Category: Uncategorized

What Caroling Taught Me About Living My Values

All year, I look forward to caroling with my family and our church group. It’s a cherished tradition that connects me to my faith, my community, and a musical tradition passed down from generation to generation.

This year, controversy struck—and from the unlikeliest of sources. While rehearsing the hymn “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming,” it occurred to me that the line “she bore to men a savior” (referring, of course, to the Mary and the birth of Jesus) could easily be changed to “she bore to all a savior” without losing either its musicality or its meaning.

Some of my fellow carolers disagreed. They pointed out that Michael Praetorius created the harmony to “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (which was translated to “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming”)  around 1600, when “men” was often used to refer to everyone.  Taking the hymn in the context of its time, “she bore to men a savior” was a universal declaration. In fact, the translation we most commonly use is from Theodore Baker (1894), but the universality of “men” still applies.

But we are no longer in the 17th or even the 19th century. Times have changed, and so has the way we use language. If Michael Praetorius (or Theodore Baker) were to write (translate) “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming” today, he wouldn’t have used the word “men” to mean “everyone” for the simple reason that it no longer does!

What would Michael Praetorius or Theodore Baker think? Well I, for one, think both would be on board with my proposed revision. The point of the lyric is to convey a message. In order for that point to be interpreted properly by listeners, the correct word is no longer “men,” but “all.” By changing the word, we actually more clearly convey the message of the song: that Christ has been born for all humankind.

You might be asking what Christmas carols have to do with a business blog. Well, it’s important to me that my readers know who I am and what matters to me. Everything I do in life is motivated by my values. I’m not just the creator of the Profit Minds Growth System: I’m also a husband, a father, a man of faith, and someone who believes that the hopeful message of the season can—and should!—include everyone.

I hope you take this season as time to think about your values. What motivates you? Do you feel like the work you do reflects the person you are? If not, what changes might you make in the coming year? Feel free to comment below and be sure to reach out to me if you want to discuss how to make your values live in your business.

The Path from Executive to Successful Business Coach

Are you a successful executive who’s just been told that you’ll have to return to the office…for real this time? 

Maybe you’re not sure that you want to go back. Working from home for the past two years has given you so much freedom. Sure, there have been challenges—a barking dog, the neighbor’s lawnmower—but it’s been worth it to have total control over your time. You’ve realized that there are more important things than your job, and you want to climb off the hamster wheel in order to prioritize the parts of life that bring you the most joy.

If this sounds like you, I have good news! There’s a solution: create your own business.

I’ll bet you’ve learned enough over the course of your career that you could bring enormous value to clients as a coachsultant. You’ll find it both fulfilling and profitable to share what you’ve learned with others.

I invented the Profit Minds Growth System to deliver the art and business of coaching to small business owners like you. The Profit Minds Growth System will give you the tools and training to build success on your own terms, and in your own home.

Today I’m going to give you a brief overview of the three parts of the Profit Minds Growth System: enhancing profit, boosting productivity, and building robust business process.

 1) Profit. In this first part, we cover the fundamentals of building a thriving coaching practice. You will identify your unique gifts and learn how to turn those gifts into teachable strategies. In this way, you will generate a steady stream of ideal prospects, turn them into clients, and grow a profitable business.

2) Productivity. The second part is all about how to get stuff done! As a certified facilitator of Dr. Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” I’ll teach you how to work more efficiently and effectively. You’ll learn how to pass these lessons on to your clients.

3) Process. Thirdly and finally, you’ll discover the secret to creating robust processes. All entrepreneurs get stuck and need to build systems to enable their business to grow. With the Profit Minds Growth System, you’ll scale your coaching practice and achieve your goals.

The Profit Minds Growth System is designed to build on what you already bring to the table. The practices that will be imparted to you are the product of proven success. My own coaching business saw unprecedented growth even during two years of COVID lockdown!

Of course, I use the Profit Minds Growth System when I coach my clients. All of my clients who’ve finished the first year have signed up for a second year, and all those have finished the second year have signed up for the third. Their loyalty speaks to the incredible results this system has produced for them.

With the Profit Minds Growth System, you will attract and retain high-quality clients. Not only will they want to work with you, they’ll want to keep working with you for years to come. 

Start your journey on the the path from executive to successful business coach today!

