I am a systems person. I take great solace in tucking into a routine every morning and using a generally ritualized structure to guide me through my day. Doing so greatly improves my chances of being productive as well as providing my “to do” list with a little natural rhythm. When you work independently in a wildly divergent field, like business development consulting, your days can quickly become busy without any really clear direction except “get it done now.” I see a lot of entrepreneurs and self-employed folks fall apart in the face of the assorted demands of their day. Distractions, stress and exhaustion are also adversaries of productivity. However, if you have a routine in place you’re more likely to keep your head, and focus, in the game. 

My typical routine looks something like this:

7 am:               Gym                                        

• Going first thing in the morning wakes me up, gives me time to think about my day and takes one thing off of my “to do” list immediately.

9 am:               Email check                            

• To tackle a hefty AM open I filter out newsletters, group updates and other regular emails into specific folders leaving only the emails that might demand immediate attention.

9:30                 Update “to do” list

• I use google’s Task function to keep my lists handy and easy to reference. There are many list manager services and aps out there to suit your needs.

10 am:             News & Blog reading             

• This is a big part of my job. Following trends, engaging with social networks and continually researching topics that are of interest to my clients are the fuel that feed my professional fires. I use Google Reader to organize the many RSS feeds I follow.

11 am:             Open project files and dig in

• I make sure to give myself enough time to work, research and write.

1:30/2 pm:      Lunch Break

3 pm:               Email check & reply time

• One of my resolutions for this year is to limit the number of times I hit the email feeder bar. By assigning myself regular times to check in I find I’m less distracted by the prospect of an email.

4 pm:               Open time

• Depending on what is most pressing for that day this time can be used in a variety of ways; writing, working on invoicing, touching base with colleagues, etc.

A Good Routine Is Not Set In Stone

You will notice the auto pilot items are condensed in the morning. My mind needs a little time to wake up some mornings and reading news, blogs, emails often lays the seeds of inspiration for where I want to direct my day. However these items are also not the most pressing; if they aren’t done the world will still rotate on it’s axis so they can be set aside and that time can be used for more immediate needs. Whatever your established agenda for the day is it is important to be able to be flexible and move forward if things do get a little out of control.

A Good Routine Comes In Many Shapes & Sizes

I have a few variations of my routine depending on the greater demands of the day. For example, on accounting days I jump right into the open accounts before heading to my google reader. I find it is useful to break an accounting day up by stopping for 30-45 min breaks to read other material every 2 hours or so. When a day requires travel I will often use commuting time to listen to podcasts or the news to make my time efficient. Once you’ve established your basic schedule you will notice the more commonly occurring themes of your days and can create your own variations.

In the time I have been actively building and refining my daily routine I have noticed a definite improvement in my efficiency and productivity. As customers, projects, environments and needs change it is nice to have something to lean on to give shape to some of the chaos.

If you’ve already got your own routine or productivity boosting tips please do leave them in the comments. I am always interested in hearing how others use their time wisely.

Before a recent social media workshop for owners and executives in the printing industry I sent out three pre-workshop questions each participant had to ponder and try to answer before the session started:

1. How does social media fit into your current marketing plan (if there is one)? If there isn’t a plan, what would you like to get out of social media?
2. What is going to be said, by whom, using which channels and why?
3. Could social media management be a service you could use to help your customers? If not, why not? If so, how?

The answers I got back were expected and it helped me develop the content for the workshop. Here is an example of one of the responses:

“I don’t know that I am able to answer these questions. I want to know:

1. What social networking is
2. How a business [printer] can use it to his benefit
3. The step by step process to establish our social network.

At that juncture I expect I would be more prepared to answer the questions. I can tell you that we have a marketing plan; however, social media marketing is not part of it. What I want from social media marketing, like my overall marketing effort, is to develop more business.”

What follows is an abbreviated Social Media Survivors Guide you can use to help begin your journey in navigating the challenges and opportunities around social media.

What Is It? Social networking addresses the human need to interact. Social media are methods and channels to interact with other humans as part of a person’s network. Social networking isn’t new. The ways in which it can get done: blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more are very new to most. According to Wikipedia, social networking transforms broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.

Why Should We Do Anything? There is a video on the web worth watching as part of your survival training. The Did You Know? video is currently in its fourth version and describes global changes in the world, new technologies, convergence and the way people behave. The video asks us if we’re ready for the changes and I believe that sets up one of the most important success behaviors in social networking and business—having a plan. Developing a strategic approach to the opportunity is better than haphazard tactical attempts. An even more relevant reason to work on your strategy about how to deal with the changes is because most of your customers are trying to figure this out too, why not work on it together?

