The Ninja MarketerS Blog

Friday, February 02, 2024

Are you ready to be a coach?

You all know the story of how I started my online business...or at least you should. I've shared it repeatedly! And while it may have started just as a way to bring in some extra income, once I discovered how to build a network marketing team online, I was hooked.

As time went on, I began mentoring other members of my team. I’d teach them the basics of social media marketing and how to set up their online business. Then I began working with marketers from other companies. I even promoted their products to my mailing list if I thought they were good quality.

But when a friend suggested that I might be a good business coach. frankly...I was shocked. I’d never considered becoming a coach. I’d assumed I wasn’t qualified enough to be one. But my friend shared several important facts with me:

You Don’t Have to Be Spammy to Coach

When it comes to coaching, some people have an idea of a sales page filled with a coach who shows off her mansion, expensive sports car, and exclusive lifestyle. She tosses phrases about like “seven figure” or “eight figure” and promises you the exact same results if you’ll only hire her.

But what you might not know is that there are plenty of business coaches who run modest businesses. They live in suburbs and they make enough to afford the lifestyle they want.

They don’t have fancy sales pages but they do believe in what they’re doing. They don’t guarantee that you’ll achieve the same things if you follow their advice but they do promise to support you on your journey.

You Can Have Fun Coaching

When I imagined coaching, I’d always thought about coaching executives in stuffy suits and having to talk about how to add dollars to the company’s bottom line. This type of situation bored me to tears and I didn’t want to do anything like that.

You can design a coaching program that feels fun to you. Maybe you’ll agree to meet your client on Zoom once a week for casual chats. Perhaps you’ll use Facebook Live videos to stay in touch inside a private group while your dogs lay "quietly" beside you.

You May Already Be Coaching

As my friend continued to talk, I became excited. I realized I was already coaching and had been for years! I just hadn’t put it out there by calling it “coaching”. Now though, I felt more confident about the idea of coaching.

Some people are natural teachers. If you are, you might be like me. You may already be coaching others. Maybe you call it “mentoring” or “teaching” or “consulting”. But many of these activities involve coaching in some capacity. Owning this is the first step toward starting your own coaching business.

Keep in mind that there’s no right or wrong way to coach. It’s just a matter of discovering your coaching style and energy while providing a supportive environment for your clients.

Ready to learn how to build your coaching business? Let's chat!

Sunday, January 21, 2024

What if you were confident?

As the poor girl from the wrong side of town, with parents who didn't quite fit the acceptable "norm", I was bullied...a lot. If not bullied, then ignored. It also didn't help that I was a nerd before nerds were cool. So needless to say, my self-confidence was not great.

Even after leaving home and excelling in my Navy career, I still suffered from a lack of confidence. And it impacted my day-to-day life. I missed out on lots of things because I was afraid to try. I didn't want to look silly in front of others if I failed.

I would often remark about the things I would do if I were more confident. I would say, “If I were more confident, I’d take up salsa dancing. If I felt good about myself, I’d wear shorts during the summer. If I were more athletic, I’d learn to water ski.”

One day as I was thinking about all of the things I wasn’t, it hit me. “What if you were?” I thought. “What if you are confident? What if you do feel good about yourself? What if you are already smart?”

“Maybe, what’s holding you back isn’t what you are, only what you think you aren’t.”

Why Is It Hard to Change?

Often we let a lack of self-confidence hold us back from pursuing our goals, building authentic relationships, and loving ourselves unconditionally. But what if you flipped the script? What if you stopped waiting for confidence and instead embraced it as yours?

It’s easy to create self-limiting beliefs. Most people do it every day without realizing it. These are the stories you tell yourself about why you’re settling for less than what you want. Some of the stories might sound good or even noble. But it doesn’t change the fact they’re not true.

What Story Are You Telling Yourself?

The key to becoming more confident is to ask yourself what story you’re telling. Is it really true you can’t be a sexy woman if you have three kids and a mortgage? Is it true to say it’s too late to get your GED and go to college?

If you were honest with yourself, you’d admit that these stories aren’t the problem. They’re masking a deeper issue like fear, loneliness, or rejection. Confronting the heart of the matter will make it easier for you to walk in newfound confidence.

