While January’s focus was on time management and productivity, February’s focus is on getting out of the feast vs famine cycle with various forms of marketing.

With it being the beginning of a new year, there is no surprise that my primary focus for the month is to get organized

Time management and productivity are at the top of my list – and for all the right reasons… after all, we’re already half-way through the first month of the year, and I am only now posting this month’s goals!

As with any New Year, comes a new set of resolutions! Creating goals and milestones are essential to to the success of any business. However as New Year’s resolutions go, while you want to set your sights high, it’s often easy to fall into the trap of creating too many unrealistic goals for oneself.

As part of the “Just Three Things” series, I’ve decided to limit my own New Year’s resolutions to just 3 major areas. Yes, they each have their own set of baby steps to take in order to achieve each task, but my theme for this year is to keep it in “threes”

2008 was a fantastic year for me, and I hope that 2009 will be that much better! So without further ado, below are the “three things” that I hope to achieve this year…

This post is part of the “Just Three Things” series…

There is nothing like putting your goals “out there” for others to see. It brings your intentions to a whole new level. After all, you don’t really want to announce to the world that you’re going to do something, and then fall through on it!

Learn more about the concept, and join in! And without further ado, here are my three things for December 2008.

This post is part of the “Just Three Things” series…

As freelancers and small business owners, we all have an endless to do list. Whether it’s written down, or is running around in the back of our minds and keeping us up at night – there are things we want and need to do to take our businesses to the next level.

Learn more about the concept, and join in! And without further ado, here are my three things for November 2008.

There is something to be said for setting goals and holding yourself accountable for reaching those goals.

I’m just about five months in after having reached my dream of taking the freelance plunge in June 2008. There was an incredible set of steps I had to take in order to reach this goal. But just because I’m here now, doesn’t mean the journey is over.

The ultimate goal now is to improve upon my business and make it as successful as possible. With this comes an an endless to do list that often gets pushed aside by client work, writing proposals, and all the other administrative aspects of running your own company.

Welcome to the “other side” LOL – the 2nd half of the Get Clients Now! 28 Day Marketing Program aimed at Filling the Pipeline.

Last week was a good week for me, however I’m really seeing how much WORK marketing really is! I admit my daily scores are not as high as I would have liked. Lack of time is something that continues to surprise me, now that I’ve taken the freelance plunge and have so much more time to spend on marketing efforts…

However, I’ve always had a problem with putting client work ahead of my own – and even now working for myself full time, I’m still putting my clients first. This is great for customer service, of course! And fantastic for meeting (and exceeding) my client deadlines… but not so great as far as marketing goes.

Here we are at the 2nd week of the Get Clients Now! 28 Day Marketing Program aimed at Filling the Pipeline. I hope everyone had a productive first week!

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my Success Ingredient items (specifically Networking Venues). I’m seeing a huge difference this time around as far as being able to spend MUCH more time on the program specifics… maybe a little TOO much time, LOL, but good none-the-less.

Success Ingredients – Week 1

I seem to be putting off the Description of Services (repeat of last month…) this time in favor of the Networking Venues. I’ve done a great deal of work in this area, updating some of my unused social media profiles, and setting up a lot of new ones. I’ve got a post on social media in the works for later this week where I’ll link to all of my profiles…

1. Networking Venues – Progress: 75%
   by July 4, 2008 – Swaped this with Description of Services
2. Description of Services – Progress: 90%
   by July 11, 2008 – Swaped this with Networking Venues
   
3. Web Promotion Strategy – Progress: 10%
   by July 18, 2008

   I mentioned last week that I’m reading Itty Biz’s new eBook:
   SEO School: How to Become an SEO Ninja to help with this Success Ingredient. If you haven’t bought the eBook yet – today’s the last chance for you to get the $9 discount – so consider getting it at the discounted rate today!

   Get $9 OFF until July 1st with the Discount Code: MovingDay

Daily / Weekly Actions – Week 1

I did great last week as far as accomplishing items from my daily / weekly action list. I’ve been able to spend SO much time focusing on my marketing efforts, since taking the “freelance plunge” in order to run my business full time.

• Total (# of 10)
  7 – 9 – 8 – 8 – 7

Program Goal – Week 1

I’m off to a slow start as far as reaching my program goals, but I’m only 1 week into this program, so I expect this will pick up.

On the new client front – I now have new work from an existing client, and am wondering whether or not I should include that in the New Client count?

It generally does take less work to get new work from an existing client, however there is still work involved, which is why I’m considering including this in my Program Goal Progress. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter!

I’m on the verge of adding a NEW client to the list, but have to wait for the paperwork to come in before I can count this as official.

• Program Goal
  20 new prospects / 4 new clients
• My Progress
  10% – 2 new prospects / 0% – 0 new clients

How Was Your First Week? And A Question…

I’m anxious to see how everyone last week! Please leave a comment below and let us know about your progress. Are there any specific challenges you have been facing with the program?

And a specific question: What are your thoughts as far as including New work from an Old client in your “New Client” list?

