Michael Wilding

Category: Motivation

  • And God Said Thou Shalt…

    And God Said Thou Shalt…

    Focus on the things that matter.

    I was sitting in a hotel in Barcelona. I’d been there three days and it was supposed to be a holiday. My mum was at a conference there and I’d flown out to spend some time with her.

    What had actually happened was that I was working my ass off.

    Everything was going wrong and I was getting that feeling of panic when you know your drowning.

    Two days in, over dinner, I was chatting with my mum and I said that I couldn’t do this anymore. It just wasn’t worth it.

    I was stressed, exhausted and was fighting to control the urge not to scream.

    Seriously, I was considering shutting up shop to go and teach scuba diving.

    But my mum did what mums do best… gave me a big glass of wine and then started talking.

    And we talked and talked and talked.

    Damn that was cathartic. Sometimes you just need somebody to talk to. Someone who you can discuss problems, ideas and things you’re struggling with.

    Because saying them to yourself, or in your head just doesn’t do the same job.

    So what did I do?

    I made a list of every job I was doing at that time.

    Then I did the same for everyone who worked for me.

    On my own I was doing, or attempting to do, ninety seven jobs.

    WTF!

    That’s impossible.

    No wonder I felt like shit.

    I removed every single job that didn’t directly add to the revenue or took more time to do than was worthwhile for the revenue it generated.

    The result?

    I ended up with four jobs a day.

    From ninety seven to four in one fell swoop.

    Then I did this for every job that each of our staff were doing.

    I’ve got be honest it was scary. I had no idea how it would affect my business. All I knew was that I couldn’t go on the way I was.

    Six months later I’d doubled my business and slashed my working hours to less than part-time.

    The lesson… only focus on the things that matter.

    Michael

    P.S. I’ve been invited onto a well-known podcast in May, I’ll let you know when it’s published so you can check it out.

    P.P.S. Get the ultimate autoresponder software here.

  • Let’s knock this out the park!

    Let’s knock this out the park!

    I’m all tanked up on caffeine right now, just before I begin a 200 mile drive to see Holly’s cousins.

    For those of you who live in big countries, 200 miles in the UK is a looooong way. To put it in perspective…

    If you were to drive the entire length of the UK it’s 837 miles. So driving 200 miles to see cousins, is a quarter of the entire country!

    Anyhoo…

    In my caffeine addled state I decided I’d knock out answers to a bunch of questions I’ve received recently.

    First Question…

    QUESTION: If you could only give one piece of advice on how to be successful online, what would it be?

    MICHAEL: You’ve got to take action. I’m part of a few groups on Facebook, I very rarely contribute because most of the people in those groups don’t want success. They want to fail. The reason you see them asking the same thing time and time again is because they don’t take action.

    If they took action then they wouldn’t have to ask the same questions because they’d be like… I tried this but found X, Y and Z. I’ve now been trying to do Q and it’s not quite what I want. What would you recommend.

    That’s the kinda message you’d expect from someone who’d actually taken some of the sage advice given by people, applied it, found it doesn’t quite work for them, tried changing it slightly and is now asking for help.

    Which is okily dokily.

    Happy to give advice and help.

    When the same question gets asked that was asked yesterday, the day before, the day before that etc… I’m not going to bother to reply because you’ve clearly not taken action on anything, you’re probably not going to, and I’m not going to waste my time replying to you.

    I could be doing something important, like spending time with my family.

    So… just one piece of advice. Take action. Doesn’t matter what route you’re taking your business, just take it there, make mistakes and then ask for help.

    Okay, next one.

    QUESTION: What’s the best way to make money online?

    MICHAEL: This question always makes me laugh. The best way to make money online? Sell shit. Honestly it doesn’t matter how you sell it, you just need to do it.

    I’m gobsmacked by the amount of people who ask me why they’re not making any money and when I ask them what products they’re selling, they say they’re not selling one because they don’t want to ruin their list.

    If you’re not selling anything… how the heck do you expect to make any money!

    My personal preference is to use email marketing. In fact 99% of all my business is email marketing. It’s simple, easy to grow, makes a huge ROI and… emails are fun to write.

    Time for just one more…

    QUESTION: What’s the most important thing that you’ve learned in your time online?

