Make Money Online

You may have 0 clients but you’ve got hunger

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To all those who started a business and haven’t got a client yet:

You may have 0 clients at the moment but you’ve got HUNGER!

You can give your clients way more value than a fancy established business that will charge them an arm and a leg for their generic “gold” service package.

You may only have one old MacBook Air and an iPhone SE but YOU will care about your client MORE than any established business out there with fancy offices.

Because you will be there to text them back on Whatsapp when the fancy business closes on Saturday.

Say that to the people you reach out to and have doubts about your ability to deliver value.

You’re hungry. That’s all you need to get your first clients.

The screenshot is from the book Mindset.

Kindness and smiles,
Angelos

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Entrepreneurship sucks but…

Angelos Georgakis St. Petersburg - Live Diversified

Hi guys,

I know you haven’t heard from me for a while.

The reason is I’ve been working hard on two courses, one on self-publishing and one on the Russian culture.

I’ve also been interviewing experts on various subjects you requested – learning, marketing, writing, self-development and more.

I’ll be publishing videos and new material soon so stay tuned!

I also wanted to share with you a few truths about my journey as an entrepreneur.

More than 3 years have passed since I gave up my investment banking job in London. I was an exciting decision but not an easy one.

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The Minimalistic Entrepreneur

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Being an entrepreneur is tough. Gary Vaynerchuk says that entrepreneurship sucks! Watch this video.

You quit your 9 to 5 job to build an online business to become your own boss, to work from home, to travel more. You are looking for more freedom and you end up in your own prison!

I guarantee entrepreneurship can get f***** overwhelming. I now work harder and longer than I used to work in investment banking.

Minimalism is not just the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur. It’s the only way to go as an entrepreneur. Here are my best tips and lessons I’ve learned going through a ton of bad days as Gary says.

Prioritise. Before you start doing any work in the morning ask yourself what the 2 -3 most important tasks are.

I don’t think that changing the theme on your wordpress site is your number 1 priority of the day (I changed my theme recently but I resisted doing it for a whole month as I had other priorities).

Look at your to-do list. Do the stuff that adds the most important value. Be damn strict with this!

Remember the 80/20 rule. 20% of the things you do are responsible for the 80% of your success. Focus on that 20%. Most of the time you know what is important but still you don’t do it. You fool yourself. Stop that! Reconsider your day-to-day priorities. I’m repeating myself, I know but it’s so important.  

Don’t check your inbox every five minutes. Set multiple alarm clocks at 11am and 4am every day to check your email. Check your email only twice a day. It wastes your time and it kills your focus and quality of your work. I’ll tell you more about this shortly.

Stop multitasking. Our brains are designed to focus on one thing at a time. MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller says that when people think that they multitask, in essence they switch from one task to another very rapidly. Read this article.

When we complete a tiny task (answering an email, sending a text message, posting a post on Facebook), we are hit with a dollop of dopamine, our reward hormone. Our brains are addicted to dopamine and we switch tasks quickly because that gives us lots of instant doses of gratification.

These instant gratifications make us feel that we accomplish a lot whereas in reality we don’t.

Multitasking reduces the quality and efficiency of our work. Organising thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information becomes more difficult.

A study at the University Of London also showed that people who multitask while performing cognitive tasks experience IQ drops. In fact, the IQ drops were similar to what you see in individuals who smoke cannabis or didn’t sleep the night before.

Multitasking has also been found to increase cortisol, the stress hormone. The rapid fire-ups of the brain leave us mentally exhausted very quickly even when the working day has barely started!

The biggest instigator of multitasking? Our inboxes. Some studies have shown that even when you have the possibility to multitask when you know for example that you have unread emails in your inbox can reduce your IQ by 10 points! For men, IQ drops can be even worse up to 15 points.

The constant thrill of having new bolded emails in our inbox keeps us distracted. A McKinsey Global Institute Study found that employees spend 28% of their time checking their inboxes.

