Is business success just common sense? A lot of people think so. They think if you’re smart and you work hard, you will be successful. But you know what? Most people are wrong because it’s not common sense to success in business.

How do I know?

First of all, most businesses fail, so it takes uncommon sense to win. The biggest contributor to the high business failure rates is that most people were never trained on how to really make a business run and grow. Most people were never taught what an entrepreneur really is. and who you have to be in your business. Because of that, there’s a major price that’s being paid.

The price is the overwhelming majority of businesses fail, and even those that very few that last and still survive most of them are just glorified jobs, with the owner working his / her butt off to make a salary. They’ve got no freedom. They’re probably working harder than they would ever work for somebody else., and have little to show for it.

It’s a fair statement to say that most small businesses, almost all small businesses, do not reach their potential. The big question is why? Why don’t most small businesses reach their potential?

And while the truth stings… the research backs it up, the main reason for the sad state of affairs for small business online and offline is the entrepreneur’s lack of skills and knowledge (Dunn and Bradstreet).

So what are you doing (besides reading this) to improve your entrepreneurial skills?

In my coaching programs Module #1 is completely focused on becoming a better entrepreneur, and many of my most successful clients have told me that right after that first session they already started thinking differently.

Here’s a few of the most recent comments about the first module from current clients:

—Tons of info. Very fast paced, with no fluff or filler. Very refreshing. My mind was totally engaged for the entire 2 hours.

—First time I’ve ever heard someone make sense of the skills and the process of growing a business, in two hours, where I felt like I really learned something cohesive.

—Excellent. Exciting. Informative…Rich seems to have the timing of the material very well orchestrated.

—I am impressed so far by the depth of the information given by Rich. For the first time ever – and I have been searching for that information a long time – am I finally learning what having and building “a business” really is about.

—An excellent overview on entepreneurship, business ownership, the various roles I need to play as my business grows. Instead of diving right into tactics, you start with the basics that MUST be understood before moving forward. Answering the WHY of what I’m doing must direct the HOW’s. But without being told that, it could easily be missed and I could be lead down a path of building a business that becomes something I didn’t want in the first place. Solid information for our first real call. Has me thinking a lot deeper about my business already.

—I feel like a just drank from a fire highdrant, it was a mindblowing amount of information. That being said, the information is absolutely life changing. I had these questions for years, and I had not found real answers until now.

—It was great and it was overwhelming and a little intimidating. Good – what an amount of information to learn, how many changes to make… Guess the best way is to follow your steps and do whatever you figured out to do first and then worry about the rest.

—In my opinion, very valuable information, and lot’s of it. The call was a great overview, and I plan on spending time going through the material, taking notes and answering the questions to have it really sink in before the next call. I could see my perspective changing even as the call was proceeding.

—We’ve worked hard at building our business and have some success, but we knew we needed a shift to get to the next level. Today I had the what, how and why laid out in front of me with the challenge to take responsibility and make it happen! What a great start!

—This call was great, TRULY FABULOUS, but I hope every call is not exactly like this. My head hurts.

—Thanks for sharpening the cutting edge of designing and building a highly profitable business!

—This call absolutely blew me away. The quality of the material was 1st class and the amount was nothing short of mind boggling. It was difficult to keep up at times and that, I believe, was the most powerful aspect of Rich’s unique and cutting edge style. I will be going over this stuff in my head 24 hours a day even if I’m not aware of it. This material is truly inspiring.

Keep your eyes out, I got some big announcements to make.

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Before We dive in…

• If you are looking to get your hands on the controversial
  Internet Business Manifesto Click Here

Chapter 1

I open my email box.
There is a great new opportunity to make money.
I buy it.
I work really hard… But the results don’t come.
It must not be the right opportunity.
I waste a lot of time and money.

Chapter 2

I open my email box again.
There is a great new opportunity to make money.
I convince myself this time it will be different.
I buy this one too.
I can’t believe I am still not getting results,
It must not be the right opportunity
I waste even more time and more money

Chapter 3

I open my email box yet again.
There is a great new opportunity to make money.
I see it for what it is.
But I still buy it – It’s a habit (addiction)
My eyes are finally open
I realize I am an opportunity seeker
I cancel my purchase
I save my money and my time.

