and
being more outgoing than maybe usually
than usually are I people to help me
with this called time trade and this is
a cool tool that shows open spots in
your hook so you can load your outlook
calendar and say you know i have
thursday afternoons open or monday
afternoons or whatever spots you want to
sign and they can just pick it off and
then it’s automatically update you as a
calendar for you so it eliminates all
the back and forth between does this day
work is this they work I would hear have
out there and it also reminds them a day
before so the book and meeting us three
weeks out at least before I found that
people often forgot about it and then I
might go to the meeting and they weren’t
there or I’d have to remind them a day
before Jay hey we still on for tomorrow
so this tool automatic will then remind
them the day before say a reminder your
meeting Evan tomorrow here’s the place
it also allows them to leave cut some
instructions so if you want to put in
I’ll put in for something like you know
why we meeting just so that if we’re
meeting in three weeks you can leave a
little note to remind myself so when I
go downstairs and meet you at the
starbucks i remember why we’re having
our meeting so you can example i have
two one is in person meeting that’s up
to 60 minutes the second is the phone
call for up to 30 minutes and i’ll send
them this link and they can check
availability
take it whatever time they want that
works for them and if this is a phone
number for example you know what number
am I going to call you at and what are
we discussing so again it makes it super
easy to set up times in my calendar it’s
free for 30 days cost forty bucks for
the year there’s a website and check it
out I’m not affiliated with time trade
at all I just love their products number
three automates almost everything else
so we’ve looked at eliminate now I want
to get to automate and the last one is
going to be delegating automate is
important there’s a lot of tasks that
you are doing that can be solved through
technology and as much as possible you
want to look at ways to do that in our
company anytime I’m doing something more
than two or three times a look for tools
to help me do it either off-the-shelf
tools that already exist ideally or will
custom code and create our own tools to
be able to help us do it those much as
possible you want to automate those
tasks again number one is eliminate you
don’t want to automate a task that
should be eliminated eliminate first
then work on automation so there’s a few
pool tools at Aqaba and hopefully they
give you some some ideas for what you do
for your business the first is called
OneNote and this is a tool that
microsoft offers and what’s really cool
about it the thing that first brought me
to this kind of service was that it
integrates with a special kind of scan
or call the scansnap and what it does is
it scans all your receipts all your
documents all your contracts all your
government paperwork saves it as a PDF
that do full text search on and you can
throw away the actual paper so i’m
running a paperless office which is
amazing you don’t open up your drawers
and see tons of clutter and things that
you need to you know file away
everything is automatically done online
it saves it on my computer and it also
saves it remotely so if you need to get
access to it from a different device
or from a different computer unable to
do it it’s great that it’s full-text
searchable so if you ever need to find
something you could just start putting
in keywords instead of is if I need to
find some receipt or some document
you’ve got to you know go through your
shoebox or your drawer your filing
system it’s just so much faster so this
is what got me hooked at the start and
it’s a bunch of difference game times
that you can use as well they’re
different sizes but then there’s a lot
of cool ways that you can use you can
use one note to grow your business as
well i’m going to share a couple of them
today so the next one is for meetings
and again the cool thing about OneNote
is that if you have it installed on your
different computers and devices
everything is automatically updated
across all the devices as well as on the
web so for me my business I have a cell
phone I have an iPad I have a computer
at my office a desktop and then I have a
laptop that i use and i’m traveling and
when I’m at home you can install one
note and any time you update anything on
any year devices it automatically makes
changes across all your computers so if
I’m traveling I make a note update on
one of my one notes I come back to the
office that’s already been updated there
as well so one way I love doing it is
with my team members on my in my company
so we’re virtual company I have a
physical office but nobody works here
except me I have eight people on my team
and I try to meet with them once a month
to catch up how are things going where
they like what don’t they like what are
the next projects that we’re working on
what are the priorities for the next
month and for each person on my team I
have a one-note file and we can share
whatever we’re working on I can keep
that updated and then if I’m meeting
them you know when I’m at the office or
meaning them when I’m at my house and
automatically have that document updated
