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How We All Need To Think Of Excuses

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You could have come up with the best excuse for why your book did not get published when you said it would. The best excuse does not change the result–the book was still not published at the time you said it would be published.

“I didn’t study for the test because I had a project that week.” Although this excuse was well done, it does not change the fact that the person scored a low grade on the test.

“I don’t use Instagram because I don’t want to start from scratch when I have 500,000 followers on Twitter.” This is not an excuse. This is a logical reason. Focusing on the 500,000 followers on Twitter is more important than creating the Instagram account.

There is a difference between a reason and an excuse. An excuse is a cover up for a flaw on your part that could have been addressed better. It is better to admit mistakes than to cover them up so everyone can learn from those mistakes, not just you. A reason is something that makes sense but is not trying to cover up a flaw. Not having an Instagram account is not a flaw when you have a strong presence on Twitter. Likewise, not having a Twitter account is not a flaw when you have a strong presence on Instagram.

Excuses should not be tolerated. Mistakes should be admitted. Excuses are just the long route that ends up going exactly where the short route goes–the realization that there is a flaw. Reasons are good especially when they can be supported. Reasons are logical, and reasons don’t hide flaws because there is nothing to hide.

 

8 Ways To Increase The Amount Of Time You Have In Your Day

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If there was one thing we could all wish for, we would all wish that there were 10 extra hours in the day to get everything done. It seems as if our days are getting increasing busy, and there is less time to complete the tasks at hand. With a big pile of work, many people fear adding on to that workload, even if adding on to the workload means getting more opportunities. However, there are simple ways to hack the workload. In this blog post, I am going to reveal 8 of those methods.

  1. Identify any patterns that take up time. If you are scheduling tweets of your blog posts, chances are you search for the blog post on your blog, paste the link into Bitly, write the tweet on HootSuite, paste the link to your blog post in the tweet, and schedule the tweet. I have all of my tweets in a document on my computer which saves me from the first three steps. Joining HootSuite Pro allowed me to save even more time. It is easy to imagine that I save 4 hours every week.
  2. Choose wisely. Not all work is productive. Walking around your neighborhood with a flyer with a link to your blog is not as effective as becoming a guest blogger for a popular blog. Some opportunities are better than others, and it is important to pounce on the good ones when they come.
  3. Wake up earlier. This is an obvious, but easy way to get some extra time in your day. We are at our peak of productivity in the morning. By waking up at 7 am every day instead of 9 am, you will be able to be productive for an extra 60 hours every month. Imagine the things you will be able to do with 60 extra hours every month.
  4. Upgrade to save time. That’s exactly why I upgraded to HootSuite Pro for $9.99 every month. HootSuite Pro allows me to save a lot of time, and it allows me to organize my tweets and lists very effectively. What can you upgrade to save extra time. If you save an hour a day by spending $30 every month, you would have spent $360 for the year on those services, but you would have gained 365 extra hours. That’s enough hours to write a book, run it through an editor, get it copyrighted, and market it to the masses.
  5. Focus on what you are good at instead of trying to be something else. I decided to give coding a try, but it ended up becoming a very bumpy road. After spending a few weeks trying to learn code, I gave up. Now, I focus on what I am good at: my writing and expertise in social media, business, and blogging. I saved a lot of time by giving up on the coding early on so it would not swallow up any more of my time.
  6. Create rubrics. Imagine writing the same email, word for word, over 100 times, and the only thing different was the person’s name. I encountered this problem immediately when I submitted a query on HARO. Instead of creating custom messages, I created a rubric message for the people whose pitches I liked. Creating the rubric message allowed me to email hundreds of people within a week instead of sending out personalized messages which could take months.
  7. Do something incredibly time-consuming for a week while doing everything else at the same time. I will never forget the working curve it took me to send out replies to the people who sent in pitches to my HARO queries in 1 week. It was a time-consuming process. However, when I was done responding to people’s pitches, I had a big slice of time left. While I was responding to pitches, it would take me entire days to do all of my work. When I responded to everyone’s pitch, I was able to get my work done twice as fast and even able to extend my break by another hour. The reason summer is my most productive season is because I gain 8 extra hours since there isn’t any school.
  8. Hire assistants. Once you start to make it big time, have other people send out the HARO queries, respond to the pitches, and answer emails for you. Hiring assistants will be able to give you more time to produce quality products.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other suggestions? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why You Need To Pay Attention To Data On The Web

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The only data most people pay attention to are their own statistics. We know how many clicks our Bitly links get, how many people visited our blogs last Wednesday, and how many sales you are getting as an Amazon Associate. However, we need to pay more attention to data that exists on the web about customers.

I never thought of looking at the data on the web. I was focused on looking at my own data and finding ways to improve on that data. After reading Big Data Marketing, my entire aspect about collecting data changed. While it is still important to collect our own data, we must explore data on the web that can relate to getting more customers, increasing the percentage of deals gone through, and other aspects of business as well.

There are many sites on the web with data. By looking at the data, we can see the trends and rising industries. The reason we know mobile is going to be huge for businesses is because data indicates a big rise in mobile sales.

By looking at our own data, we are able to find ways to better ourselves. By looking at the big picture, we are able to expand on what we already know, think outside of the box, and get data results that we never thought were possible.

4 Ways To Find People To Talk To On Twitter

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Twitter Engagement

Many people use Twitter to build strong connections with like-minded people. These connections tend to lead to more business opportunities, traffic, and sales. Ironically, a big challenge on Twitter is trying to find people to talk to. Even though there are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, some people do not know how to talk to and find like-minded people on Twitter. In this blog post, I am going to show you four ways to find the people that you need to talk to on Twitter.

