Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

As many of you know I’ve been traveling for most of 2008, having left my home in Brisbane Australia back in April. As I type this I’m on the European leg of a worldwide journey, sitting in an apartment in Amsterdam.

My European travels have really highlighted some of the unique challenges you face when attempting to run a business and enjoy yourself no matter where you are in the world. The reason why it has been especially unique in Europe is because of how much moving around I am doing. Literally each week I am in a different city, which makes for fun times, but also means I am in a constantly changing environment.

As a result of my experiences I’ve learned quite a lot about traveling with an Internet business, some of which I’d like to share with you now.

Here are seven things you should consider if you decide to travel with your business…

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How To Create Recruitment Systems To Hire People Before You Need Them

I was recently asked how I hired quality editors when running my previous business BetterEdit. As I responded to the question I realized the information provided might well serve others, so I’m going to explain my system for staying on top of the recruitment process here in this blog post.

Before I begin, a brief caveat - this system as I implemented it only worked because I had a website that received a continuous stream of traffic from Google. It was by no means a huge amount of people, perhaps a few hundred daily unique visitors, but because the traffic was targeted and due to the supply and demand ratio for editors versus work, I was in a good position to make the following system work.

However, that doesn’t mean this can’t work for you if you don’t have consistent search engine traffic or if the dynamics of the employment market in your industry are not as favorable, you just have to work a little harder to find the good people and bring in the traffic. If your website already receives consistent search engine visitors then you are position to immediately benefit from this technique, so make sure you write this down on your to-do list after you finish reading.

Slow Companies Fail

If you read Rich Schefren’s recent report, the Uncertainty Syndrome, you may remember he talked about hiring solutions that bring good people to work for your company BEFORE you need them.

Due to the speed of today’s markets, those who are quick and stay ahead of the curve generally win. Your company is only as good as the people working for it. If you combine those two ideas, then it makes sense you need the best people working for your business and you need them yesterday.

Think about any time you learned something new that you just knew you could apply to your business and immediately benefit from it, yet you don’t personally have the time to do it (nor does it make sense that you do it - it’s not your core strength), none of your current staff are available to take on the role and of course hiring new staff is never quick if you start from scratch. By the time you have the right person you’ve missed the boat - the market has moved on to the next thing and your prospective customers have already been captured by faster-moving competitors.

An even more common problem in successful organizations is business growth. In order for your business to take the next step you need help. Perhaps you require someone to take on the extra administration responsibilities, new talent to deliver the services your company provides, added customer support, maybe a project manager or a new tech person to help handle increasing technology demands.

If you are hiring reactively, then every stage of growth is hindered significantly by each new hire you have to make. This can be such a huge problem that you have to turn down work, work that is your company’s core strength that you would love to take on, simply because you don’t have the capacity to deliver the results due to limited resources. That’s VERY frustrating for an entrepreneur.

Be Proactive

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This is a guest post by Blog Mastermind graduate student, Francis Wade, who you may recognize as the time management expert with the Jamaican accent from his testimonial video. You can read about Francis and find more of his time management tips at his blog - http://2time-sys.com.

Managing your time = Managing your money

This simple equation has driven entrepreneurs from one time management class to another in search of tips that will transform them into ultra-productive professionals.

Most courses on time management run for two days, where you learn a new system of habits developed by someone who has invented a way to be more productive. The new system works so well for the inventor that he/she decides to package the approach into a detailed prescription to be followed by everyone.

The problem is, why should a time management system that works for the “expert” in their New York corporate world work for your internet business run out of your bedroom in Hawaii? You live a different life, with a need for flexible hours (i.e. midnight shifts included), and you don’t have the luxury of a secretary, IT support and real vacations away from email.

Plus there’s that habit that you have of taking a mid-afternoon nap… which you are sure helps you…to say nothing of the difference between the culture of Honolulu and Wall Street!

Instead of telling you to “follow me,” why can’t they tell you how to do something similar to what they did, so that you can also invent a time management system of your own? Did they follow some kind of method that you could use, and is there a process to follow, or were they just very smart or extremely lucky? You are a different animal, and you know that your habits are different from theirs, so why should you be expected to be successful following their system?

The fact is that most people who take time management courses have a hard time implementing a whole bunch of new, foreign habits all at once. Habits are hard to break, and the 101 new habits and 66 new tips in the new system they are learning are just impossible to learn overnight.

But, you give it a good try and it works - for a while - until the first crisis hits and you do what we all do — go back to what’s familiar. We feel bad, and we wonder how something that seemed so easy in class could be so hard to do in reality.

But in the back of our minds, we still want to be more productive and need to find a way to harness the insights that exist in all the programs out there… but who has time to attend them all?

The Solution

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As many of my long-term readers know, I went through a Rich Schefren coaching program back in 2006. The reason I originally joined was because of what Rich presented in the Internet Business Manifesto.

Unless you have been deleting all your subscriptions to Internet marketing email lists then you probably already know that today Rich is opening the doors to his latest personal coaching program -

The Guided Profit System

I wrote a notice to my newsletter about this program and I’m going to reproduce it below for my blog readers who are not on my newsletter so you can benefit from my experience with Rich’s training.

Before I do that let me be clear about one thing -

Rich’s coaching is only for a certain type of person because it’s cost prohibitive for many, HOWEVER, his resources like the Manifesto and the report he released last week, The Entrepreneurial Emergency, and the audios and teleconferences he releases, are all free and present great ideas. Yes there is a sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden sales pitch, but the core message can be taken away without spending a dime.

If the coaching program offer today from Rich is annoying you because you are sick of hearing about it or you think it’s way too over priced, just focus on what you can learn and implement from the free stuff.

For those of you in a position to invest in business coaching I give a strong endorsement of Rich’s programs. Rich is the only person I ever gave $5,000 of my money to for coaching. It’s worth it just because Rich is so generous with his personal time - you will definitely get a chance to talk to him directly if you join his program.

With that out of the way, here’s what I have to say about the Guided Profit System -

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It’s not quite as easy as the title makes it sound, but bear with me, this article will explain the three steps that are the foundation of every Internet business, why so many people go wrong and give you some realizations that might just be the key to take your Internet business to the next level…

I’ve been studying resources lately designed to teach Internet business, but not just introductory materials, content that goes beyond beginners and is intended to take you to making making millions online.

In my case I’m interested in advanced topics that I can apply to what I do and fill my current knowledge gaps to take the next step forwards. While hunting for those elusive gold nugget ideas I invariably scan the introductory materials and learn with interest how this particular person or organization cover the basics - how they suggest you get traffic and make sales.

My studies have led me to the conclusion that Internet business is actually quite easy. Explained in simple terms (which I will do in a moment), the structure of a successful online enterprise is comprised of a few components, that when linked together can deliver hundreds, thousands and even millions of dollars in online profits.

Easy As 1-2-3

While we all have different ways of presenting what we do and the tiny details of getting a result vary, most Internet marketing experts teach the same few principles, which are in fact no different from what direct marketers have been doing and teaching for decades.

It goes something like this…

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