One Big Tip Podcast: If you’re feeling stuck in your business? Learn how to be more productive with your time to accomplish more and move ahead

At the beginning of their journey, most entrepreneurs make the same mistakes. They don’t realize the value of their time, and they try to do everything themselves. As far as efficiency goes, this is a giant misstep. It’s more efficient to take the time to train someone once or twice and hand off the tasks and projects that are automated easily.  Using a systematic approach to productivity, Steven created a framework for his clients based on efficiency strategies that show them how their habits leave profits on the table. 

 

Learn to Boost Your Mental Fitness

Dr. L interviewed me on his Health, Wealth, & Wisdom Summit. 

We judge ourselves and self-sabotage our happiness by constantly chasing after the next thing and not being happy with what we have accomplished already.  Plus, we have accomplice judges within oursevles. Some examples are the stickler, the hyper-vigilant, the avoider, the pleaser, or the controller. Which one is sabotaging you? Learn to forgive yourself and overcome by watching the video below.

 

Generating Leads: There are LOTS of of Other Ways

There are so many ways to generate leads. Listen to the video to hear just a few methods people use to obtain more clients. All vary in style and one of them is quite unique. I can easily help you utilize one of these or any other technique in your client search. Yet, the methods that I use are actually proven to work.  Are you ready to learn because I am ready to teach these methods to you. We can grow your business together. 

Watch this short informative video and schedule a time to chat at your convenience. 

Smarter decisions, more profits.

The Keys To Profit & Business Growth – Interview with Elizabeth Bachman

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE INTERVIEW

 

 

If you cannot watch, you can read it below…

As one of the people whom I regularly consult about business, I’m so excited to bring you on here to give some new information in addition to the work that we’ve featured you before. I’m always excited to come to you as a resource. Before we get into productivity and profit, let me ask you about your dream interview. Who would be your dream interview if you could share the stage with someone who’s no longer with us? If so, what would you ask them?

There are an awful lot of people that I admire throughout history, but I think perhaps more than ever, I would look to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The work that he did in non-violent protest, in the non-violent calling of our attention as a country to the systemic racism that still exists. I am an old white guy, and I benefit from this. I’m working hard to become an ally of those who are oppressed by the current system. I’ve benefited tremendously throughout my life. I would ask him a couple of things. One, what is it that I could do better to help those who were not born into the privilege that I have? The other is how did he find the strength, the personal conviction to continue to beat his head against that proverbial wall consistently without becoming frustrated? I’m sure he could be getting frustrated, but without becoming violent or becoming overwhelmed with the size of the problem. At least his public persona was like that. How did he find that within himself? That to me is the measure of a man or a woman.

I have often thought about the things he said that inspired people. Often it was enough. He was done and it was time not to take it anymore. I was hearing one time somebody talking about a turning point in life isn’t necessarily the turning point. That is a huge cataclysm. Sometimes a turning point is the moment where you’ve said, “Enough,” as Rosa Parks said, “My feet hurt. I’m not going to get up and move to the back of the bus. I’m going to stay here.” The courage it took there but also being tired.

Sometimes it is that proverbial straw. It’s one more thing that pushes you over the edge and you say, “I can’t do this. I can’t be this. I can’t react this way anymore. I have to do something different.”

This actually brings me to another thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is awareness. Becoming aware of where things are not right. We’ve been through a year of a pandemic. Society and life are changing completely and a year of social upheaval and a year of pushback where people said, “Enough. I can’t do anything more.” It also comes from being aware when you are being put down or as an ally where you are putting someone else down without realizing it, being aware of the unconscious assumptions. I look at Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Doctor, and think about the courage it must’ve taken to speak out in the first place, the courage to keep talking, and the courage to keep moving forward. America has an African-American senator from Georgia who was a pastor in Martin Luther King’s Church. There is progress.

Most small business owners have no clue what their time is worth.CLICK TO TWEET

It’s slow but it’s been 400 years in the making. There isn’t any reason to expect that overnight we’re going to be able to change the system. I was reading the book How to Be an Antiracist. The system adapts and the system morphs because the system is all about power and who has it. The system doesn’t want to give up its power. Those of us who have privilege recognize that in order to raise all boats, we have to not be concerned about whether or not we might lose a little bit of what we might otherwise gain.