Chapter 4

I open my email box again
There is a great new opportunity to make money
I delete it.
Instead, I read The Internet Business Manifesto

Chapter 5

I have someone else open my email.
I am making a lot more money.
I am having fun building my dream business.
I am finally a strategic entrepreneur.

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Gee, what do I want to do today?

If you ever started your day by asking yourself that same question then pay very close attention because the question above is the beginning of an ineffective day.

Strategic entrepreneurs don’t start out their day asking "what do I want to do?" They ask themselves "What are the most important, highest leverage activities that need to get done?" and create a list of the most important activities that answer the question.

After that, they estimate the amount of time each activity should take.

Next, they analyze the list of important activities that must get done and determine which activities they should do themselves and who they are going to get to do the remaining activities.

Then when they start work they tackle the most important, highest leverage task or activity first. They do not ask the question of themselves "which one of these task do I want to do now?"

Remember no entrepreneur is born effective you have to cultivate it and you do that by practicing the habits of effectiveness. You wouldn’t want an employee who worked on what they chose and you should respect your business at the very least as much as you want your team to.

Here’s a quote from the Harvard Business Review, June 2004 p59

"Jack Welch realized that what needed to be done at General Electric when he took over as chief executive was not the overseas expansion HE WANTED to launch. It was getting rid of businesses that, no matter how profitable, could not be number one or number two in their industries."

Today be conscious of the choices you make when deciding what to work on.

Are you picking tasks based on what you want or are you picking your activities based on what your company needs from you?

If you pick the most important task to work on first you’ll be more effective, your company will be more profitable, and you’ll be able to work less so you can actually pick fun things to do outside of work instead of the poor substitutes you’ve been using to fill your work days.

So remember – it’s not what you want to do – it’s what your business needs done.

To Increased Effectiveness,

Rich Schefren

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It’s Monday, we’ve all got lots to do today, and this is an
important – but lengthy message, so I’ll just get right to it.

In order to assist you in developing the habit of effectiveness
today, I’m going to teach you the way habits are formed and a
personal strategy of mine for installing new habits faster and
more certain to last than any other method or strategy that I
know.

But before I get way ahead of myself, Let me remind you about
timekeeper. Don’t forget to continue using timekeeper, And if
for some strange reason (like self-sabotage) you haven’t gone
to get it – please do so right now:

http://www.crypto-central.com/html/timekeeper.html

Some of you have already sent me your time logs – Very
Impressive! it’s really important to maintain your momentum
right now.

Here’s why:

It’s critical to remember that effectiveness is not inborn.

Just like each and every one of us had to learn to tie our
shoelaces, and there was no one born knowing how to do it -
Every effective entrepreneur had to learn to be effective.
And all of them had to practice the being effective until
it became a habit.

Along those lines… What is the #1 habit for effectiveness
that you must develop?

Here’s what Peter Drucker had to say:

"Effective entrepreneurs do not start with their tasks. They
start with their time. And they do not start out planning. THEY START BY FINDING OUT WHERE THEIR TIME ACTUALLY GOES. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back on unproductive usages of their time"

Don’t you see that you need a program like timekeeper to
follow Peter Drucker’s advice? So keep on it!

Alright, let’s get to the main point of today’s message.

I don’t talk about it much, but before I opened my chain
of hypnosis I traveled all over learning from the best
NLP and Hypnosis teachers in the world. I was certified
in NLP by Richard Bandler himself, the creator of NLP and
the man who taught it to Tony Robbins. I studied with
Robert Dilts, Michael Hall, and basically every big name
out there.

I am telling you this because I want you to
know that when I share my understandings with you it’s not
some crack pot idea I just developed, it actually was more
than likely a concept I was taught by a master.

Anyway, NLP has a great model on how learning a new skill
takes place. Once you understand the model, you can leverage
it to install new habits rapidly.

Pay careful attention here,
first I’ll explain it, then give you examples to make it
easier to understand, then I’ll show you how to use it for
your own advantage.

Learning a new skills is divided into four stages

Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence. This is where you don’t
know how to do something and you don’t even know that you don’t know.

Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence. This is where you now
know all the different things you don’t know and
you begin to work on learning them.