Studies have also shown that the damage of multitasking in the long run can be permanent. MRI scans showed that people who multitask consistently show less brain density in the anterior cingulate. That’s the area responsible for empathy and emotional control.

So, stop multitasking now, check your email twice a day, put your phone in a silent mode and focus on the task at hand.

Don’t skip breaks. It’s tempting to skip breaks (and even lunch) when you have lots of work to do. However, research again has shown that those who take regular breaks are actually more productive than those who don’t. Sounds trivial again? It does. But we skip breaks (including myself of course) and we feel we’re working like a supernatural machines. Total illusion.

A great app to use is Pomodoro One. Pomodoro One has an alarm that goes off after a set interval. Then, it sounds an alarm and gives you a break from work. When the break’s over, it automatically starts timing your work again. You can use it on both Desktop and phone.

You don’t need business cards. It’s a waste of paper. I get angry when I see so many business cards on the streets. If someone wants to keep in touch with you, give them your telephone number, or your email. If they are really interested in you, they will contact you. I’m sure that the chances are higher that someone loses your contact when getting your business card rather than saving your number in their phone.

Unsubscribe. How many emails do you get that you don’t even read or open. When you first decide to declutter your inbox you may get overwhelmed. So, unsubscribe as new emails come in. Don’t try to do it all at once. You’ll drive yourself mad.

Delete the Facebook App from your iPhone. It’s unbelievable how much time we spend on Facebook. The best thing I’ve done in my life is deleting the Facebook App from my phone. Not only did I find inner peace staying away from the Facebook “blink-blink”, but I also solved the common problem of the iPhone battery! The Facebook app is probably the #1 energy monster app. OK, to be fair it’s not the app itself; it’s our addiction of checking Facebook on our phones.

Don’t check your sales every 5 minutes. As an entrepreneur you strive for every sale. You want to see your income increase. It’s your dream. You don’t want to go back to office job. You want your financial freedom like nothing else.

In the beginning, I was addicted to checking the sales every minute. How many more sales? I used to check sales on multiple sites every hour. I used to get up in the morning and check the sales in my computer with my eyes half-closed. All this checking takes so much time and as email checking kills your quality of work. All this checking adds zero value to your business. Dedicate every minute on how you can make your product better. Spend your time on that and only that. Check your sales once a week, or once in two weeks.

It’s the same with running a race. If you constantly look around you while you run to check on others, you lose focus. For those who run 100m even a thought can cost you the race.  

Launch it. then make it better. Have you heard of the concept of the Minimum Value Product (MVP)? Don’t wait to launch your product until it’s perfect! It will never be perfect. There will always be something more to do before you launch it. Create a product that adds value to the people. Gauge interest. Listen to the feedback. Your customers will tell you how you can make it better. Again I recommend some further reading here. What else? The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Outsource. I’ve said this again before. You can’t do everything on your own when you run a business. I know you can do this task very well yourself. And that task. And that task. I know it will take you just an hour. But it will be an hour that you could devote to something else that could add more value.

This is how Muller explains it: “Take the time to eliminate the pointless, the superfluous, the questionable. Then decide what you can hire out or delegate. Then focus on the work that only you can do, that you can do best, and that you can do for the most impact on your business.“

That’s all for now. This post is about the Minimalistic Entrepreneur. It shouldn’t get too long.

If this post gave you some good tips, can you share it now please? It will take you 5 sec.

Kindness and smiles,

Angelos

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Do you follow these blogging marketing strategies?

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Joe Pulizzi in the book Epic Content Marketing explains the secrets of creating a successful blog (Click here to for book info).

1) Encourage conversations.

2) Hang out on other blogs.

3) Loosen up. Express a personal opinion. Be authentic.

It’s essential to define well your audience.

4) Who will be your reader?

5) What are your reader’s needs?

6) What keywords is your reader searching for? Follow these using Google Alerts.