so think of it as a note-taking tool
that is automatically updated across
all of your devices wherever you are
it’s also stored on the web so you can
log in and get access to it even if
you’re not on your own computer the last
way that I really like it for is for
traveling and this is more the personal
side but I guess there’s also related to
business whatever I’m child I like to
travel a lot like to take you know
cruises and go see different places I’ll
always do research on the different
places that I’m going to and I can open
up a file in OneNote and create a new
folder that you know might be you know
2013 Europe cruise and in each one set a
different note for each place that I’m
going to go to and I’ll do all that work
on my laptop or on my desktop and save
it and I can put maps on each place that
I’m going to and different places I want
to check out then when I actually get to
the city I can load up my iPad or my
phone load up one note and all the
resources are right there so have the
map of the city I know where I’m going
different restaurants or stores to check
out it’s all there you know within my
hand and so it’s such an awesome tool to
use the traveling and if I make a change
on the fly there when I go back to my
computer is automatically updated
there’s so many cool different ways to
use this and its really thinking about
it as an external brain for yourself
anything you want to remember you can
just shove into OneNote and then it’ll
you know always be there waiting for you
when you need to get access to it so I
can go on and on and on but we’ll stop
there for a second to move on to a new
tool this one is called SkyDrive and
SkyDrive is a great way to backup your
files and share files with your team
members so I give you ever lost your
files in your computer that takes up how
much time to go into and try to restore
the files or maybe everything’s gone
it’s such a such a such a waste such a
waste of time when you lose your files
and so a skydrive cool thing about this
again you can have it across all your
devices so I have it on my office
computer after on my home computer and
then I my
portable devices too and it’s a folder
that is shared so if I have a file that
I’m working on at home and i know i need
to go finish it up at the office i’ll
just save it you can save it in your
SkyDrive folder when you get to the
office it’s already there updated ready
for you to work on again so if you’re
working on an excel file or word file or
whatever it is put in your SkyDrive
folder and it’s automatically going to
be there now I also use it as backup for
my whole computer so all of my files are
in are in the Sky Drive so then if I
ever switch computers all I’d have to do
is install SkyDrive and all of my files
automatically get dumped into there so
you have access to it from your
computers and you can also log in
remotely so if you’re at your friend’s
house or you know clients of sight you
can log in and get access to our or file
that you need so very very cool it saves
a lot of time the other thing you can do
with it is share files with your team so
instead i have a people my team nobody
works here in Toronto with me and we
have to share files right we’re working
on proposals projects whatever it is and
so their files that we need to share
between each other and email such a
hassle to go back and forth because
you’re suing this conversions hitting
each other so you can set up a shared
Sky Drive folder so with each of my
staff members I have a shared folder
with them and we put all the files that
we need to use you know in that folder
and so I can always update it they can
update it and we both have simple access
to it if I make a change it
automatically updates it on my staff’s
computer and vice versa so a great
time-saving trick to really get stuff
done I also use it on the personal side
so I have a shared folder with my
parents for example and if I take
pictures of my son and I want to send it
to them instead of having to shrink the
files and put them in an email or send
them you know the another website I can
just pop them into the sky drive folder
they can automatically download from
their computer and they have it ready to
go and they can you know do whatever
grandparents do with their pictures the
last really cool thing about it that I
love is you can get previous versions
so if for example you deleted a file or
you made a change it you didn’t want to
change you can always log in to the web
version + download the previous version
so this happened to me recently where my
marketing manager I asked her to make a
change to a file and she updated tons of
files instead of just one and I needed
the older versions of those files back
you know I didn’t have a local copy so
you could just log in and say restore
previous version and you have it back
there with you so it’s great when you’re
working in the team environment where
you have people you know accessing the
same file maybe making changes that you
don’t want to make or if you
accidentally delete it you can always go
back need access to it that’s all done
online so pretty cool tool and the last
one in terms of automation tools I want
to talk about is link and link is a cool
way to be able to connect with people on