Stage 3 – Conscious Competence. This is where you now know
what you need to know, you can do the skills
necessary, but it takes all of your concentration.

Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence. This is where you can now
do the skills necessary without thinking about it, it’s now a habit.

OK, now let me give you two examples of how this work in
your life.

First, learning the alphabet…

Stage 1 – There was a time when you were very little that you
didn’t even know that there was 26 letters in the alphabet.
Therefore, you didn’t know what you didn’t know – hence you are
unconsciously incompetent

Stage 2 – Next you learned there was an alphabet, that there
were 26 letters, but you didn’t know them all – therefore you
knew what you didn’t know – hence you are consciously incompetent.

Stage 3 – Then you finally learned the letters, you learned
the song too – but when you needed to write a word you had to
really concentrate on writing each letter hence you are consciously
competent.

Stage 4 – Now, when you write a word or a note, you don’t even
think about what the difference is between the letter
d and b, you can write without even thinking about it hence you
are unconsciously competent.

Just to make sure you really get it, let’s take a look at driving
a car, because I bet there still might be parts of the driving
skill set that you have not become consciously competent in.

Driving a car…

Stage 1 – There was a time that you were not aware of
everything that was involved in driving – you didn’t
know there was a gas pedal, break pedal and maybe
a clutch too, hence you were unconsciously incompetent.

Stage 2 – Next you started to learn about driving – you read
the book – your parents explained what they were doing
while they were driving, you asked questions and got
answers and you started trying to drive yourself
(supervised, of course) and you realized you had a lot
to learn, hence you were consciously incompetent.

Stage 3 – After practicing, studying, and really getting out
and driving, you could do it, but you had to really
concentrate when driving – you weren’t ready yet to
turn on the radio, talk on the cell phone and drive
all at the same time – you had to focus and
concentrate, hence you were consciously competent.

Stage 4 – Lastly you drove enough so that it became automatic,
you no longer really need to think about what you
needed to do, you just did it – you can have the
radio on and drive well automatically – you were now
unconsciously competent at driving.

But here’s the interesting part – are you unconsciously
competent at parallel parking?

In other words can you parallel park with the music on and
talking on the cell phone?

Most people cannot – they haven’t
parallel parked enough times in a condensed period of time to
have the skill become unconscious – therefore they are
consciously competent – they can parallel park but they have to
turn down the music, stop talking and start
concentrating on the parking job ahead.

It’s really important that you realize what the parallel parking
example means to your pursuit to become unconsciously competent
at being effective. It means simply being effective from time to
time won’t really help you in establishing the habit.

So, to install habits in the quickest manner – what you need to
do is to know which stage you are in and then focus on what you
need to do to move to the next stage.

Taking a look at effectiveness – understand that more than likely
right now you are unconsciously incompetent – that there is still
parts to being highly effective that you simply don’t know.

Therefore your initial goal is to become aware of what really
makes up effective behavior – (i.e. keep reading my messages).

This will help you transition to stage 2.

In stage 2 you now know the activities that make someone effective
but you don’t really know yet how to do it yourself – So you keep
learning and you apply what you learn in these messages.

Next stage 3, you’ve been keeping up with the recommended activities
and you now can be highly effective but you must consciously choose
the behavior and you must do so consistently and often (remember
the parallel parking example?).

If you practice all the effective behaviors consistently and work
on doing them without even thinking about it – you will pass on to
stage 4 where you are now unconsciously competent – your are
effective by habit, which should be your goal as an entrepreneur.

For now on, when you want to condition a new habit – understand
which stage you are in and what you’ll need to do to go to the
next stage – it’s simple, although not always easy.

With that – make sure you are keep current in reading these notes,
and make sure you keep tracking your time.

To Your Effectiveness,

Rich Schefren

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Being strategic and effective is all about getting the
right things done.

In order to become a strategic entrepreneur
you will need to build the habit of effectiveness. No one is
born effective – I repeat – it’s not an inborn trait, so…
if you never worked on developing the skill of effectiveness
you are not as effective as you could be or should be.

Therefore to build the habit of effectiveness you’ll need to
practice (consistent practice leads to powerful habits) the
five skill sets I laid out for you in the last post.

