In the business creation cycle, IT Arsenal’s specific “website setup” pitch has had it’s waters tested. Looking at April and May’s report, busy is good, but we’re all busy, how can you put busy to work for you? How can you spend time working on your business while you’re working in your business? (or just plain jammed for time) Re-purposing content is one way, and here are some tools and background on how to do it well.
Background Scene
- A messy thought process and lots of ideas and spent time on what to offer and how. “I could do this!”…
- Choosing one idea, tricking myself by saying I’ll change “modules every few months” to laser in and start small. Specificity works.
- Site updated and changed to reflect one idea. Newsletter now made sense to write based on one idea, and posts, and conversation, and much else.
- Ferociously seeking feedback, which creates action, vets issues, and acts like a lit match to things you’d only danced around before like actually using that newsletter you set up months ago, or streamlining a sales funnel, or writing an agreement template, or product outline.
What I’ve noticed also happens is that with the communication you open up for feedback, you get interested buyers and a few sales, but if your business is even a little service oriented, you also end up with a lot more trading time for money. You know my thoughts on trading time for money; it’s good, but it’s not the goal, raise rates and build product. <- I’m still training myself how to do that. Plus life is life, we’re busy. Don’t let busy stop you from progressing your ideas.
Have you had this happen?, you get bogged down with business related e-mail, support requests, friend and family asking favors of your skills, things that don’t directly impact profit, but are somewhat related to business and since they are, you’re excited.
As this has surged for me, and I struggle to keep up with the response time, wowing new clients, and still finding time to develop the next level of the business cycle, the value of re-purposing and capturing my actions became vital. I was constantly thinking, how is this going to help build a freedom enabling business in ADDITION to paying for rent and toys? I want time. Once I did that, I started taking some specific actions.
I see a lot of people, myself included getting stuck here with OK income, and more hours of work. Let’s not get stuck here. I’m already creeping out, join me, I know it takes work. Keep focusing on scaling, systems, automation, batching, and business. When it overwhelms, get away until you’re fresh. Read this article by Noah Kagan featured on Lifehacker while you do -> Stay Productive When Burned Out by Working on Indirectly Related Tasks
Leveraging Busyness
You do stuff every day in your job that someone other than the person your directly helping can benefit from. Seeing that as potential income is critical, envelope it into your mind.
Re-purposing content is the process of capturing what your doing, so you can re-package it and use it later, to save time, sell, or market. It’s a stellar way to make “busy” the new profitable, but how?
Tools
I’ll hold my tongue on further background, here’s what’s working. Implement as many of these as you can while your developing, try to always be capturing content to re-use later, start recognizing when you’re doing something useful. Go a step further and pre-plan that product idea first so you can keep a special “folder” or “bucket” for that content and when those “busy” times come you can gear discussion and content toward a profitable end.
Record Everything.
mobile screenshots
- surfing the web or viewing content that you need to capture? find out how to take a snapshot on your mobile. iPhone users, press the home and sleep button at the same time.
screencasts
- camtasia for pc, or screenflow for mac. or screenr.com for no software needed recording. if you’re doing any coaching or just solving a problem, record any actions you take on your computer. you or a virtual assistant can easily clean these up later to package, sell, or include with something else.
e-mails
- create a folder for any e-mails where you give out your advice, or expertise in anything.
phone calls
- record calls on specific topics where you lend your wisdom to someone else. name these something meaningful with a core topic to package later. google voice (article on using it for business) can do this, there are skype tools (ecamm is the best) for this, or you can simply use https://www.recordmycalls.com/ and set up an account to have them record your calls.
evernote
- evernote is my dual “bucket” and “capture tool” on your Android or iPhone, it’s invaluable. take a quick note, a video, an audio note….and it will sync to your computer for further filing away. i use evernote for my “on the spot” idea and action recording.
webinars
- you probably attend more of these than lead them, keep the recordings and ask permission to re-purpose them in your own products or on your own website. most people are glad to have their name put up somewhere else, and in today’s world, people are starting to remember where they got it, just as much as the original source, if not more. accessibility is everything.
live events
- take video, audio, or just written notes with the tools mentioned. even rough notes of a life event is valuable to someone who wanted to go, or was interested, but wouldn’t fly across the country.
Save in Buckets.
Dropbox (if you don’t know what this is, you should)
Flickr (snapshots go here, so I can easily post to other mediums or save)
folders (self explanatory)
drafts (blog, not e-mail)
*keep things out of e-mail, we have enough e-mail complexes
Re-publish.
Put what you’ve recorded to good use. Text, images, and video can be easily sent, modified, and made into downloadable links. You have little excuse.
- YouTube
- Slideshare (boosts backlinks to your website, possible traffic generator)
- Scribd (boosts backlinks to your website, possible traffic generator)
- Blog Posts (don’t want to put this on your main blog? start up a microblog to quickly stack this content)
- Product Content (this is key, re-use your wisdom, & advice, answers as a packaged product. “everything you wanted to know about X, the 10 most common questions about X, answered, what i’ve learned in 2 years about x”
- i’ve started doing this as mini packages with clients for quick but high value sales. i’ve recorded all my support actions using mailchimp for instance for one client, and then another client comes along with almost the same needs, and i am able to quickly create a package with all the materials needed for that second client. releasing this for the general public requires more on a salespage and system for sales, but in practice is the same and is working out well.
- Case Studies for E-mail list building
- Turn into PDF’s for downloads and E-mail list building or microsales
- File away for use with your next project, client, idea
- Salespages (others raw responses are gold for testimonials or real life examples)
- Membership programs (access to 20 videos, and 130 files about X, woah!)
- Listen and watch yourself. Reviewing your own content even a week later has a big impact on performance. This is how professional speakers, and athletes get better.
It’s so easy to capture what you are doing with today’s tech, you owe it to yourself to set up a system so you can come back and reap the benefits again and again.
Go hustle, and don’t get caught up in mediocrity because you are busy. Here if you need me.