7) Do you contribute to the conversation on the places your readers hang out? Do you leave comments there?

8) You should have consistency. Can you commit yourself to publish an article twice a week? The worst thing you can do is to start and stop later.

9) Use killer titles. Controversial titles are also good. Make titles based on what people search on Google (Use Google Keyword Planner for this).

10) Don’t use too much bluff in your posts. Less is more. Remember: Edit Edit Edit before posting.

11) Each post should have a call to action. What do you want reader to do after they read your post? A call to action can be to download an ebook, to sign up to your newsletter, to follow your social media page, etc.

12) The blog post should be written in such a way so the content can be repackaged later to an ebook, a course, something more substantial. Plan ahead for that.

13) Guest post on other similar blogs. Choose the top 15 in your niche. Never turn down an opportunity to do a guest post.

14) Measure with Google Analytics. What are the most popular posts? Do people sign up? On what page?

15) Outsource. Most successful blogs outsource content. You can’t do everything on your own.

16) Refer people to good quality content that’s not yours. Always focus on adding value to your people.

What other strategies do you think are successful?

Leave a comment below!

Kindness and smiles,

Angelos

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Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

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Hi Divers,

I just finished reading Joe Pulizzi’s book Epic Content Marketing.

Do you want to increase traffic to your blog?

Do you want to increase sales of your product or service?

Do you want to build awareness of your brand?

Then this book is for you. 

Key Lessons

Customers don’t care about you. They care about themselves and their problems.

It’s not about you and your awesome product. It’s about them.

Stop selling to them.

Focus on their needs. Add value to them. Serve them.

Inform them, engage them, amuse them.

Make them more intelligent.

This is the only way to build trust. Once you build trust, selling becomes effortless.

Provide content that makes people stop and read what you have to say before you even think to sell anything to them.

Epic content is helpful, relevant, compelling, educational.

It’s not about finding customers, it’s about finding fanatic customers that will trust you 1000%.

Use storytelling. Storytelling shows why the brand exists. And that’s beyond any products or services.

You need to emotionally engage people. They have to see themselves in you.

The Six Principles of Epic Content Marketing

  1. Epic content needs to fill a need: Your content should answer some unmet need. It should solve a problem that people have. It should add value. Sometimes, it meets just an emotional need. Have a look at Coca-Cola’s or Red-bull’s storytelling. Another example now. Have you ever seen any of Gary Vaynerchuk’s videos? Their purpose is to make take action. To awake the giant inside you. The target straight to your emotional world.
  2. It communicates consistently: When you subscribe to a magazine, you expect your magazine to arrive to your door on time and as expected. The same holds with your content. Deliver consistently giving the best value as expected.
  3. It requires you to find your unique human voice: Be human. Be you. Don’t be a reporter. When people build a brand, they become a brand. They speak like a brand. People want to connect with you. Show emotions. Send your newsletter as if you were sending a text message to your friend.
  4. It expresses a point of view: Take a side on a matter. Don’t be afraid to have opinions. People will identify themselves with you because of your ideas and opinions. You can’t please everybody. What matters is not customers after all. It’s fanatic customers that will follow you no matter what.
  5. It is less about sales: “The more you talk about yourself, the less people will share and spread your story.”
  6. It is the best content in its niche out there: The ultimate goal is to provide content that people can’t find anywhere else. Though this sounds impossible in the beginning, the ultimate goal for you is to provide the best content out there that will position you at the top.

Do they above six points sound obvious? Yes, but who applies them to their marketing strategy?

It’s all about the brand. How cool we are. Why we are the best. What our product can for you. 

NO!!! 

Listen first. Then see how you can help and add value. Maybe sell later. They will buy from you. Why? Because they trust you.

Finally, Pulizzi says that epic content usually has some additional characteristics. It’s real time, fact-driven, efficient, visual and curated. Read here for more.

Really disruptive book. I learned a lot from it. Read it.

Kindness and smiles,

Angelos

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