  1. Use Twitter’s search engine to find individuals. If you want to find entrepreneurs, search the word entrepreneur. After the big guys and magazines come up, there will be other entrepreneurs on the list who will commonly talk with their followers. Those are the people you need to talk with.
  2. Use Twitter’s search engine to find individual tweets. If you want to see tweets in real time for a certain word or phrase, you can search for tweets with that word or phrase using Twitter’s search engine. Before interacting with a tweet, be sure to look at the person’s profile and determine if this is someone you want to build a strong connection with. Then, reply to that tweet and wait for the person to respond.
  3. Follow the followers of someone else. If you find someone you want to talk to, and that person has over 100,000 followers, follow that person’s followers. Some of those people will be entrepreneurs who will follow you back. When these people follow you back, start a conversation with those people.
  4. Talk with like minded followers. Every Twitter user has a list of people who they can talk to, and that is their followers. No matter how big or small that list is, there are going to be like minded followers on that list. By building strong connections with these followers, you will learn how to develop strong connections with others as well.

Those are the four ways to find people to talk to on Twitter. What are your thoughts about the list? Are there any other tips you would like to add? Please share your thoughts below.

 

Mr. Wonderful’s Little Study For Getting A Deal On Shark Tank

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While browsing the web for a bit, I happened to stumble upon an article on Boston Magazine that had an interview with Kevin O’Leary. Most people know O’Leary as Mr. Wonderful, the guy who always sits in the middle seat on Shark Tank. During the interview, O’Leary was asked what would result in someone walking out of the tank with a deal. It turned out that O’Leary had been performing a little study about this. Here were his three findings:

  1. People who got the deal were able to articulate their opportunity in 90 seconds or less.
  2. People who got the deal were able to convince the sharks that they could execute.
  3. People who got the deal knew their numbers.

Whether we end up on Shark Tank (hard) or end up sitting in one of those five seats (much harder), we would be thinking about these three findings as a way to identify quality deals and make them happen. However, for those of us who do not get to go on Shark Tank, it is important to apply these three findings to our businesses.

With the rise of smartphones, multitasking has gone up. As multitasking goes up, attention spans go down. If you cannot convince someone in 90 seconds that you are important and that your product is good, you will lose that person’s attention. For many YouTube videos, most people stop watching after 10 seconds. The number of people who watch the entire YouTube video is minuscule compared to the number of people who actually viewed the video. This process works similar to a food chain where plants get the most energy (sunlight) and the animals on the top of the food chain get the least energy (because other animals got to use the energy from the plant first). In the beginning, everyone is eager to hear what you say. However, as you continue to talk, the energy level goes down. You need to “wow” the person you are talking to before their energy level hits zero.

After “wowing” someone, you have successfully talked the talk. Since the person’s energy level is higher, you want to keep that energy level high. In order to do that, you need to make sure that person sees you are a responsible person who walks the walk. Saying, “I will run 8 miles today,” and actually running the 8 miles are two different things. Metaphorically speaking, you want to be able to tell the person you are talking to that you will be able to run those 8 miles.

Now you have the person listening to you and absorbing everything that you say. The final part that seals the deal are your numbers. You could have a remarkable opportunity and be responsible, but it’s all fluff if you are getting 0 visitors on your blog, have no social media presence, and have a business going through financial decline. Not only do you need to have the numbers, but you need to have the numbers that click in the person’s mind. Since you gave a big boost to that person’s energy level, that person is able to show a greater appreciation towards your (good) numbers. The numbers offer tangible evidence in your ability to deliver what you say you will deliver.

Although getting on Shark Tank is very difficult, it is very easy to learn valuable lessons about business from the sharks themselves and while watching the show. What are your thoughts about Mr. Wonderful, his little study, and Shark Tank in general?

 

How Technology Is Affecting Our Mindset

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The mindset is the decisive factor of how far you will go in your lifetime. Money, fame, wealth, and fortune have nothing to do with how far you go. There are people with money who spend it wildly. There are famous people who have been arrested because they were caught using illegal drugs. The wealthy people had to become wealthy somehow. The people of good fortune could lose that fortune if everything went wrong. In fact, more lottery winners than you would think have ended up going bankrupt after winning the lotto.

The mindset is unquestionably the decisive factor of success. Having a powerful mindset allows those rags to riches stories to actually happen. Having a powerful mindset also allowed people to come up with new innovations, be persistent, and do remarkable things.

With the giant shift in technological advancements, it is important to question how much of an impact technology has on our mindsets. There are many people who are finding more opportunities because of the web. Some people are using the web to create businesses and build powerful social media presences at young ages (like me, but Houston Gunn, Jeet Banerjee, and many other teenagers are creating their own businesses as well). Other people are using technology to completely halt their progress. This comes in the form of a 5 hour YouTube video watching spree or something similar.

In addition, technology has made everything faster. I become very impatient when I see the five second ad on YouTube, and I know I am in the majority on this one. Technology has resulted in some people losing their patience. When a certain task takes a week to complete, one week seems like years. The people who are able to complete several tasks and stick with something for years are the people who looked at success stories. We all see the success story of the blogger who started with nothing a few years ago and now makes a solid $100,000 a month.

Technology has the power to dramatically strengthen or cripple the mindset. There is no in between. It is important to accept that technology has had a big impact on this world in several ways. Improved communication and organizing hundreds of documents on one computer are some of the ways that technology has had a big impact on the world. Technology has also had a big impact on our mindsets, and the people we become is dependent on how we look at and respond to the technology around us.