While the 5 skill sets above are all easy to understand,
they aren’t so easy to do well. In other words, you will
have to build and develop them (they don’t appear like
magic), just like you’ve learned how to do anything else
important in your life. You need to continually practice
over and over again until these five skill sets become
"The Way" you automatically go about doing your work.

Next week I’ll breaking down in detail how learning and
developing habits go hand in hand and the key distinctions
you must understand to be successful.

If you’ve been keeping up, today should be day 3 of your
time log. Is it getting easier? It should be by now, and
you should also start seeing how much time you’ve been
spending on tasks and activities other than your top
priorities.

Scary, isn’t it?

Just keep up the good work, make sure that you spend as
little time (none would be best) multitasking as possible.

Stay focused on one task at a time. It’ll be easier to
record, and its the work process of highly effective
entrepreneurs.

So just keep recording, keep focused and notice your
patterns, make today a super-productive day.

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So, did you take action on the last post?

Were you more effective because of the 5 minute exercise
you did?

If so, keep up the good work – If not, why not?

Did you not follow through?
Did you pick the wrong activity?
Did you not do the exercise?

Remember, in everything you do, whether good or bad,
strive for clarity!

Yesterday I promised I would share with you what I
believe to be the five skills necessary in order to
be an strategic entrepreneur.

The five skills are:

1 – Managing Your Time

2 – Focusing Your Efforts On Important Results

3 – Making Your Strengths Productive

4 – Concentrating Your Efforts On Those Activities
That Are Most Important To The Results You Desire

5 – Making Effective & Strategic Decisions

The 2 core skills – (#1) Managing Your Time and (#4)
Connecting your Efforts On Whats Really Important,
determine how strategic and effective you, the entrepreneur
really are.

You can get more of every resource except for time.

Time
is your most constricting resource – so time management
is critical to getting the right things done.

So, step one (and the basis for your assignment today)
is to get really clear about where your time goes and then
doing whats necessary to eliminate those tasks and
activities that waste your time and the time of those who
work for or with you.

Your assignment for today:

(1) Go to the link below:
http://www.crypto-central.com/html/timekeeper.html

(2) Download TimeKeeper and start using it.

(3) Use the billing code to represent the different roles or
areas of responsibility you currently have.

(4) Use the software for the next 7 days you are working.

(5) Print a weekly time report and email it to me before
our next one on one call.

Why I recommend TimeKeeper…

If you work in front of your computer and you’ve never
attempted to work in a focused manner on the activities that
are most important, then simply having the software will
improve your productivity all by itself. But the real benefits
will be next week when we get a clear picture of how you are
currently spending your most precious resource – YOUR TIME!

Don’t delay get the software now, and start using it today.

You’ll thank me later – I promise.

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There are lots of entrepreneurs who are quite knowledgeable;
however, effective entrepreneurs are much, much rarer.

Yet
it is the effective entrepreneur who succeeds in building
successful businesses.

As an entrepreneur, you and your company make no money for
simply knowing. You make money and build your business by
getting the right things done.

How to decide what are the right things and how to get
them done will be the primary focus of your upcoming
ProfitNotes.

By highlighting both "what to do" and "how to do it" you’ll
learn (if you follow my lead and spend the few minutes each
day these emails require) what you do well, what you need to
improve on, what you are currently doing poorly and shouldn’t
be doing at all.

You’ll learn where you belong in your business, your niche and
your market.

Your first assignment:

(1) Take out a sheet of paper or open up a blank mindmap.

(2) Spend 3 minutes brainstorming what you believe are the
skill-sets an entrepreneur must have to be effective.

(3) Take 1 minute and rate your current level of performance
in these areas.

(4) Spend 30 seconds highlighting the areas you believe are
your biggest roadblocks to success.

(5) Take 2 minutes to answer this questions "What could you
do today (realistically) to be more effective?"

(6) Do the one thing you just decided would make you more
effective today.

That’s it for now, in the next post I’ll tell you what I believe are
the 5 skills every entrepreneur must develop to maximize their
effectiveness and truly be a Strategic Entrepreneur.

But for today, make sure to do one thing new or different that
you believe will make you more effective.

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