your team or do webinars like this we’re
actually all using link right now this
is a newer tool that I’m just getting
familiar with myself but it’s also
really funky am looking forward to
diving deeper into it so there’s a
couple ways to use it one is webinars
like this so you know we want to have
people come in and be able to ask
questions and get involved and look at a
presentation so I’m the main presenter
you guys can all watch we’re recording
it so we can have a copy later that we
can upload to youtube or share in our
sky drive folder so that’s that’s a cool
way to do it for webinars and video
conferencing the others just to have
meetings with your team again I have a
monthly meeting with everybody on my
team and I have my OneNote file open
ready to kind of keep my notes but it’s
also nice to see them right so it’s not
just you know chatting and so you can
set up a link meeting between both of
you you can see each other you could
talk away we’ll share your screen
whatever you need to do to have an
effective meeting and really bring
people together who who are offline and
otherwise unable to connect so cool tool
that that we’re all using now that tag
can also save you a lot of time
so next that’s automate the next step is
outsourced so delegate so we’ve
eliminated a lot of paths we don’t need
to do we’ve automated as much as we can
to technology and now it’s time to
delegate and this is a hard one for a
lot of entrepreneurs you have to give up
control at some point you can’t do
everything yourself and especially the
low level tasks that prevent you from
making the kind of money and providing
the kind of value that you should be
making and providing the number of
different ways to do it I’m going to
touch on a few quickly the first is
fiscal and university interns so if
you’re on a budget this is a great way
to go one of the first people I brought
in on my team was his neighbor her name
was Maria she started as a high school
in turn they do it for free they do it
for course credit goes with the school
schedule on the university level they
usually pay but have a higher skill
level here they’re coming to you to
learn you have to make sure you’re
giving them some training you gives them
some opportunities there is some
hand-holding but it’s a lot cheaper than
going out and getting a full-time
staffer foreign language engines this is
a picture of a dese who’s now in charge
of my operations at my business it’s a
free program English is their second
language so that’s one thing to think
about you may not want them in that
communications are all at the beginning
but if you have a technology roll or
something skill-based they can they can
get involved in and they’re they’re
looking for exposure to the work
environment so you know these came here
from Holland and worked for me I think
for buddy a year on that program and
then I hired him to join the team and
that was I don’t know eight years ago
something like that so a great way to be
able to get skilled people tonight at
home mom’s part-timers so these are a
great untapped resource a lot of
stay-at-home moms are really highly
skilled but are often bored there’s a
lot of down time as well being a
stay-at-home mom looking for ways to
make extra money on the resume they
don’t want to
show a gap so you know be able to say
they work that your company is great the
one thing is they do need flexible hours
so it may not be available exactly from
nine to five but if you can afford to be
flexible they’re great attention
resource and it’s understanding at the
start that you don’t need to hire
somebody full time the first person I
hired was for one hour day that’s all it
was one hour a day to do some database
work and that freed up just over an hour
day because he was better than me of my
time to really focus on higher little
projects so you know if you’re just
getting started you don’t have a team
yet you don’t have to thinking about the
huge outlay of cash the full time
employee will be think about hiring
somebody for an hour a day or two hours
a day or a couple hours a week just to
free up your time to focus on bigger
level projects try to get that CEO time
in another one is community leaders of
fans this is a picture of GT who has
been with us since 2010 and we have a
forums community on our website where
entrepreneurs come and they post you
know their questions and their problems
we all try to help each other out and at
the start I ran it but it became too
taxing on my time and so I connected
with GT who was one of our most active
forum members and asked him if you
wanted to do a joint venture so we
partner up on the farms now and he
manages a lot of the day-to-day stuff on
it I’m still involved in answering
questions and posting but he basically
runs it and so you can look for
opportunities to partner up with your
community leaders with fans people who
like your business even potentially
customers sometimes they’ll do it for
free or really low cost sometimes all
they wanted some recognition or you can
give them you know paid salary or some
kind of joint venture opportunity but
we’re looking for creative ways to be
able to delegate some of the tasks that
we’re facing know we’re getting crunched
down with and hopefully they don’t cost
us a lot of money to do it 11 resource I