What If You Just Went for It?

Sometimes, the best way to overcome fear and increase your confidence is to do something bold. Do it before you feel confident. Do it before you feel spontaneous. Do it before you feel like you’re ready.

When you challenge yourself to do things before you feel prepared, you experience new adventures. You grow in exciting ways. You discover parts of your personality that you didn’t know you had.

Why Not Make a List?

Create a list of things you always tell yourself you’ll do when you’re “ready”. For example, you keep saying you’ll go on a cruise as soon as you lose the last twenty pounds. Except you’ve been “losing” those pounds for three years now.

Each New Year’s, you promise yourself you’ll go back to school so you can get out of the job you hate and start doing work that matters to you. But you haven’t made the time to fill out the local college’s placement test.

Take Action

Once you have your list, don’t file it away! Pick one thing on it and take action right now. Call a travel agent and get information on upcoming cruises. Talk to your college about scheduling an appointment for the placement testing.

Stop waiting for confidence and embrace the now. Be your beautiful, bold, confident self!

Monday, December 11, 2023

Evaluating How You Use Your Time

Tracking your time for clients is a good practice for service providers. But don’t stop by just tracking it for clients. You should also be tracking time for your own personal use, too. When you do this, you’ll discover important insights about your business that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Here are a few questions you’ll want to ask after you’ve been tracking your time for a week or two…

Where Is My Time Really Going?

You’ve been working on launching your e-course for two months and you’re still nowhere near ready. But when you open up your time tracking app, you can quickly see that you spent 14 hours on Facebook or 9 hours tweaking the design of your website.

It’s easy to procrastinate when you don’t have any form of accountability. But a time tracker forces you to look at how you’ve been spending your time. This isn’t about shaming yourself.

Instead, focus on being positive. You might say, “I spent ten hours on Facebook last week. What projects would I like to invest those ten hours into this week?”

Are These Tasks Giving Me a BIG Return?

You had a business coach tell you to make 10 Instagram posts each day and you’ve been following that advice faithfully. But when you stop and look at how you’ve spent this time, ask yourself, “Is this task giving me a BIG return?”

If you aren’t getting a good return on the time you’re investing, consider moving your attention to a project that will grow your business, like launching a course or hosting a webinar.

Do These Tasks Have to Be Done by Me?

Some digital business owners get bogged down in doing non-essential tasks that keep them from their important work. For example, if you’re a best-selling author then your most important work is writing that next book. But instead, you’re spending hours every week managing your Facebook group.

But what if you could outsource your community management? You could still pop in daily to stay connected to the group but you could focus all of your energy on that one thing you do well—writing your books.

Is This Task Draining Me?

As you’re reviewing your time tracking, think about how you feel after you’ve completed each task. Did you feel energized and motivated after filming that Facebook Live broadcast? Did you feel frustrated and drained after working on your sales copy?

Pay special attention to tasks that take your energy. Try to find a way to avoid doing them. For example, you could hire a copywriter to handle your sales page or if your budget is tight, consider bartering with another service provider. Then you’ll both get to work in areas where you shine!

If you want to create more of what you want in your business and your life, tracking your time is important. The more you track your time, the better you’ll be able to manage it.

Sunday, December 03, 2023

Staying on track: scheduling and planning tasks

One of the best ways to stay organized and keep on track with your projects is to create a monthly plan. Your monthly plan can be filled with notes about when to do your various tasks so you can smooth out your workflow (no more rushing to write that blog post at the last minute!). Here are a few pointers to get you started…

Make a List of Recurring Tasks

Take some time to think about what recurring tasks you have to do each week. Do you log in to your blog and delete spam comments? Do you schedule your social media content including videos and pictures?

There may also be tasks you only do once a month for clients—like backing up your website or assigning work to other team members. Add these tasks to your list, too so you won’t forget them.

Schedule Recurring Tasks

Now that you know what you have to do each week or month, make space for it on your calendar. You can use a physical or digital calendar, depending on what you prefer. Digital calendars do give you a slight advantage since you can set reminder alerts so you never forget an important task again.