Where Does Social Media Fit In? I’m not trying to overwhelm you with videos, but they are an effective medium along with print and there’s one you don’t want to miss. Eric Qualman wrote Socialnomics, a brand new book on social media. Eric developed a video that takes many of the social media statistics and puts them in an engaging presentation on how we are totally changing the way we communicate. The beginning of the video asks “Is Social Media a Fad?” By the end you will see that some form of social networking with new media tools will continue to grow in use and application.

What Can a Business (Printer) Do About This? No one likes the first part but it’s a good first step. Think strategically about what you could do. Where are you, where do you want to be? Where is your current customer and where are they going? And what about the customers you don’t have…where are they going and can you meet them ahead of time or help them get where they are going? It’s how you can win new business from existing customers and new customers by identifying what they want and having a process in place to deliver on it. That’s marketing.

The second part to the question is a tactical one. It’s got a 4 part answer according to Qualman and it works because I do something similar and help others do the same: 

1. Listening: Choose a social media channel and set up an account. Find out who is saying what to whom and perhaps why. Following your customers, customer’s customers, vendors, partners and competition can increase your knowledge—and suck up a lot of time if you don’t watch it.
2. Interacting: Participating in conversations, sharing ideas, asking questions, answering questions, exploring what can be done and said are all part of this step. 
3. Reacting: Make changes to your social media approach, your business, your services, your customer service…your whole mission can happen here. FedEx listens actively on Twitter and follows up in minutes if someone Tweets about a bad FedEx experience.
4. Selling: The first three steps will help you identify what a business wants. Keiger Printing in Winston-Salem, NC uses Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, Delicious, Digg and more to show their customers they are listening and creating dialogs about how they’ve helped their customers beyond cost savings alone. They use case study content on their social media channels to show what can be done. They can even ask for business from some of those who follow them. 

When you leverage social media so people find you, listen to you, and ask you if you can do business with them—that’s a great indirect sales approach. There’s less selling and more helping. You have the opportunity to get paid for that help.

Four popular social media technologies for you to investigate should include a blog (for writing complete thoughts about trends, happenings, thoughts, challenges and more), LinkedIn (for posting information about yourself and your business and network with others who may be looking to find people like you or about topics you may know about), Facebook (to interact with people personally and/or professionally and create communities that are interested in common goals or ideas) and Twitter (to share a quick thought or idea about who you are, what you think, what you want others to know, what you can do to help and follow how others are doing the same in their own way). How you use these tools can help you find out things, get found and identify new opportunities to grow your business in a new way. Once you’ve started the journey you have experiences you can share. You could even set up services to help others do the same in their business.

Share what you learn along the way in some new media…that’s what being social is all about.

Keep the learning going, pass it on. ~Peter

I just can’t seem to get this stack of business cards off my mind.

When I teach seminars or meet people along the way that classic marketing method is always in play--the exchanging of business cards. I contact some of the key people who hand me cards based on a timely need or project idea that aligns with our current efforts. But we can't always get to all those people.

I actually sat at my desk and brainstormed about how I could possibly make an impact on each individual who took the liberty to hand me their contact information, and not to mention those of whom I actually requested that they hand over their contact information so that I could, you guessed it - contact them.

What should I do?

Do I handcraft a response about what I can do for them? Nah, that’s bound to get too big before it even gets going. I’m thinking I should create an engine that’s threefold:  generates ideas, serves as a resource and keeps the dialog going between me and the the potentially Bizucated masses. In that order, I could make a huge difference. As a coach, I teach customers how to grow their customers’ businesses. Technically, it’s my duty to pass on what I know and I like to think that by passing on what I’ve learned, I’m creating the possibility of my customers being the best at what they do. Which takes me to my next point, my knowledge is only as good as the action that follows.

Over the years, I’ve learned that everyone, no matter what business they’re in, struggles with time management, keeping up the pace and just plain old getting things done. What if there was a reliable source that kept us on the up and up about how to overcome these challenges. A resource that my contacts could count on. A resource that would help me, help my contacts, help themselves.

I find that the clients who prevail are the ones who apply what they’ve learned and actually do the work. I’m doing the work by getting the business and writing and delivering the presentations and completing the consulting projects. Now, I’m ready to take it a step further. It’s time to create a system that’s going to serve as a resource for everyone that I come in contact with. How much greater would our community be if all of us were committed to making an impact on everyone who trusted us enough to hand over their business cards?

Maybe this would be a good spot in this posting to reveal the new service I have in mind, maybe revealing it here would be premature…I guess the major question/revelation for me would be ‘why am I doing this?’

As I take the next step in Bizucating my contacts, I‘d like to thank you for giving me the time and the space that I needed to realize the vision of the next dimension at Bizucate. If you've got some ideas you'd like to share, let me know. Stay tuned.

Keep the learning going, pass it on.

~Peter