How To Be More Efficient

It might feel like harder work at the time but there are several ways to become more efficient and when you have a big enough incentive to close your computer you get a lot more done!

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Clicks And Leads is a “tongue in cheek” digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.

Mentioned in the Vzine

On the blogs

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders: Chris Barrow
Vzine 060 | Marketing Versus Sales
Vzine 059 | Ethics In Business
Own It! 173 | Being Unbusy
Own It! 172 | Law of Attraction (Part 1)

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Hi, it’s Nicola here. Recording, I hope. I’ve got 15 minutes to do this, so I’ve really got to get organized. I’ve got to record the three sections, I’ve got to re-label them, get them uploaded to Google Drive so Phoebe can take them from there and Sarah can take them from there.

Today is a big day, we’re recording five Write Club podcast episodes, and I’ve also dashed off a marketing email. What else have I done this morning, I can’t remember what else. There must be more. Yeah, so, basically we batch-record them, because people come and go from here all the time, and it’s really nice if we want to catch everyone in on the podcast recordings, then we just get together for a day, and hash them out.

We’ve got a really, really strong organizer on the team, Stephanie, and she makes sure that we each know what we’re doing, what we’re talking about. There’s a different chairman every week, we’ve got a different guest every week. So, it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare, and she’s taken that over, thank goodness. That’s not my strength. I just have to concentrate on making sure we actually record each episode as we’re going.

So, I want to talk a bit more about how to make your life easier with doing things like that in the main section.

This week I suddenly had a mad burst of enthusiasm and decided to launch a 30-day challenge. I wanted to help people who were interested in the concept of being everywhere online, to know what to do every single day for thirty days, and I figured out that if they just followed my instructions, one simple instruction every day, then at the end of thirty days, they would end up with three to four great bits of content out there on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and all that stuff, and they would also end up with three to four podcast episodes.

They would now know how to make a podcast. So, I figured that was pretty cool. I put out the word on Facebook, Twitter, through my mailing list, on my blog, all the usual places. PushCrew, you know, which is a sort of SMS push notification, and I sent a message to everyone who subscribed to my chatbot on messenger, and we’ve got pretty much 40 people signed up already in just literally 24 hours.

It’s going to be quite lively one, if you’d like to join along, just come along to my Facebook page NicolaCairncrossUK, and you’ll see pinned to the top of that page, all the information you need to find out about the challenge, get involved, and sign up for it. So, yeah. Looking forward to seeing you in the private Facebook group for that.

It’s been quite a busy week this week. Mainly, characterized by nearly 24-hour power cut and the fridge man not coming for three days. So, that was quite funny. My fridge broke, my landlord and landlady supplied a replacement one while we tried to work out what was going on.

And then we called in the fridge man from Kalamata and he was supposed to come on Thursday, and I was thinking he’s going to turn up in the middle of the podcast recording, then I was thinking he was coming on Friday, and he was going to turn up in the middle of four recordings we were doing for the Own It! podcast where we were inviting guests, and listeners of the podcast on to talk about their main passionate topic, and then I thought he’d come on Saturday.

So, I just carried on as normal, and I was going out in the evening, so I finally went out at five, and went down to see one of my friends, and then we went to a taverna.

There I was, sitting in Melissa, and Stella, who’s a friend of ours, came over, and she said, Did you know the fridge man is at your house? And I said, no I didn’t know he was there. And she said, well, I’ve just been and let him in. Because she has a key. And, he’s fixing your fridge right now. And I thought, well that’s just typical, isn’t it. You’re waiting for three days, and they turn up just as you leave. It’s the same the world over.

Ah, yes, the power went off. It went off about eight o’clock one evening, just before I was about to cook my dinner, and it went off completely, everything went off, and I hadn’t charged my phone, my iPad, or my laptop recently, because I let them run down once a week, and that was the day.

So, I had to swiftly scrabble around for matches and candles, and there were lots of both, luckily. And then I just sat and read. I feel there was a bit of power left on my iPad, so I sat and read in my living room by candlelight off my iPad, and then I went to bed with a candelabra like they used to in the olden days, you know, with three candles on, and it was very turn of the last century, no, turn of the century before that, and read in bed, and it was perfectly adequate light, so that’s obviously how they used to manage in the olden days. In the olden days before Downton Abbey, that is.