love using is called odesk and this is
basically a community
of people around the world who want to
work remotely and so I have a few people
on my team from Odessa doing specific
tasks here are the main things that they
do so you can look at it web development
software development writing admin
design sales and marketing customer
service those kinds of tasks for they
don’t have to be you know right in front
of you in the office is a great way to
be able to do it with each of you
potentially higher you get to see a
picture of them you get to see how much
they cost you get to see feedback from
other projects it’s kind of like eBay
there’s a rating system so here’s a
person you know who’s had some good
feedbacks see how many hours his work
coming contracts you can make them take
tests so if you’re trying to hire a
programmer and you don’t know anything
about programming yourself you can look
to see if they passed any of the
important programming tests to get a
sense of what their skill level is so
it’s a great way to be able to find
people and again they work all remotely
this is part of the big brother so up to
you if you want to use it or not but
what it will do is it tracks their
screen and and their mouse clicks so you
can log in and see what they’re doing
for you what documents are opening and
that bar on the left where it shows
those kind of green bars shows how
active they are with their keystrokes
and their mouse clicks now they know
that it’s being recorded so it’s not a
surprise to them but if you ever want to
dig down and see how the time is being
spent and what they’re doing odesk is
the ability to do it those are cool
tools 99designs and this is great for
any kind of graphic work that you want
to do so logo design business cards
designed website design you basically
put in your your project so you know I
want to create a new website and a
budget and the cool thing about this is
you only pay for finished product so a
lot of times with graphic designers
you’re hiring them based on the past
experience but you don’t know what
they’re going to give you we’re here
these guys are actually out doing the
work to create your logo or your website
and will show you examples
of what yours will actually look like
and you only pay for the winning design
so some of the ones that I’ve done make
a website Heather make a logo in
PowerPoint design create an infographic
and you can see some of them are more
popular than others so on the power
point 1 and logo I had 94 different
people create entries for me and here is
we’re going to see you pick your top one
so this is for PowerPoint design that I
needed and you can see you know there’s
a whole array it gets at different
choices you can leave comments for them
to say I really like what you’ve done
but you know can you make it red instead
of orange or I don’t like how that
mountain looks can you change it around
and they’ll make changes on the fly for
you then you can send your top eight
choices to your friends and get their
feedback to say you know which one did
you like help me pick a winner so a very
cool system anytime you’re doing
anything related to design work tool
fiber this you can yeah you can lose
your time on this it’s things people
will do for five bucks and so some of
them are serious and business or click
on the business category here some of
them are funny and joke like so you can
have somebody you know pay five bucks to
in the voice of Sean Connery wish your
best friend the happy birthday or in the
voice of Mickey Mouse I’ll call up and
wishes son happy birthday there’s a
whole bunch of weird things that people
will do for five bucks again you may not
want to check out the site because this
is about productivity and you may lose
all your productivity going here but
we’re focused on the business 11 that
I’ve use as an example trend transcribe
audio so I’ll do some videos on YouTube
and if I want the audio transcribed
there’s somebody here who will do it and
so they’ll transcribe up to 16 minutes
of audio for five bucks that’s a pretty
good deal takes them about seven days to
do it things to look for at the top you
see their top rated seller you can look
at their feedback so that second arrow
shows you know they’ve done 223 ad
positive reviews and 0 negative reviews
and at the bottom shows some other
feedback so just like any other you know
rating system you want to make sure
you’re working with people who have good
feet I can have done it before I mean I
guess you only have five bucks but you
don’t want to waste your time going down
the road with somebody who’s not going
to deliver so some of the stuff that
I’ve done some Facebook posts so here is
one where they would put your name on a
cappuccino cup and put your website in a
crossword puzzle so that cost five bucks
and I could post it on Facebook and you
know people like it and comment on it
and some other ones that I’ve done I’ll
hold up a sign in New York City I’ll
write your website in the plate of pasta
I’ll write your name on my shoe or my
foot the kid on the bottom left where’s
that t-shirt around all week with
whatever website you want and he takes a
picture and he’ll put any website that
his mom will approve so I give him five
bucks and he wore that around his school