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For those of you who have been following along with the Get Clients Now! posts, you know that I’ve just started a 2nd program this weekend.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, please see the Intro Post on the series – basically, I’m making myself accountable for my marketing efforts by publicly posting my goals and progress on the program found in the book Get Clients Now! A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants, and Coaches by C.J. Hayden

This Month’s Focus

Get Clients Now focuses on the Four Stages of the Universal Marketing Cycle:

• Filling the Pipeline
• Following Up
• Getting Presentations
• Closing Sales

Although my first program focused on Filling the Pipeline. At the risk of being repetitive, I’ve decided to focus this program on on Filling the Pipeline again.

I’m doing this because primarily, with my last program, I was still juggling both a full time day job while running my business part time (approximately 20-30 hours a week on nights and weekends). With only 4-5 hours a day to spend on my business, it just wasn’t realistic for me to dedicate 1-2 hours a day of that time on marketing. So my marketing efforts were often put on the back burner.

This time will be different! I’ve just finished up my first week running my business full time (I recently took the freelance plunge, and am LOVING that I can spend so much time focusing on my business and my clients, etc.) Last week was amazing to say the least – I got so much accomplished, and really do have to wonder how I managed before. I still have so much to do (both in house projects, as well as client work).

Anyway, my last program was hugely successful, despite the fact that I was only able to spend about half of the time that I wanted to on my marketing efforts. This time around, I will be able to dedicate the proper amount of time and effort to the program, and I’m very excited about the potential that will bring.

So, without further ado, let’s begin the program!

Action Worksheet – My Program Goals and How I Will Obtain Them

Below are my program goals for my second Get Clients Now! program. If you are joining along, you can download the FREE marketing plan worksheets from the Get Clients Now web site.

Although I’m working on Filling the Pipeline again, the book has so many suggestions, that I will be varying my program specifics greatly this time. Yes, some elements are the same, but there are some new ones thrown in as well. I’m also doubling my program goals from the last time.

Start Date

• June 21, 2008

What strategies will you use?

• Networking and Referral Building
• Writing and Publicity
• Advertising

Where are you stuck or what needs the most work?

• Filling the Pipeline

How much business do you have now?

• $X,XXX / month
  Yes, I’m still keeping the dollar amounts private
  

How much business do you really want?

• $X,XXX / month x 2
  I’d like to double my monthly business income

What would that get you?

• Enough of a monthly income to not only replace my old paycheck, but to save up for a new computer, as well.

What is your program goal?

• 20 new prospects / 4 new clients

What will be your reward?

• New office/computer/organizational supplies
  $50 maximum
  

Success Ingredients

1. Description of Services
   I got a big head start last month, but still have some finalizing to do. I also want to re-structure my shopping cart so the services are listed in a more user friendly format. As-is now, it’s more suited to other internet professionals who know exactly what they need. I’d like to put together more packages that would be better suited to web newbies.
   by July 4, 2008
2. Networking Venues
   Something else I got a head start on last month, but need to finalize. I’d like to narrow down which social media sites I plan to utilize the most, maximize my profiles on these sites – and start using them!
   by July 11, 2008
3. Web Promotion Strategy
   This might involve some paid advertising, but my primary goal here is to work on Search Engine Optimization. By the end of the month I want to narrow down a few sets of keywords and keyphrases that I plan to target, update my search engine optimization techniques, and re-submit my site to the search engines.
   by July 18, 2008

   By the way – as part of my web promotion strategy, I’ll be reading Itty Biz’s new eBook: SEO School: How to Become an SEO Ninja. If you like Naomi’s writing style on her blog, you’ll love it in her first eBook – it definitely does NOT feel like school. If you decide you want a copy, you can get $9 OFF until July 1st with the Discount Code: MovingDay

Daily / Weekly Actions

1. Daily: Spend 1 hour on my Success Ingredient Projects each day
2. Daily: Post 2 blog comments each day
3. Daily: Make 2 message board posts each day
4. Daily: Post 1 Q/A Answer each day
5. Weekly: Post 1 Q/A Question each week
6. Weekly: Publish 2 posts on my blog each week
7. Weekly: Make 1 new community contact each week
8. Weekly: Select / maximize 2 social media profiles each week
9. Weekly: Find 1 new place to submit my web site to each week
10. Daily: Plan my day each morning (or the night before)

Special Permission

• I Deserve to be Successful!

A Few Changes

Now that I have 40 hours a week to spend on my business, I’ll be putting a big focus on my marketing efforts. This time around, my goal is to accomplish at least 7-8 daily/weekly actions every day (I had some much lower numbers last time around).

One thing that I found mis-leading about scoring your daily/weekly actions is that C.J. Hayden suggests giving yourself a Y for weekly items that you might not have done on a given day, as long as you had not planned on working on it. I find that to be misleading, because I could just not plan on an item all week, and give myself five Y’s. Some days my scores were elevated because of the freebie Y’s this method gave me.

I’m going to try to be more accurate this time, and only give myself a Y for items that I actually completed. Yes, that means I’ll get some N’s because I have several weekly items that I don’t need to complete on a daily basis. I feel this will be a much more accurate representation of my true marketing efforts, though.

Care to Join Me?