That’s where fear comes in. Fear and greed are old friends, our old enemies. Fear and greed are motivating factors. I also am reminded of a meme that was going around during the beginning of the lockdown in April 2020 or maybe over the summer, I think too. People were saying that the pandemic aren’t real if they’re not happening to you. That’s not the exact quote. I have to look up that quote. You have to be reminded to pay attention if it’s not happening directly to you.

The fact that I don’t have to think about the color of my skin and yet a person of color, every time they look in the mirror, is reminded that they are a person of color, that disparity in opportunity.

It is not the same as racism, but I do remember as a woman, I am careful walking down dark alleys because as the old saying goes, “Boys are trained to take charge, try stuff, go ahead. If you fall, it’s no big deal. Girls are conditioned by society to be careful.” I remember back in my early 30s, sitting around with a group of friends who I was working on a show. One of the singers who was a big, burly guy with a big loud bass voice asked the women at the table why they would be nervous walking home alone in the city if they went out to get pizza because it would never occur to him to be nervous.

The disparity in treatment. That’s why I’m so proud of my girls that have set off on their own. One is an Adjunct Professor of Writing at Columbia. The other is finishing her Master’s in Mathematics at Boston University and looking to land a job shortly working in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, which is a big thing these days.

SWGR 558 | Business Growth

How to Be an Antiracist

It would not have been available to a woman years ago.

It was much more challenging. My wife has a Master’s in Mathematics but when she went through her master’s program years ago, she was one of a handful of women in the program. When my daughter was at St. Olaf as a physics and math major, I think close to half the class was female.

It is possible to change.

We’re making progress.

We have to keep trying.

Particularly in this day and age, I sit on a lot of Zoom meetings, as everybody does. It’s much easier to hide in a Zoom meeting. I’m trying to be aware of people who perhaps their voice hasn’t been heard and they’re sitting silently in a meeting. I know that’s one of the things that you help your clients with is how to speak out.

How to speak out and do it in a way that the people who need to hear you can actually take in the information instead of shouting in their faces, which makes people automatically say no or put up resistance. How do you do that? Which actually takes me back to Martin Luther King and how the non-violent protest was a way of making the point without instantly provoking armed resistance.

It’s funny. It occurred to me that some of what you do parallels some of what I do in the marketing because what we try to do with our marketing programs, with our strategic marketing to help our clients, is to enter into the conversation that’s going on in the head of your prospect. You want to interrupt what they’re thinking about. They have a problem that they don’t want and a result that they do want. If you can use your product or service to connect those things and interrupt that conversation that’s going on in their head, then you can get their attention. I would guess that there’s some similarity between that approach and what you talk to your clients about with respect to how you do approach someone in a way that is constructive but not antagonistic.

That’s one of the reasons why I love working with you, Steve. I have to be transparent. Steve is my business coach. Thanks to Steve in the six months I worked with him in 2020, my revenue doubled. I have to say it. The stuff he promises can happen because it happened to me. One of the things that you were talking about in terms of marketing is I come from a presentation and marketing background. You may think that the performing arts are not marketing, but of course, they are, because what you’re doing is selling an experience. You’re trying to move people to think the way you want to think or to experience something. Of course, in training performers, you’re trying to market yourself as the product. The difference is that you yourself are the product, rather than perhaps in your widget or your service. You and I both work a great deal with service-based organizations and people who are their product. It’s the same thing.

Steve, this is really fun because I haven’t even gotten to all the questions I had for you. I have a lot of questions for you. Although I work a great deal with women in the corporate field, it’s still a matter of selling an idea, if you will, or enrolling people into the idea that you are the person to be listened to, the person to be followed, the person to be hired or promoted. It’s still sales and marketing. It’s the same thing that you do, Steve. I wanted to ask you though a couple of specific things. You were a productivity coach for many years, right?

That’s correct.

What got you to move from productivity to profitability to focusing on how to make a profit?

The easiest way to wind up with more money in your pocket is to cut expenses.CLICK TO TWEET

That’s interesting because in fact, I still work with people on their productivity but it’s with the aim of getting them more profits. The problem that I had was that I would sit down with a small business owner and I would explain to him or her how I would improve their productivity and they get very excited about it. The fundamental fact of it is that most small business owners haven’t a clue what their time is worth. If I tell you, “I’m going to get you an hour of your time every day for the rest of your life in terms of productivity,” “That’s great.” “What would you do?” “I can do this.”