for for a week so you know questionable
value I guess but it’s a good story and
you supporting a young entrepreneur
asked one that I want to talk about
terms of a habit is masterminding so
this is really important as
entrepreneurs we’re trying to do
everything ourselves and a lot of us
don’t have a network of people around us
to be able to help us and guide us and
give us advice and what to do and it’s
lonely and we’re always talking about
the good things with our business right
if you go to a meeting you’re always
saying oh I just landed Royal Bank is a
customer or whatever it is so is a good
stuff who you talked about the crappy
stuff with your business hudye talked
about about the fact that you’re
thinking about quitting because it’s too
hard you know friends and family may may
be supportive the lend an ear but if
they haven’t gone through it if they’re
not entrepreneurs themselves they can’t
really give you some advice on what to
do and so did you with masterminding is
you find a group of entrepreneurs who
are around the same mumble as you but
have different skill set and you get
together and you you help each other out
your meat so
in our groups who run a couple of groups
here in Toronto we meet once a month at
my office over there for three hours and
we basically go around the table and
talk about the problems we’re facing and
we try to help each other out and it
works well when will come with the
attitude of trying to try to be a
resource and try to help and also people
who have different backgrounds and skill
sets so I don’t want you know 10 people
in my group who are all salespeople I
get people who are from different
backgrounds somebody strong as sales
somebody strong an operation somebody
might be a legal background somebody
showing up marketing because we’re
limited in what we know as entrepreneurs
and you want other people around you who
can fill those blind spots and so that’s
the first point that’s really important
about it the second one is when you meet
other entrepreneurs at least for me I
find I get a natural high you know I
leave the meeting excited wanting to to
you know do more with my business and
just hanging around other entrepreneurs
you get new ideas and new energy to grow
your business because if you’re not
around other business owners regularly
if you work from home or you have an
office but you just run it by your staff
you can start to get down on yourself
and down in your company and what you’re
doing and being surrounded by other
entrepreneurs helps keep you going and
so it’s important to find some kind of
group either join one that’s already out
there create your own it can make a big
difference in helping you not only just
stay productive but give you ideas and
motivation to help you grow your
business so those are the five things
that I want to talk about today I know I
threw a whole ton of information at you
guys today we are recording this so we
are going to send out the slides to
people and the video so you can watch it
again and go in detail I want to hear
that wheel of time for questions so we
talked about having questions as they
come I know the chest still here Twitter
this stuff coming in and so we’re going
to go through and start to answer some
of these and hopefully give you
some help so ed to throw it in the chat
where how do you find the mastermind
group so I’m based in Toronto depends I
guess on where were your base it’s as
simple as doing a Google search the
challenge here is that a lot of cities
don’t have my supplying group already
set up and you may have to look at doing
it yourself so an example how I learned
about it was um a guy named Brian
Scudamore who runs one eight hundred got
junk and they went from zero to 8
million in a couple of years based out
in British Columbia and when I talked to
him is that the number one factor the
help of growth was starting mastermind
groups and they asked him how he did it
and what factors you know led to those
groups mean successful and I brought it
to my city of toronto because there was
nothing here you know there’s not
working groups there’s groups around
business coaches but there wasn’t that
mastermind group concept so you may find
something in your city that you can go
and join or you may have to look at
creating your own next question I’ll
fast turnaround signs assuming he’s
talking about the 99 designs typically
so it depends you set the time usually
looking at one week to two weeks the
longer goes doubt the more expensive it
is to bid on a project so if you’re
doing a website and you have a thousand
dollars budget you may only get a weak
to do it but if you have two thousand
dollars they may give you two weeks to
do it it’s still pretty fast you know a
lot of times work with designers can be
a long process so they definitely have
an end to the auction that that helps
question from Robert one note how do I
use it for business and personal reasons
so I talked about OneNote and how i use
it for scanning my receipts and I use
that forgets business and personal
reasons there too for my team managing
my meetings and keeping track of my
notes another cool way to use it if you
look on
personal side is returns so for example
if i buy a screwdriver at home depot
i’ll scan in the receipt and throw it