    MICHAEL: It’s not about making a shed load of cash. Yeah, that’s nice. But the only reason you should be getting into this business is to make you time rich.

    If you want to take control of your life, free up your time so you can spend it with friends and family, travelling, playing golf or whatever the hell you enjoy, then the internet marketing lifestyle is for you.

    Keep focused on that and whenever you’re going to starts something new ask yourself… how much time is this going to take? How much revenue do I expect it to make? Is it worth giving up that much time of that money?

    Having enough money to be comfortable and being time rich is far more satisfying and life-fulfilling than being mega-rich and not having a second to spare. I’ve tried that route. It’s tiring, depressing and lonely. Don’t bother.

    Make sure your business model is simple and effective. Heck… all you need is a landing page, an autoresponder to send emails from and something to write about. Drive traffic to the landing page, get email leads, send them newsletters with information and products they may be interested in.

    That business can make you well into six figures and take you just a few hours a day, or even less.

    And if you want to do that, here’s a thirty day trial to the autoresponder I use.

    https://michaelwilding.com/recommends/?id=aweber

    Right, I’d better be getting into the car before my caffeine high fades.

    Ciao,

    Michael

  • My bad… I forgot this!

    My bad… I forgot this!

    I got a sharp reminder yesterday that I’d forgotten to send you the details of my daily routine.

    I’m sorry, I’ve got so much I want to share with you that sometimes I lose track. Doesn’t happen often, but it did yesterday.

    But all’s well, because…

    I’m going to share it with you now 🙂

    My alarm goes off at 7am every morning and I usually get up about 7:30am or 7:45am. I’m incapable of getting out of bed when the alarm goes off so I’ve given up trying.

    I have a quick shower, head to the kitchen to make a coffee and then crack open the laptop by 8am.

    Whatever happens I try to be working by 8am.

    At this point everything is turned off. I’m not on Skype, emails aren’t being forwarded to me, no push notifications and I put my phone into Airplane mode so I’m literally uncontactable.

    (except by Holly, who knows I’ll get grumpy if she interrupts me when I’m in the flow)

    All good so far…

    I pull up my sticky note list, which I always make the night before with real pen and paper. My first job  is always the next days emails. That’s because whatever happens these must go out, so I get them done first in case there’s an emergency.

    Usually I have at least three emails to write, but sometimes it could be five or six.

    However many I have to do, it’s very rare that these aren’t done by 8:30am, I already know what I’m going to write about and it’s written on my sticky note the day before, and I can move on to the next task…

    Scheduling blog posts, loading images etc… usually I only have a couple of these a day now as I have someone to help me with the rest.

    I might even ask him to do these soon, and I know he’s reading so he’d better watch out 😉

    With those published it’s on to social media where I schedule a bunch of comments.

    That’s the regular day-to-day stuff that I need to do and all of this is done by 9:15am, so I take a 15 minute break.

    Next I take ninety minutes to catch up with our development team and work on bugs and our new products.

    I’ll log on to Skype to do this, but stay invisible and will only speak to the developers, nobody else.

    It’s 11am now and time for some breakfast. I usually have a cup of tea and something to eat with Holly.

    The rest of the day… well it’s mine to do with as I please.

    Personally I spend a few hours working with my consulting clients and doing some other bits and pieces, then spend the afternoon doing… whatever the hell it is I fancy!

    Following this, I do more than most people fit into an entire day in just four hours.

    There’s no tricks, secrets or magic. It’s a simple structure and the most important parts are to stop interruptions, focus on a single task at a time and not attempting to do too much in a day.

    Simple.

    Michael

  • I’ve Got A Favour To Ask

    I’ve Got A Favour To Ask

    In a minute I’m going to tell you how I structure my day to get all my work done in just a few hours.

    That’s right, I run a six-figure business in just a few hours a day. But it didn’t used to be like that. I was spending every waking hour working, and often I would only get three or four hours sleep.

    It took a lot of trialling to discover a way that worked for me.

    But more on that in a second.

    First of all I’d like to ask you a favour…

    If you enjoy reading these emails then please let others know about them. I’ve crafted a nifty little button which you can press below to share this newsletter with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. All you need to do is hit that button.

     

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    And now that you’ve hit that button, which I’m sure you’ve done because you’re still reading which means your enjoying this email ;), let me explain what happened to me…

    Business was good. But I was spending about twenty hours a day, seven days a week running it. And I knew I was burning out.