The chasing of shiny objects is always a problem for the small business owner but to sit down and say, “What is that worth to you?” Often, I get a blank stare. “I don’t know.” If they couldn’t understand what the value that I was bringing them was, what was the value of that hour I was giving them, how would they know whether or not it was worth engaging as a coach? When I came across this system and it’s a systematic approach of improving leads, how many prospects do you have coming into your pipeline? How efficient are you at converting those, what methods do you use to convert those prospects into clients, how do you maximize the value of each client, how do you properly set your pricing so that each line of business is profitable? How do you most efficiently drop those revenues into your pocket, into the bottom line, how do you take the top line, growth, and make that into a bottom-line profit, which is of course what the small business owner really wants?

By going through this systematic approach and coming up with a number, I say to these small business owners, “If you give me 45 minutes, I can find $30,000 to $50,000 or even more in untapped revenue without you having to spend any additional money in marketing.” It’s fun to do this. There’s a quantification of the value that I’m bringing. If I’m going to bring you a $100,000 or $150,000, to spend a fraction of that on me as a coach to get you there, it’s a no-brainer. That was what caused me. This system is so powerful. It was clear to me that it fit naturally with what I already do. I use that productivity expertise to help implement these strategies.

That’s actually one of the things that I like about working with you is implementation has always been a challenge for me. Getting it done and how do you use these strategies has helped immensely. As I’m on a similar line, I’ve heard you say a wonderful thing about businesses don’t fail because they run out of clients. They fail because they run out of cash. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?

What’s really interesting is when you sit down with a business owner and you ask them how they do manage their business, often the reality is that they manage their business by looking at their bank account. If they have money in the bank, then they feel good. If they don’t have money in the bank, they feel bad. They don’t look at what the cash flow is. I like to partner with CPAs or bookkeepers and make sure that there’s a strong relationship between the small business owner and either the CPA or the bookkeeper so that they understand their cashflow. You get to the middle of the month and you’ve got thousands of dollars coming in cash but you can’t pay a creditor today because you have nothing in the bank. That’s a problem and that’s where you wind up. If you run too fast, get too far out over your skis, as they say, in terms of managing your cash flow, that’s when the business goes out when you go out of business. If you can’t sustain it because I made this great investment that’s going to pay off a year from now but you run out of cash before you get any of that return, it doesn’t matter.

There are so many companies where income or sales fluctuate, you may have a great month and then you may have a month where nobody picks up the phone calls or they say, “Yes, but not now.” Planning for the cash flow is a big challenge.

You should always have some amount of cash in reserve so that you can get through those lean months. A big corporation can write a bond. They can borrow some money from a bank to have a line of credit. Some small businesses have a line of credit as well. The best way to do that, if you are a small business, is to put a little piece of it into a separate account that you don’t touch. I’m a big fan of Profit First methodology by Michael Michalowicz. It’s one of the things that he recommends. You take a piece of your profits. By the way, you should always have a profit in your business. You should take the profits first before you pay yourself and pay your bills.

Maybe it’s a small amount. Maybe it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, or 5%. You always have a profit. You’d take a piece of that and you put it off into an account, which is he calls it The Vault. You set that aside until you’ve built up enough to have 3, 6 months of expenses set aside so that if you hit a lean patch, like a pandemic, that’s what costs a lot of businesses to go under. They didn’t have enough backstop. Fortunately, the government stepped in here, at least in the U.S., but then that money ran out and businesses started failing.

 

SWGR 558 | Business Growth

Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

I spent a lot of time in Austria in a resort area and when the tourists aren’t allowed to come, life is hard. In Austria, they pay 51% to 55% tax. Their taxes are high and therefore, when things get thin, they have a cushion because they’re getting money from the government. That’s why they pay those high taxes. They have a safety net, which America is not so great at, has not done that so well.

Although we had some emergency legislation in 2020 and it looks like we’ll have some more emergency legislation coming through here that will hopefully prop up some of those in the greatest need.

Let me ask you again because this also works for families. If you have a salary but if you’re spending your whole paycheck or more, it’s the same principle. You were talking a little bit about finding more untapped revenue. Some of it is, “I have to get more clients,” but it’s not that. It’s not that simple. What are other ways we could find untapped revenue?

I think there are a number of things. If we start at the back end with the P&L, the profit and loss statement, the easiest way to wind up with more money in your pocket is to cut expenses. I ask the readers, “How long has it been since you’ve looked at your credit card statement to look at every line? How many of those line items are absolutely required to generate business? Are there things in there with cheaper alternatives? Finally, what are those things that are completely unnecessary?