away then if i need to return the
screwdriver to find that receipt I don’t
have to go digging through you know
boxes I can just go to one note do a
search for Home Depot the receipt will
come up I can pull that up on my iPad or
on my my phone go in the home depot with
my screwdriver and show them the receipt
and they can scan it and give me a
refund so you don’t actually have to
have the physical paper copy any more do
we need those prices worst case i guess
you can also print it off and bring in a
receipt but the stores are able to
handle it so awesome awesome tools what
off wow so many questions coming in so
let’s see do we need to visit the high
schools and university websites to get
the interns so for that it’s the best
option is looking at the schools that
are around you and where I am in Toronto
there’s a school board and every
internship programs are run from the
school board and so you can tell them
you’re an employer looking to have a
high school intern work for you they
give you a form you fill it out tell
them the types of person that you want
to bring in and they will you know start
feeding you potential candidates at the
university level it’s each school has
their own way of doing things so the
best bet is to try to find whatever
universities or colleges closest to you
because the students are likely living
close to their school if it’s too far
away they’re not going to want to make
the travel to where you are so find the
closest two or three colleges
universities ocular career center see
what they have if they have an
internship program and let them know
that you exist a question from Twitter
can you give a quick opinion on link vs
google hangouts sources GoToWebinar so
i’m still pretty new to link I’m liking
it so far go to
pinar I know has caused me a lot of
problems in the past and I’ve worked
with with some clients and it’s also
expensive so you need to have you know
some some bigger dollars to pretend vast
to be able to do events with GoToWebinar
good a meeting google hangouts I’ve used
in the past that the challenge with it
is you can only have I think eight or
nine people who can be on at the same
time other people can sit in and watch
but they can’t actively participate so
you have to go outside through there
Chad or through Twitter to be able to
actually communicate with people here
with with link you can have up to a
thousand people on a specific call and
they can all participate so we’ve we’ve
muted you guys otherwise we’ve had a lot
of crazy background noise but there is
an option to basically have everybody
involved if you wanted to and everybody
could potentially be the presenter share
their screen sharing on discussions so
if you need to have more people in on on
a presentation then it makes more sense
to use a tool like link the guys from
records office saying we can unmute if
you allow Evan I don’t know it’s finally
not a good idea to hear all the sorts of
crazy noises that happen in the
background but thank you for the offer
next question do you have any blog post
or ebooks about how to start a
mastermind group I do actually have a
worksheet on it if you go to my website
Evan Carmichael calm / worksheets with a
capital W you’ll see a whole bunch of
different worksheets that we have to
help entrepreneurs that one specifically
is around creating the mastermind group
and I share how I go out looking for new
members what kind of questions we ask
the structures that I used to run the
meeting I’ll share the non-disclosure
agreements that we use the fees and
basically everything you need to run a
meeting so you could check that out I
think it’s seven bucks so it’s not not
going to break your budget as you go
through
another question have you ideas on how
to market fine art for free I’m seeing
that galleries have 500 other artists
competing needing sales this makes me
tired so that comes in from Anna thanks
for the question Anna it’s it’s hard
making a living as an artist as I’m sure
you know and the ones that I’ve seen do
the best job are not the ones who are
out going and trying to land individual
sales and lend individual calories but
do more of the pr side of things so you
build a media list and you you know keep
a contact list of all the people who are
interested in art and report on art and
let them know your story and nothing
other things that you’re up to and
hopefully you get some stories written
about you or clips on TV words you and
they are you talking about your story a
lot of times publications and and
stations will want to do shows the
showcase entrepreneurs and what they’re
up to so this is a great way to be able
to get your name out there and then
people watching will hopefully pick up
the phone call you will go to your
website is a great way to bring in leeds
instead of you going out and forcing
trying to go and find them yourself i
know i know it’s super super challenging
for heart but it is helpful we had cost
him today just some housekeeping
questions about where where’s the email
so i think someone can run you to jump
the line there suddenly we’re doing that
as a test just to see what’s going on
but i couldn’t quite hear that question
that came in so one question is how do
you access one note from the ipad you
have to install the app or is it via the