I received some interest from the last program – and I see a few sales of the book in my Amazon Affiliate account, so I’m hoping that means there are more of you out there ready to join me in this round. As you’ve seen from my first program, the book has great suggestions, and I saw great results!

So, if your doing a program, I hope you’ll join along and help create some accountability for yourself! If you just started on Saturday, great! Please post your program goals and daily/weekly actions, etc. below. If you started recently (say a week or two ago) then you’ll be a bit ahead of me, but please feel free to post your program information from your first week, etc. You’ll actually be ahead of the game, but can post your progress from the relevant week.

Good luck to everyone! I hope this is a very successful month for us all!

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Can you believe it’s already been 4 weeks? Time has gone so quickly, and we’re finally at the end of the first Get Clients Now! 28 Day Marketing Program program!

I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone did. Overall, I’m very happy with my progress! I admit that it’s been difficult for me to get as many weekly and daily actions completed as I would have liked. Up until just last week, I was juggling both a full time job, as well as running this business on nights and weekends.

If you didn’t read my big announcement post, however – I finally took the freelance plunge last Friday!

I’m really looking forward to starting a second GCN program, because I will finally be able to devote the proper amount of time to my marketing efforts.

Success Ingredients – Week 4

Unfortunately, last week was such a whirlwind for me that I did not make a lot of progress on my Success Ingredients. Something that I will definitely be concentrating on the next round.

It is such a difficult habit to break, as far as pushing your own work behind that of clients. Something that I made big improvement on this last month, however I know I can still stand for much improvement here.

1. Description of Services – Progress: 90%
   by May 30, 2008
   Missed deadline – Still In Progress
   
2. Networking Venues – Progress: 60%
   by June 6, 2008
   Missed deadline – Still In Progress
3. Blog Concept / Topics – Progress: 50%
   by June 13, 2008
   Missed deadline – Still In Progress

I’ve done best with the Description of Services – I actually have everything written up, but still have to add my new services to my main business web site. There are also several changes that I want to make to the shopping cart – basically a re-organization of services and categories, etc. that will make the cart more user friendly.

All of this is on my schedule for the week, so Description of Services should NOT be one of the items on my Success Ingredient list for the next GCN program. This is my last ditch procrastination effort, LOL. Obviously it is an extremely important item – time to start putting myself first for a change, though, so I have several blocks of time set aside this week for completing this item.

As far as Blog Concepts and Networking Venues are concerned – I’ve done quite a bit here. I have a tentative blog schedule created for the next month. I gave myself such a low percentage score, however, because there were several blog posts that I had intended to write, and they are still sitting incomplete in my Drafts folder. Yet another example of putting your own marketing efforts last (which C.J. Hayden stresses in the book that you should always make marketing the First thing that you do!)

On the Networking Venues, I’ve joined several new social media outlets this month, including Plurk which is the “new Twitter” LOL. My goals for the next program include really taking a good look at all the services I’m setup with – narrowing down which ones I feel will be most beneficial to me, and really start using them to their full potential!

Daily / Weekly Actions – Week 4

My daily actions were about average this week – some good/ok days, and a couple poor days in there as well. Several of the higher scores were again to do with C.J. Hayden’s suggestion of giving yourself a Y for an item as long as it wasn’t on your to do list for that particular day.

Overall, throughout this program, I feel my daily/weekly scores could have been a bit higher. Definitely something to improve upon next time around!

• Total (# of 10)
  8 – 5 – 7 – 7 – 6

Program Goal – Week 4

As for the most important part of the program – the final program goal numbers, I’d say Get Clients Now! definitely delivers! Throughout the entire program, I’ve been doing great with bringing in new prospects – in 4 weeks, I’ve received inquiries from 16 new people! If that doesn’t count as Filling the Pipeline, I don’t know what does!

As of last week, I didn’t think I’d reach my “new clients” goal, but some good Karma (no, not the Plurk kind, LOL) must have come back at me, because I signed 2 more clients last week, with a definite yes from a 3rd (just waiting for the final paperwork to come through to make it official – I’m counting it here, though, because all of the hard work of working with this potential client was done during my GCN program).

• Program Goal
  10 new prospects / 2 new clients
• My Progress
  160% – 16 new prospects / 200% – 4 new clients

How Did Your GCN Program Go?

Now I want to know how YOU did? Did you enjoy the book? Was your first GCN program successful? Would you recommend it to other small business owners?

I definitely enjoy and recommend the book (look at my program goals above – numbers don’t lie, LOL).

If you’d like to give Get Clients Now! a shot, I’ll be starting a second program on Saturday. I’m actually on the fence as to whether I should do another Filling the Pipeline program, or if I should move onto Following Up. I think I could greatly benefit from a different stage of the Universal Marketing Cycle:

• Filling the Pipeline
• Following Up
• Getting Presentations
• Closing Sales

However, now that I will actually have TIME to market myself properly, I am very curious to see how the program will go for me if I spend the proper amount of time on my Daily / Weekly Action Items for the Filling the Pipeline program.

Needless to say, I’ll be reading up on the Following Up information, and will make my final decision by the end of the week. I hope you’ll join along!

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