What’s that system that you signed up for six months ago that you actually haven’t touched but you’re still paying $30, $50 or $100 a month for?” I worked with one small business owner who was paying $400 a month for a 401(k) system for her two employees. Nobody was using it. Unfortunately, there was a huge disentanglement charge but that was only 3 or 4 months of the cost. It was still worth it to pull out of that. Looking at those things and every penny that you save off of your expenses dropped straight to the bottom line.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who opened up an office. She was so excited and she had ordered this big fancy sign for office but her business was online only. Customers never came to her office. Almost everything she did was online. She didn’t need it. She said, “This is so cool.” She knew someone else who did have customers walking in the door. She thought what they had done was cool and so she invested all this money in an office that she didn’t need. This was even pre-COVID. This was pre-pandemic and then realized, “I could have saved that money.” Of course, you don’t realize it until after you spent it. Is this part of what you mean by being business growth strategies?

There’s the strategy to grow and it’s growing your pipeline. It is growing your leads. We have a number of methodologies to improve the incoming number of folks into your pipeline. We look at the conversion rate. Are you attracting the right kinds of prospects? Are they people that you have a chance? If you get 100 leads and only convert 1% or 2% of them, you’d be much better off with a system that gets you 10 leads but you convert 5 of them. Are you getting the right kinds of leads?

Are you advertising the places that your clients are instead of where you think where they’re not basically?

Are you attracting the right kind of people with your marketing message? Are you entering into the conversation that’s going on in the head of your prospects? Are you interrupting that conversation? Are you sending them useful materials when they’re actually ready to buy? Statistics show us that 1% of people that go to a website, they go to a landing page. They are ready to buy right now. The other 99%, you want to capture their information and then provide them with education that as they move from future buyer to now buyer. When they’re ready to make that vendor selection, when they’re saying, “I’m ready to buy now. I’m ready to buy this solution,” that naturally, you’re top of mind. They do a drip campaign, a client nurture campaign. There’s a variety of ways of making sure that you stay top of mind with your prospects, the people that are along the buyer’s journey.

Of all the various things that you talk about, that you help people with, where could somebody start? Is there a most important thing?

Yes. The most important thing is to make sure that you understand what makes your business unique and how is it that you service your clients. What makes an ideal client for you and how do you service them in a way that’s different from your competition? We’re working with a carpet cleaner. That’s a difficult business to differentiate but there are a couple of things that he does that differentiate him from his competition. He likes to stress the fact that he’s a second-generation carpet cleaner. His dad was in the business. He knows a lot about how to clean carpets and what’s the right way to attack the different kinds of material. That’s very important but a lot of people can say it.

What he does is he takes such care of the home that he goes into. He takes care of it as if it was his own. He put some little corner strips to make sure that his equipment never bangs the corner and chips it. He’s very careful. He has a methodology too. He uses less water. Particularly if you have kids, you don’t want to have to say, “Kids, you can’t go on the carpet for 24 hours.” It dries in a couple of hours. There are things that are a little bit different and helping. He’s got a UV light that he uses to find urine spots from pets. That’s a big problem. Often he says, “I find it in places that the homeowners didn’t think that there was any problem.” “The pet never goes in. How did that happen?” The key thing here is you don’t want to come up with one or two things. I always work with my clients to find three things that make them unique because you may share one or maybe even two with somebody, but you’re never going to share all three.

The strategy to grow your pipeline is growing your leads.CLICK TO TWEET

Steve Kirch, it’s wonderful. I will say, as someone who works with Steve, that going through the process of finding out where you’re doing okay and where, “I haven’t even thought of that,” is very interesting and exciting. With me, he came up with a potential $133,000 in extra revenue. That means me implementing everything, which is where I then lean on Steve as a productivity coach. It’s a fascinating thing. As a coach, I truly think of myself as a small business, which I don’t know if I did before. That’s also exciting. If you are a founder running a small business or curious of how even your home as a business and your personal expenses could get better, then I highly recommend reaching out to Dr. Steven Kirch. Steve, what’s the first thing that people should do to find you?

I think the easiest thing to do is to go to the website, ProfitMinds.net and download the free book. There’s an eBook that outlined some of the strategies that we use. I would start there. You can also reach out to me from there and make an appointment.