web you could do both so you can
download an app and you can you can have
everything there at your fingertips it’s
probably easier than going to the web
version but the web version is great i
find if you’re not using your own
computer but you need access to a note
so if you’re traveling or you’re a
client’s office or a friend’s house and
you want to log in and find
and whatever note or receipt that you’ve
created you can always log into the web
version to find it but otherwise I find
it more helpful to either use a desktop
version or download download the app
let’s be what us question from Twitter
do you have any advice and how to avoid
scope creep besides I have a tighter
contract this this is a tough one when
you’re negotiating deals with your
clients it is obviously nice to have a
tighter contract but what I usually do
when I’m negotiating things with my
clients is when they start to add new
things I force something else that come
out of it so if they add something else
that they you know must have I either
look at increase in the cost or saying
you know this wasn’t part of our initial
discussion and it’s going to take me you
know X amount of time to people to do it
it’s entirely possible to do it but we
have to take something else out and so
your lease are giving them an option
you’re not saying you’ll know I won’t do
it or you know here’s how much is going
to cost to do it but you’re also given
the option to take something out and
that’s happened a lot with projects that
I’ve worked on you get into especially
the bigger projects at the beginning you
know you have this big vision for what
you want to have happen but the project
changes as you actually get into it and
it’s very common but you want to make
sure you don’t lose your shirt on it the
other thing is to buffer in extra time
or extra supplies into your contract
because you always want to make sure
your clients are happy you know you
don’t want you don’t want to leave them
with a bad taste in our mouth even
though you’re following kind of the
letter of the contract of what you said
so I would let them know that you still
want to let them know you’re doing them
a favor right like you may take on a
little bit more because you’ve left time
to buffer that in because you want to
make them happy but you let them know
that you’re doing this to help build a
relationship because you really you know
like work on this project and like
working with them don’t just give it
away they’ll let them know that you put
that extra time in
what else I’m scrolling through the
messages here question from Ed how do
you manage your team without taking it
too much of your time so this all starts
with hiring the right people some people
are very needy and need a lot of
hand-holding and some people are more
independent workers in and do tasks on
their own and so before I hire anybody
I’ll always give them some tasks that
work on and I’ll see this would be real
tacit they would probably do for me when
I hired them and I’ll see how quickly
they do it you know they take a lot of
time to do it or not what’s the quality
output that comes and how much are they
asking me for questions over and over
and over again now sometimes the
questions make sense but you want to
have a pretty clearly defined job
requirement that they can follow if they
if they write it along so the people who
are slow or who don’t deliver quality
product or who asked a million questions
are usually not the ones that that i’ll
end up hiring they may be great for
other companies but not for me so i need
people who can do their own projects
think on their feet and not require too
much work for me at the beginning when I
hire somebody it’s its work the train
and I put in that time to train but
ongoing there’s usually not much support
work that I have to do I will have our
monthly meeting that will you know do a
quick update and try to find projects
that they want to keep working on and
and see what we’re going to do for the
next month and in between the meetings
most of the e-mails back and forth will
be I guess maintenance on things that
we’re doing or new ideas that we have
but I don’t usually have to hop on the
phone or set up a link meeting or you
know do a screen capture to explain
something because we’ve gone through it
already or we do that as a monthly
meeting so it starts with you doing a
better job on the on the on the
interview process but then ongoing also
building in some kind of stir a load of
my notepad file of questions here
so that you’re making sure you get the
right people on board and you have a
system that works what else some very
simple but clever ideas here Evan all
right thank you no question they’re good
could you please survive some further
tips on elimination so again the idea
here is you’re doing more work than you
should be doing and things that you
think are important are actually not too
important and so it’s looking at what
you’re doing and the work show that
talks about this but you could do it on
your own just write down typical things
that you do in a day in a week and in
the month things that especially the
ones that recur are you doing almost
every day almost everywhere almost every
month and you want to really ask
yourself does this have to get done does