So, I’ve moved out the back because it’s marginally quieter here. There’s something noisy going on up that road. Everybody here’s getting ready for the start of the season, which is in a couple of weeks time, actually, it’s Easter.

Easter comes a bit earlier in Greece than it does in England, and it’s sort of that weekend is the big one, really, for them, it’s bigger than Christmas, that’s for sure, lots and lots of families come home from all over the world to Greece for Easter.

So, yeah, I just want to talk to you about batching, because that’s what makes life so much easier.

Today, I’m going down to record five episodes of Own It! the podcast with the ladies, and we’ll literally press on through the whole day. We change chairman, which changes the energy of each episode, which is nice. And we get up and have regular breaks and things, but it’s the best way to do it because everybody lives all over the place.

And, the other thing is, I find when I’m doing this 30-day challenge, I recorded seven days worth of videos in one hour yesterday, because I wanted to get the first week done and dusted, and I wanted to make sure that I had a good proportion of it done in advance. So, I find that batching really easy.

The thing I don’t fine easy about batching is things like, naming conventions. So, saving every video with the same, sort of, string of letters and numbers is a bit of a challenge for me, not least because I’m number-dyslexic.

But I press on, and I try and plan it out before hand what I’m going to call things, and then I work out, you know, what numbers everything’s going to be. Sounds like such a simple thing, doesn’t it, but it’s the biggest challenge for me.

But, I would really encourage you to try and batch your content, and I find that working, set aside certain days for certain types of activity works really well as well, because you end up in your flow on that activity and you don’t, even if you get up for a cup of tea or coffee, you don’t end up breaking your concentration.

And your brain gets used to working a certain way that day, and it makes it really much easier to keep the concentration going, and then, if you swap to a different type of activity, say, you were doing admin on Mondays, and marketing on Fridays, and then you were delivering to your clients on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I definitely find it much easier.

So, I have all my things like client calls, and sales calls on Wednesday and Tuesday, client calls on Thursday, along with recording the podcast, because I find I get into a more contemplative state of mind when thinking about Own It! the podcast and recording Own It! the podcast, and I go straight from there to Clicks and Leads Academy calls and client calls afterwards.

So, batching is really good for being efficient, it’s really good for keeping concentration levels high, and it’s really good for staying in the flow of certain activities. So, think about what you could batch in your business and, as always, love to hear your comments underneath the video, whether you’re on YouTube, Facebook, or the blog, and, talk to you soon.

So, what’s on the blog and the podcast this week?

On the blog there’s obviously more information about my free 30-day challenge, so go over to NicolaCairncross.com/blog to find out more about that. On VZINE number 60 I’m talking about marketing vs. sales, and how important it is to get a really strong brand for your business, and have people think they know they can trust you. How to get people to feel like you’re talking directly to them when you’re talking to camera, like this, there’s one simple tip.

And, yeah, also, how impossible it is now to send cold traffic straight to a sales offer and expect it to convert. You really need to do some work in warming people up first to get, you know, building a relationship with them.

And on Own It! Episode 172, that’s ownitthepodcast.com/172 or you can come to NicolaCairncross.com/blog There’s a great big lorry going past now. Yeah, Own It! 172, we’re talking about the law of attraction part one, and the reason we called it part one is cause we’re going to be talking about it again in the future.

We were just talking about how we both came to realize, that the law of attraction isn’t a load of old hokey, but it’s actually a very important part of being a successful businessperson, because you really need to get into grips with how to control your mind, and I know I bang on about that a lot on this VZINE, but it is the one single thing that makes a difference, I believe that really, really strongly.

What you think about becomes real.

Yep, so that’s what’s on the blog and the podcast this week. So, Write Club the Podcast, don’t forget to go and check that out if you’re a reader or a writer. WriteClubThePodcast.com will take you straight there. So, thanks very much for joining me this week, and, as always if you’d like to make a comment on the blog, YouTube, or Facebook, it’s down below, just use the comments section. I would really love to hear from you.

Find out more about Nicola’s Clicks And Leads Academy and get the help you need to start your online business today

Creative Direction & Video Editing
Phoebe Soremekun

Intro Music
Pool Cosby

Incidental Music
NELZEN – Chicago To Compton
NELZEN – Translucent Groove
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Drone footage of The Mani
Georgios Ser-Aouas

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