Thank you so much, Steven Kirch. Before we go, don’t forget that if you’re interested in how your presentation skills are helping you, then you could go to my free four-minute quiz, SpeakForResultsQuiz.com. It only takes about four minutes. That’s where you can see where your presentation skills are doing well and where a little support might be able to get you the recognition and the results that you want. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Steven Kirch, for being my guest. I will see you on the next one.

Important Links:

 

 

How to Create Three Months of Email Content in an Afternoon

Most small-business owners know the value of an email list. Email can be a great way to communicate with your audience on an ongoing basis.

But this is where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck: Once you start an email list, how do you know what to send them?

No one wants to be spammy—we don’t want to send advertisement after advertisement. If we only email our clients when we’re selling something, they’ll never want to open our emails.

But when you deliver value in your emails, you build a relationship with your audience—you build trust. Sending weekly emails with quick deliverables keeps you and your company top of mind for your prospects and helps move them along their customer journey until they are ready to buy.

Here’s how to generate three months of email content in a single afternoon—without hiring a copywriter.

Step 1: What are the top 5-10 questions your potential customer will ask?

List out some of the questions your prospects and customers are asking. These questions don’t need to be broad—they should be questions you could answer in just a few minutes.

For example, if I’m selling custom window treatments, my customers might ask questions like:

  • What is the best window treatment for living rooms?
  • Does the material of the blinds make a difference?
  • How long does it take to install a custom window treatment?

If I’m a fitness coach, my customers might ask:

  • What should I eat before and after my workout?
  • How do I choose what exercise program is right for me?
  • What are the best exercises for back pain?

Take a moment right now to brainstorm 5-10 questions you hear from customers and potential clients.

Step 2: What are the top 5-10 objections you hear from prospects?

List out the most common objections raised by your potential customers. Cost objections come up in every industry, but there are also probably other objections specific to your product or service.

Once you have a healthy list of objections, jot down what information the prospect needs in order to overcome that objection.

A window treatment prospect might think their old blinds and drapes are fine. The information they need is how faulty window treatments can lead to floor discoloration and damage from the sun.

If someone is considering a fitness coach, they might have tried a weight loss program before without success. The information they need is why fad diets don’t work, or how the right program will be focused on their specific needs in order to help them reach their goals.

Just like you did in Step 1, take a moment to jot down 5-10 common objections relevant to your industry.

Step 3: Choose 12 of these topics

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

You’ve likely generated more than 12 ideas, but you only have to choose 12—one for each week of the three-month time frame. (If one of those months is five weeks, of course, you may need to choose 13 topics.)

Select the topics you believe your audience would be most excited to learn about. This might be your most frequently asked questions, or topics that are especially interesting.

If you know your ideal customer well, it should be pretty easy to narrow down your topics. But if you have doubts, reach out to one or two great current clients and ask them which topics they’d be most interested in.

Hold onto any extra topic ideas—you can use these to jumpstart your content next quarter.

Step 4: Record a short video for each topic

Once you’ve selected your topics, record a short video answering each question or providing information around each objection.

Why videos?

First of all, videos are easy for anyone to create.

There are many free or low-cost video recording software options. One app that many people already have is Zoom: you can start a meeting, hit record, talk for a few minutes, and save your video without any complicated tech. If you hit “stop recording” at the end of each video response, Zoom will generate separate video files without any extra editing on your part.

And for a lot of us, making a video can also be faster than writing out email copy. With video, you can rely more on the inflection of your voice, rather than having to carefully edit the text to sound like “you.” Seeing your face encourages prospective clients to trust you and can nurture a friendly, personable relationship.

But perhaps most importantly, prospects are more likely to actually open emails that include video.

One analysis found that merely including the word “video” in a subject line can increase an email’s open rate by 6%. Another found that videos can increase click-through rates—how many readers clicked on a link after opening an email—by a whopping 65%.

These videos don’t need to be long. In fact, keeping the video under five minutes can help ensure the value is quick and digestible for your viewers. Even if you need to re-record a couple of the videos, this whole process shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.

Step 5: Send one video a week to your email list

Congratulations, you’ve created all of next quarter’s email content in a single afternoon!

Now all that’s left is sending the videos to your email list. Most CRM software has an option for scheduling your videos ahead of time. You can do this yourself or give this task to a VA.