this really have it is this super
important to my business and you should
cut at least twenty percent of the
things on that list because there’s
absolutely Tassie you may think are
important but do not at the end of the
day add so much value to your business
from there you can look at automation
and delegation so you end up doing a lot
less work but it all starts with
elimination and thinking about all those
tasks and if they’re really adding value
to your business or not next question
from Michael how do you manage all your
emails so I get a lot of emails right
I’ve had almost 20 million people visit
the website and my email is on the
website and I’m the one answering it so
it’s it’s rough and I love answering
emails because its most of you guys
writing in with questions about your
business and so it’s you know gives me
part of the greatest joy of my days is
helping entrepreneurs it still is really
hard and I only have four chunks of my
time every week that I do it so you
can’t find me on Friday Saturday Sunday
and what I find really helps first again
we’re chunking so we’re eliminating
distractions when I sit
then I’m doing email that’s all I’m
doing I’m doing email and I find to buy
knowing that I have a finite time to do
it so I only have 90 minutes and to know
that you only have 90 minutes to do a
task makes you work harder and get you
more focused right if you think you have
the whole day to do something then ver
obviously it takes the whole day but if
you only have 90 minutes to do it you’re
focused and you can get it done within
those 90 minutes so find that helps the
next thing is I try to do I try to
answer the emails quickly that don’t
require much of anything else they don’t
require me to look at a document or do
anything besides respond on that email
and then you can also look at how can
you get your team involved so there’ll
be some questions that come in to me
that are related to my website or
projects are working on the back and
forward off to my team so an example
might be somebody on my newsletter
writes back I get all the responses if
you guys are on my newsletter list and
you write back to me it’s coming to me
but it might be something like you know
I didn’t get your list of your favourite
books can you please send it to me and
that involves logging into the software
tool finding the email sending the last
of them I’ll pass it off to somebody on
my team and they’ll do it for me and so
there may be some tasks you don’t
actually have to do yourself when you’re
answering the emails what’s next
question from Lynn how do you stay
focused ah focus that’s awesome question
a lot of entrepreneurs of a hard time
with it starts with figuring out what
you’re passionate about as an
entrepreneur so you know what is it that
you want to accomplish with your
business and then figuring out are the
tasks that you’re doing now align with
your long-term vision and a lot of times
we get distracted by shiny objects you
know new opportunities coming along we
have to jump on that great way to make a
lot of money you don’t want to go after
those it’s got a line with what you’re
doing and then pick two to three top
things that you’re going to focus your
time on and and have the courage to say
no to the other things until you see
these first projects through
if for whatever reason the project is
not what you thought it was going to be
and you know you’re going to switch
gears that’s fine but as entrepreneurs
we tend to take on way too much and we
do little bits of projects and we don’t
see things through and you’ll be a lot
more successful i picking two or three
main things that you’re focusing your
time on and see those through and finish
them gets into completion get the point
where you’re really happy with them and
then beyond that you know don’t worry
about the rest of it until you finish
those initial projects I know where
we’re at three o’clock were running out
of time there’s still tons of questions
coming in which is great if you guys
want it’s going to go to the last slide
here if you keep asking questions if I
didn’t get to your question now you can
use the ass or the hashtag ask Evan and
I’ll still respond later on trying to
help you guys out as much as possible so
if you take the twitter and use that ask
Evan hashtag I’ll try to get back to you
guys just a quick note I’m a judge on a
new contest that Microsoft is having its
a twin with office com you can win up to
ten thousand dollars in cash some
ultrabooks windows phones a whole bunch
of cool prizes you just have to do a
submission as to why you feel you
deserve it and some of the challenges I
guess you’re facing on the productivity
sighs and I’m one of the judges and
there’s a few other ones we’re going to
pick some winners and I’d love to see
one of you guys when some of this stuff
so thank you for joining us here today I
appreciate you taking the time out of
your busy day to do it I know you know
we’re all strapped for time so really
appreciate it again we’re going to be
recording it I’m going to send you guys
a copy and if you want to keep the
conversation going with the ice cave and
hashtag I’ll try to get back to
everybody so thank you very much guys I
really appreciate it and we’ll see you
soon
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