I share tips and tools each week that I hope can help you do what you’re doing successfully. But II wanted to take some time out to ask you about you and what your needs are. I know as I’ve grown and Purpose Publishing right along with me, there is much that I’ve learned but so much more that I’ve needed help with. Whether it’s time to reinvent yourself and start maximizing your full potential. Let us know. We turned 11 years old this month. As a wonderful birthday present, we want to hear from you. Take this quick 7 question survey and help us help you.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VSTFBQ9

Take the survey and be entered in a drawing to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

To Our Success,
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MG

Productivity doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by preparation. I firmly believe it is fundamentally the result of your intelligent planning, drive for excellence, and steady efforts. I’d like to introduce to some and present to other one of my favorites ‘Go To Tools’, Evernote.

Evernote is like my second brain that helps me remember everything. It’s a reliable note-making app (and you all know how I love taking notes). But it also reinforces and keeps me organized and enables me to get more done. With Evernote, I capture, organize, and share notes from anywhere so that my very best ideas are always with me and synced. This is a must have tool for those of you writing books because every idea for a chapter, book title, funny story or thought. You won’t lose it and you’ve got a place to keep them all for you. I LOVE it!

I’m a Fan of these Evernote Best Features:

• Collect everything at one place and make it more accessible
• Scan and search information from business cards
• Add attachments, links, and audio recordings
  
  

What tool do you use that you can no longer live without? Tell me about. I want you to win.

To Your Success,
​
MG

​Small businesses often have an extremely constricted marketing budget to use, if at all. Often, this poses a challenge to promoting your business successfully. But that’s okay because today I’m sharing an uncommon marketing tactic that many big companies use to share their products and/or services. So, why not you?  There are plenty of ways for you to market yourself to your customers without spending any (or much) money. Let’s start with this one: Team up and Jump out!

Connect with a business related to your industry (but not a direct competitor) for a joint project. This can be done locally and offline through some kind of special event, or online (which could still be done locally) with a class, webinar or promotional giveaway.

Partnering with another business means twice as much notice and exposure. It also introduces each of you to a whole new audience related to your niche. It’s a win-win!

Industry partnerships are a great marketing tactics because they allow small business owner’s access to marketing know-how, technology, and customer bases that they could not have achieved on their own. You must put careful thought and effort in if you want to form a profitable partnership. Clarify expectations, engage with and vet different businesses, assess how you can work together, and have several conversations before making things official. But once it’s official and yielded good success, take a bow. You made a new colleague and garnered new business for yourself.

Do you want some examples or ideas? Reach out to us and share. We’re happy to give you some feedback and things to consider. We’re here to help you.

To Your Success,
​
MG

I recently thought about listening to the excellent NPR podcast episode a few years back. It was all about how Instagram got started.

Truly a remarkable story. Instagram Founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, launched the app in October 2010. By April 2012 only a year and a half later – Facebook acquired the service for $1B dollars! Yes, that’s right – a billion dollars!

Are you asking yourself? How could someone make a billion dollars in just a year and a half? That’s an incredible TRUE story!

I learned 6 success lessons from this story, and I’d like to share them with you. But I’m doing bite sized- so we can really dig in to this. Here’s the first 3 and I will come back next time with 3 more. Here they are:

1. Find untapped potential.

How do you make something people want? A good way is to find untapped potential, something that could be done but hasn’t been done yet.

For Instagram, the untapped potential was the power of cell phone cameras. In 2010, cell phone cameras had become good enough, comparable in quality to point-and-shoot cameras. But nobody up to that point had made it easy for people to share photos right from their cell phones. Other apps at that time required you to transfer photos to a computer first before uploading them.

The founders saw this untapped potential and decided to make the most of it. They made it easy for people to share photos right from their cell phones.

2. Meet emotional needs.

Finding untapped potential is vital, but it’s not enough. For people to really want what you have, you need to meet their emotional needs.

Instagram did it well. First, it meets social needs. Instagram makes it easy for people to share pics with their friends.

Second, it meets self-confidence needs. A pivotal moment in the story was when one of the founders realized it wasn’t enough just to help people share pics; the pics should make them feel good. So what did they do? They built filters right into the app so that users can polish their looks and photos before sharing.

3. Make something people want.

Making something people want is the key to success in business. You can only thrive if people want what you have. If they don’t, nothing in the world can give you success in the long term.

In the case of Instagram, people want to share their life stories in a visual way. Instagram is still winning today because it meets this desire better than most.

With the app meeting users’ social and emotional needs, it’s a no brainer people love Instagram.
 
Now think about yourself, what creative thing do you have or does your business product? Consider these 3 things as you begin to work on your next big endeavor. Then, come tell us about it. I can’t wait to hear what you’re doing next. Until Then.

To Your Success,
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MG

Productive members of society are the backbone of our world and our communities.
Individuals that make little or no contribution to society are an encumbrance to it. That said, all work and no play make Jane a dull girl as they, so there’s no plea to look down on people that want to have a little enjoyment in their lives.

However, productivity is critical to your work and success.

No matter if you are an employee or you’re self-employed, your level of productivity will determine how far you will go. It makes it easier to be productive when you like what you do, but no matter how much you love your work, sometimes you need an extra boost.

Here is 1 Quick Tip to boost your productivity at work.

Set a Schedule for Yourself with Time Blocks

Regular employees have work schedules, but that does not mean they are productive the whole time they are at work. I don’t have the data, but I’d bet there has been some increase to productivity with Work from Home situations. Let’s face it water cooler talk- seriously shut down, breakroom besties- that’s done and the casual chat at your colleagues’ desk for 7 minutes-it’s over!

Now, the self-employed are even in worse case, because they don’t have a regular schedule unless they set one they lived by. But often, that isn’t really the case. But a schedule provides structure to your day, and narrows down your choices on what you should do at any given time. I live by time blocks. Without them, I could literally spend my day in ‘Squirrel Mode’ and who can really get everything one like that.

An American psychologist named Barry Schwartz says in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, “choose less and feel better.” With too many choices, you feel unhappy and anxious, and tend to make bad or wrong decisions on what you should do based on emotions (how you are feeling).

Eliminate the pains of indecision by scheduling your tasks according to priority. What needs your attention now? Then, consider how much time you need to accomplish the task?  If you are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done, for example, you may be tempted to simply walk away from it and take too long getting back to it.

Scheduling your tasks helps you concentrate on one thing at a time. With this type of plan, before you know it, you’ve done everything you planned to do. Dice up a major project into lesser, more manageable blocks to avoid the feeling of overwhelm.
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Setting a schedule with realistic time blocks will also help you decide what you need to delegate, and when you should say no. I hope this tip helps you. If it does, drop me a note and let me know how. I’d love to hear from you.
 
To Your Success,

MG