In the subject line, preview the topic of the video—and be sure to include the word “video” to get that open-rate boost.

Here are a couple of subject lines from our examples:

  • [Video] How to tell if your window treatments are damaging your floors
  • Why fad diets don’t work [30 second video]

The magic of quick-value content

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Black Lives Matter. PERIOD.

Black Lives Matter. PERIOD.

Ready to march in Pleasanton’s Black Lives Matter protest

Children are an amazing gift. You bring home this little blob from the hospital, turn around a few times, and discover an amazing person. That’s what’s happened to me recently. My amazing daughter, an adjunct professor of writing at Columbia University, challenged me: “Are you going to do something, Dad?”, “Do you have any plans for showing up on LinkedIn as an anti-racist?”

This is a hard thing: I am a small-business owner and have tried to keep politics out of my business even though I have very strong theological roots and care deeply about the plight of all humanity. Today, I serve on the board of The Gratitude Network and give that work the highest priority as I set my schedule for the day and the week.

Given today’s environment, it will be impossible for me to say what I believe to be important without appearing to be taking sides politically. But I can no longer stay silent.

My daughter knows my heart.

From the very beginning of our relationship, my wife and I have worked to improve the lives of the under-resourced locally, across the US, and around the world – investments of both time and money. Although never wealthy, we knew we came from privileged backgrounds as we never had to worry about where our next meal would come from – even if it might be waffles at the end of the month as the food money ran short.

We were both raised in white, suburban surroundings, attended fine schools, and were afforded excellent college and graduate educations. We have worked hard to provide for our family and I do not apologize for what we have been able to achieve.

But the events of the past two weeks have shown that I must do more. The senseless killing of George Floyd has re-awakened the nation to respond to this issue at a level that I don’t recall since the height of the civil rights movement in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

This is not just about standing on the right side of history but about standing up for what is right, period: I must stand with them.

My daughter asked me the following questions: What don’t I know? What do I know? Where do I have influence? What am I going to do?

What don’t I know?

I am a heterosexual, white male. I clearly do not know what it is like to be a person of color. Or a woman or gay or bi or trans or anything other than what I am. I do not know what it is like to be denied fair treatment just because of who I am or what I look like.

I do not know what it is like to grow up in a system that is biased against me.

What do I know?

I know that I was born into white privilege. I would say “solidly, middle class.” Dad worked, as an engineer, Mom didn’t (well not for pay, anyhow). While there were clearly limits to what we could afford, we never wanted for anything growing up. That was not a choice I made, I just got lucky.

I also know that all people are God’s children and we are all equal in God’s sight. I know that I hope for a world in which every child can grow up free from fear and want and able to live out their own dream, and any system which perpetuates inequality is wrong and should be abolished.

I also must acknowledge my participation in the systems here in this country which perpetuate that inequality. I have not done so intentionally, but nonetheless, I am part of the system.

I even have to admit that deep down, I am a racist. My brain is wired to prefer those who are similar to me – this was a survival mechanism as we evolved as a species, so it’s there and I need to acknowledge it.

The question is, do I act out of that racism? Do I let my “reptilian brain” control how I act? I work very hard to be able to say “No!” to that instinct. I think I’m doing okay, but it’s still there.

Where do I have influence?

I have influence in my community, with my friends, in my church, and even a bit on-line. Over my lifetime, I’ve noticed that I’m a natural leader, so in most settings where I participate, I wind up in some sort of leadership position.

As Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” So I need to acknowledge that I have that responsibility and speak out against all systems that continue to, in the words of Al Sharpton (from Mr. Floyd’s eulogy last week) put a knee in the neck of black people. These are our systems of education, employment, justice, and public protection (aka police) at the very least.

What am I going to do?

Well, last week, I participated in a march here in my local community with my mask and my sign “Black Lives Matter, PERIOD.” Yes, all lives matter, but when you read the parable of the lost sheep, it’s clear we need to focus on the one who is lost, not the 99 who are doing fine.

Assuming social restrictions continue to loosen, I will go to Washington for the march on August 28 to commemorate the anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, “I Have a Dream.” Between now and then, I will speak out. I will not remain silent. I will challenge the status quo. And I will begin working to change the systems that perpetuate injustice and inequality.

It’s time for this privileged, white man to state firmly and for the record: Black Lives Matter. PERIOD.