A dad's advice to himself and his kids.

Ok, this isn’t any “writerly” stuff or “sales big balls” stuff that I favor.  This is me, putting my head down to get caught up.  This week was a good one for me.  I probably doubled my capacity to do work, if not more so.

How?

Well, partnering?  Partly, sure.

Outsourcing?  That too.

I had a problem: selling created some work I hated.  I love blogging.  I love helping people.  I love the premise of self publishing.  I built a business on it, and I connected with friends because of it.  I believe.  I love.  I lead by example.

That said,  it’s still tedious as hell to do a blog setup.  Fantastico, wait.  Plugin, wait.  Analytics.  Wait.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Feeds, details.  Crap I’m not good at.  Server issues.  I want to talk to people dammit, not be a pale geek working on DNS issues at 4am.

So, selling was creating a problem for me: namely this: I had to do stuff I didn’t like on a regular basis.  Every sale came with $750 (good) and then massive issues: having to do a chore that I couldn’t stand.  I like selling.  I like causing blogs to get delievered, but like a petulant child, I couldn’t bring myself to eat my lima beans.

And my customers, with high hopes, they suffered.  My customers got harmed because I was not doing my job right.  Work piled up, choking out my bandwidth.  And I couldn’t do the fun things because I always had doom and dread surrounding me.  I can sell people–left and right.   I couldn’t sell with confidence because I was unable to deliver.  I knew it, it eroded my confidence, my ability to wake up with enthusiasm to sell.  It got me off kilter on my projects large and small, and burnout came in.  I was testy about this stuff, and I didn’t build the rest of my business.

Plus, every blog was reinventing the wheel.  I took in a bunch of blogs about 3 weeks ago.  I got jammed up, refunded yet more money.  I got behind on fun little projects. I got behind and surly on delivering my freelancer battleplan.

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So I fixed it.  First, I took control of my GTD.  Did a good job with it.  Second, I decided that I needed to start doing things correctly. That I needed to start making this thing a business, and that I was in too many loops.  So, Johnny B. Truant, erstwhile devil that he is, said, “Hey, WordPress?  Johnson, WTF are you hemming and hawing on that.  Pay me a few bones and it’s out of your hair.”

OKAYfine.  I say, “but we gotta define what it means to “install wordpress”

We did that.  In true, analyical fashion, we have the plugins winnowed down, what the “Hard parts” are.

Now, I can sell & host blogs without dread.  I have a worldbeater behind me.  I can now focus on making them all the best.  I have the ball, and I want the ball.  Selling now doesn’t have extra tedium, and I can afford to offer more to my customers because my “headache” is gone.

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So, that means:  http://smallbizblogfacts.com will have nothing but how to blog for a LOCAL business wanting REAL LIVE CUSTOMERS that swipe their AMEXES.     That’s project #1, and I’ll focus on it, cause it’s where I get new people to help.

The next one is getting “GenuineChris.Com” upgraded.  It will be my portal, my main site, a “jump in” point for people to get on my lists, and get what I do.  Not that anyone “gets” what I do.  I’m going for the big time, before I run outta time.  I’ve got eyez on me.

I can more or less define my “core” services: sales pages, Social Media Setups, Search Engine Tune Ups, bulk blog writing, auto-responder writing, blog strategy, setups of DAP.  I can create then a menu and a coherent sales process that gives people access, explains what it is, and then get good people to handle fulfillment.  This is what I want.  I am–at heart–a salesperson.  I love to help people.  It’s what I excel at.  I can create a strategy, and I can have really good people (that don’t dig the sales stuff) do the rest.  My customers are the biggest winners here.   Why didn’t I do this before?

I’ll name out my services that I want to sell, and automate where possible.

And, there’s no fixed overhead.  It’s piecemeal.  That’s the beauty.  I have good people–REALLY good people–backing me up.  (Like, world class, you would not-believe-it-if-I-told-you people).  I can now be free to sell, at velocity.

After that project will be the finalization of http://freelancerbattleplan.com.  I’m 2 weeks late.  But this time, I mean it.  I’m gooood to go with it.  Pumped, stoked, and ready.  I’m just learning too much from Teaching Sells to mess with it.

So, this week was a life changer.  Light on new sales, I got 3 big projects 100% done, leaving me with 4 more to finish.  This project, though, that I did with Johnny B Truant is going to pay major dividends, soon.   I am now free to do what I’m good at.

You will indeed here more of me this week.