As you are filling up your calendar, think about how long each task will take and build in some buffer time. For example, if you think you can write a blog post in twenty minutes, give yourself sixty instead. Now, you have extra time if you realize you need to research a fact or interview a source.

Create a Checklist

Some recurring tasks may be big and complex. Maybe you’re an Amazon seller that needs to upload products to your website. There’s a whole list of things you have to do to make this happen—you need to upload the product to Amazon S3, add it to aMember, set up a form in aMember, create a pickup page in WordPress, add the official sales page to the website, create an autoresponder series, etc.

With all of these tasks, it’s hard to know where to start. Use a checklist to help you stay organized. The next time you’re doing this task, note down every step you have to take along the way. Now, doing this task in the future will be easy since you just have to open your checklist and get to work.

When you schedule recurring tasks on your calendar, you’ll be more likely to remember them. You’ll also feel less stress since you know exactly what to do to stay on track each month.

Thursday, April 13, 2023

tracking time for your personal use

Hey all my busy entrepreneurs...

Do you sometimes find yourself in a funk and don't feel you're as productive as you could be?

I have felt like that frequently the past few months. At a friend’s urging, I began using a time tracker. I was amazed to see how much time I was filling with minor tasks (like checking Facebook on my phone and surfing Pinterest).

If you haven’t done it before, you should try tracking your time, too. The results can be surprising and like me, you may discover you could be far more productive…

Take 2 Weeks

Think of time tracking like a budget. Your hours are your dollars. By tracking them you can see where your money (in this case your time) is really going. Then you can make adjustments to your schedule depending on what you learn.

Plan to spend at least two weeks tracking your time. If you only track your time for a day or two, you’re not going to get a complete picture of what your habits and routines really look like. This can lead you to under-estimate the time you need to do certain tasks (like finish a big project).

Do Quick Check-Ins

Tracking your time doesn’t have to be all-consuming. Instead, you can check-in with yourself 3-4 times a day to make a note of what you’ve been doing. A good idea is to plan to check-in after every meal. This gives you a chance to think about what you’ve done and what you plan to do in the coming hours.

Record everything no matter what. You wouldn’t splurge on a huge purchase then not budget it. This could lead to financial errors and other problems. It’s the same concept with your time. Acknowledge how you’ve spent it, even if you’re not proud of it.

Use a Physical Notebook

There are dozens of time trackers online. These can be useful when you have to track time for client projects. But it’s not so great when you’re tracking your personal time. If you go to record your time and find yourself distracted by social media or emails, you could definitely benefit from using a physical notebook instead.

Make It Fun

When I started time tracking, I asked a friend to join me. Together we both began tracking our time. I have to admit it was pretty boring at first. But then Kevin suggested that instead of sharing our logs, we take selfies and send them to each other instead.

It made the experience more enjoyable and kept both of us focused on being productive. You can do the same thing—send a quick selfie to a private Instagram account or text each other throughout the day for a visual record of how you’ve spent your time. Decide on a set schedule so you're not texting each other every hour...unless you want to!

Look over Your Log

After you’re done with tracking your time, plan to have a review session the next day. Look over your logs and make notes about what you’d like to change now. Do you want to spend more time with your family? Would you prefer to cut out Facebook and use that hour to work on eating healthier meals?

Time tracking can be a great way to see where you’re spending it well and where you can make some improvements. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself becoming more intentional with how you spend your hours!

Thursday, March 23, 2023

The 4 Best Tools for Time Tracking

Time tracking is a great way to ensure that projects stay on track while giving your clients peace of mind. But manually tracking it yourself can be difficult. It’s hard to remember to do it every time you start working on a project, leading to inaccurate time estimates.

The solution is simple: stop tracking your time yourself. Instead, use a tool that monitors your time use for you. Then you can simply review it at the end of each day and make sure it’s accurate. Here are a few of the best apps and software for your time tracking needs…


Account Sight

Account Sight allows you to track time for 5 clients and 5 projects. The great thing about this site is that it integrates with PayPal and QuickBooks. This means that you can easily track your time, invoice your clients, and update your earnings with just a few clicks. There’s both a free version and a paid upgrade that unlocks additional features that you may want to use.