    The problem… I wasn’t working smart.

    At the time I was in Barcelona and reckoned I had maybe a couple of months more left in me before I just collapsed. In reality it was probably more like a few weeks.

    Anyhoo… I knew something was wrong, and I knew I had to fix it. Fast.

    In the end it only took two things to go from there to doubling the business and working just a few hours a day.

    That makes it sound easy. However the journey to get there was anything but.

    What I’m about to share with you took me a lot of time to learn. It sounds simple when written down, but don’t underestimate its power.

    Use it or don’t use it. It doesn’t bother me. But this is what worked for me.

    First of all I implemented the 80/20 Pareto principle.

    This is simply that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your work. The theory can be applied to anything. Like 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers.

    Anyhoo… it was the fact that out of the twenty hours I was working, four of them (twenty percent) accounted for eighty percent of my business.

    I sat down, with a pencil and paper, and wrote down everything that I was doing each day. The list was insane. It took over two pages (double-sided) of A4.

    No wonder I felt like shite.

    Anything I was doing that didn’t directly make me revenue got crossed off. Anything that did directly make me revenue was circled.

    That left me with just 12% of the jobs I’d been doing. Only 12% of the work I was doing was directly making me revenue!

    Next I went through the jobs that I’d crossed off and marked any I thought were necessary for branding or the general business. That brought back in maybe another 12%.

    Most of the work I was doing was completely irrelevant. I was only doing it because it “made me feel” like I was running a big business.

    Heck, I don’t want to feel like that. I want to feel like I’m running a tiny business with no stress, but still make big money.

    All those jobs that weren’t directly generating me revenue had to be outsourced. If they couldn’t be outsourced then they were cut.

    Next, I got a routine that allowed me to work through the significantly decreased number of jobs I had to do in just a few hours.

    And this routine is crucial.

    But I’m gonna share that with you tomorrow.

    Right now, hit the buttons below to share this newsletter with your friends. Then keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow morning for the routine that allows me to do an entire days work in just a few hours.

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    Ciao

    Michael

  • How You Wasted 95 Days Last Year

    How You Wasted 95 Days Last Year

    On average people waste 95 days every year at work.

    That’s around 795 hours.

    Looking at it another way, last year you effectively threw away three months of your life doing meaningless crap.

    Which is 25% of the entire year!

    And it’s only getting worse.

    Let’s look at some figures. The average person…

    1. Receives 304 business emails a week
    2. Checks their email 36 times an hour
    3. Takes 16 minutes to re-focus after checking their email
    4. Spends 31 hours a month in meetings that result in nothing
    5. Only works for 3 minutes on a job before switching to another job
    6. Wastes 2 hours recovering from distractions each day
    7. Gets 56 interruptions during their working day

    Companies waste billions of dollars every year paying people to do nothing.

    That’s fine if those companies want to do it. But for your own business, you sure as hell don’t want to be wasting your time like that.

    The key to doing an entire days work in a few hours is… focus.

    First decide what time best suits you, morning, afternoon or evening. It doesn’t matter when but it’s best to stick to a similar time every day. For me it’s the morning, I like to get up, have a cup of tea in the garden and then work so everything’s done before lunch.

    But whatever works for you!

    Next, when you sit down you must turn everything off. And I mean everything.

    No emails or push notifications.

    No partners coming in to your workspace.

    No children distracting you.

    Absolutely nothing can break your concentration. 

    Now grab a post-it note and write down the things that MUST be done that day (I actually do this the day before). This should take no more than two or three minutes.

    You cannot fill more than one row on the post-it note, so be selective and only choose the most important things.

    Next… start working on item one, when you’ve finished take a five minute break but don’t allow yourself to be distracted. This is to make a coffee or stretch your legs, nothing more.

    Repeat this through all the jobs on your list.

    When you’ve finished you can turn on you emails, push-notifications and let the kids back in.

    This will allow you to do an entire days work by the time most people have got to the office, said hello to colleagues and made themselves a coffee.

    And once you’ve done it… you can do whatever the hell you want for the rest of the day.

    Try it, it will change your life.

    Michael

    P.S. Check out Rob Cornish’s incredible guide on how to shock your website visitor into buying from you.