Toggl

Toggl makes it easy to see where your time is going at a glance. You can color code clients and projects, which turn into colorful charts and graphs. It also integrates with other productivity tools like Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and more.

Toggl has a free version that you can use for as long as you want. If you choose to upgrade, you’ll probably do it for access to the accounting features so you easily invoice clients and track your profits.

Rescue Time

Rescue Time is another app for your time tracking. It works differently than most tools. With Rescue Time, the program tracks what websites and apps you use throughout the day. It then gives you a productivity score each evening.

The cool thing about Rescue Time is that you can set specific activities to be categorized as “productive” or “distracting”. This can be helpful if you’re frequently on Facebook to update a client’s group or page. You can simply set Facebook to “productive” so your daily score is accurate. The app has both a free and a premium option if you want more in-depth tracking.

Trigger

Trigger is an app that combines the power of time tracking with project management, resulting in robust software that lets you see at a glance what you need to do each day to stay on track with your projects.

Along with time sheets, you can use Trigger for online reports and automated invoices. It also integrates with Freshbooks, Zapier, Basecamp, Slack and more. You can get started with a free account but it’s limited to just 5 projects, so you may need to upgrade to a premium account later on.

Don’t get discouraged if the first app or software doesn’t seem to fit your needs. It can take a few weeks of testing out different apps until you find the one that works best for you and your business.

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

How i track time for my clients

One thing I have noticed is that often it’s hard for clients to understand exactly what I am doing. They paid me for ten hours of social media help but they don’t know what they purchased unless I tell them. At the end of the month, it’s hard to validate the money they’re paying since they aren’t sure what happened with it.

Here are some things I recommend to improve your time tracking for clients. These have all been very beneficial to helping my clients understand exactly what they get when they hire me.

Start with a Regular Report

Every week, I send a brief email to my client and let them know what I did. If you decide to do the same, don’t say something vague like, “I spent three hours on your social media.” That doesn’t give the client an idea of what you were doing.

Instead, provide relevant details. One recent report for a client included things like "one hour spent uploading 15 posts to your social media scheduler. Then I researched popular Pinterest group boards. I followed the rules of each board then pinned your latest blog post so you can get more Pinterest traffic. I also updated the branding for your Facebook fan page with the new logo we discussed.”

Measure Results

After you share what you did, include any metrics that might be helpful. For example, I wrote a new blog post that resulted in two big sales for the above client. I was sure to mention that in my week’s report.

Keep in mind that the results you measure should match the client’s goal. If the client’s goal is to become a social media influencer, then mention that their new video tweet got 103 RTs and 1.5K views on Instagram. If you’re not clear on what your client’s goal is, you need to talk with them. Figure out what it is they’re looking for and develop a strategy to help them achieve it.

Schedule a Review

As a service provider, you want to make sure that you’re spending your time on projects that matter to your client. It’s smart to request a 15-minute call every month. You and your client can use this time to review what you’ve been doing.

I prefer face-to-face time with some clients and so will schedule a monthly meeting. We might meet for lunch or coffee and then spend some time actually looking at their social media accounts and discussing what has been done and the results we are seeing.

This monthly review ensures that you and your client are working toward the same goal. Your client might see what you’re working on and say, “Yes, do more of that please!” or they might say, “No, I want to change direction on this project.”

Tracking Your Time is Good

It’s not just clients who benefit from your time tracking—you do, too! Even if you’re doing an unpaid internship or bartering with someone, track your time.

Plotting how long it took you to complete a task can be helpful so you know how much time to budget for future projects. For example, I write fairly quickly and was only budgeting 30 minutes to write a blog post. But that is for my own topics. I discovered that when I am trying to write for a client it often takes longer. Once I realized this, I began to block off a full 60 minutes so I can write without feeling rushed or frazzled.

Take my advice. Email your clients a weekly report. Your clients will appreciate it and and you should start getting more repeat jobs. And this will enable you to spend less time marketing your business and more time doing what you love — serving your clients.

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