The Importance of A Daily Routine for Your Business

I previously discussed my morning routine in a few of my other posts. That was primarily focused on having a good start to the day, the morning routine – that which I do first thing when arising in the morning.

Here I am referring to the importance of a daily routine for those activities that generate income for your business. Or those that are leading in that direction, if you’re not yet making money.

Mindset First

Even though we’re now speaking of the Daily Method of Operation (or DMO for short), you still start it out with mindset / personal development. This reminds you of why you are doing business, and how your connecting with people is all about helping them. It keeps you working on your own personal improvement and, let’s face it, we can all stand to improve in something. It gets you in a mental frame of mind for all of the other activities you will be doing.

Many people like to exercise just before starting the DMO as it gets the blood flowing to the brain better. I will start doing this after I have lost some of my excess weight and gotten firmly on track with my weight loss plan. Right now I am saving my willpower for sticking to the food plan.

We all have so much going on in our lives that we need this mindframe adjustment.

I often find myself pondering all the different aspects of my life and feeling like they don’t go together, do you ever feel like this? The feeling is usually brief, but I realize my memories of the various things I have done is the only thing showing that these were all the same person doing this. Or technically, not the same person, if you want to get into a discussion about the age of brain cells.

Back to the mindset. Pardon the diversion.

The routine / DMO I have been taught starts out with 15 minutes of personal development. It could be reading an inspiring book, watching videos from one of the great inspirational speakers, listening to audios, or reviewing your notes of something you watched previously. I would say 15 minutes is a minimum, take more time if you have it available. Don’t be in a hurry to get through the video but stop and take notes of things that you can share with others to help them, or that are helping you as well.

This part of the routine is not something you can or should skip. I know it’s tempting when you have a limited time, but you can fit in 15 minutes surely?

My favorite videos for the mindset / personal development are from Bob Proctor, but I have also watched Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and Eric Worre, and there are recordings of Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale, and Jim Rohn that I am going to be using as well.

This is not a time to be doing your training on business techniques but you can and should do this every day whenever possible too.

Part 2: Connecting with people

The most important part of the DMO or business routine, in terms of actually generating the revenue, is to reach out and connect with people. By “connect” I mean that you are actually conversing with people. This could take various forms, such as private messages on Facebook or other social media, Zoom or other teleconference programs, on the telephone or in-person meetings (hopefully you’re not doing a lot of the last under current circumstances).

The connections, as I am learning to count them for my daily goals, are when I ask someone if they are open to taking a look at what business I am working with, or any phone conversation with a prospect.

Here you are discussing with prospects or potential customers or team associates, what it is they are seeking, what are their circumstances and you are asking questions to determine what their needs or pains are. Then you will know if your product or opportunity is a good match. All through this process you need to be friendly and engaging, and genuinely listening to what the person is saying. Not in a hurry to get to your next question.

At the same time, you are working on a business, and you don’t want to spend too much time with people who aren’t going to be a good fit. (This depends on the nature of your business and degree of connection with the person – this rule definitely doesn’t apply to people in your warm market – personal friends and close family – as you are cultivating close relationships with them and you need to be more patient with them).

I will write another article about the prospecting process in more detail, but for now I will just say that you want to end every conversation with a question, usually either an open-ended question or one that gives two choices. This is a way to direct the conversation without trying to control the other person. If you’re not familiar with the term, an open-ended question is one that starts with the words Who, What, Why, When, How, and similar words. These questions allow the person more freedom to open up in their answers, and encouraging them to open up is a big part of what prospecting is all about.

I should add that I have had to work on asking these types of questions, as I have had the bad habit for most of my life of mainly asking Yes/No questions, which often don’t strike into the issue and turn the conversation awkward, or lead it in the wrong direction.

Until last week I was only connecting with people on Facebook and LinkedIn. And in private messages on Social Media there is a big downside – after you ask the question it could be quite a while before you get a response. Days or even months later.

One way to avoid this is to mainly focus on people who you see are currently active on the platform. With Facebook, for instance, if you have the messaging window opened up then you see, on the right side of the screen, a bunch of your friends with green dots next to their names. That indicates they are currently active (or it could be they just left Facebook open when they went to bed – I’ve done that plenty of times).

I mentioned these connections are where you make the money – but it’s not the whole process. The next step is just as important.

Create content that appeals to your target audience

You don’t need to create content every day if your time is limited. My sponsor, a man who is very experienced with online marketing, says 3 times a week is plenty if you are on Facebook. Keeping it to that number is a good way to manage your time if you don’t have much to put into this.

The idea is to do a post, send an email, upload a video, something that people you are connected with will see and will want to be actively engaged with. On Facebook, they come on your posts and like and comment, perhaps even share to their friends, groups, or to their own profile. In email, they click on a link if they like what they are seeing and engage with the video or website you have sent them.

This is so important. Many people think the way to make money in sales in just to post their link.

This is a BIG mistake!

You need to offer free value content so people can see that you are not just helping them in order to make money. They have to see you are a good source and an authority in your area. You need to posting the types of content that people like to engage with so that more people see your post.

All of these things apply to a blog, of course, like the one I am writing for right now.

Your content helps people to know, like, and trust you, and then because of that personal connection they will want to buy from you, and not from someone else who is promoting the same product that they didn’t feel that connection with.

I have found no content gives that personal connection better than making videos. You can also have it by commenting and liking other people’s content, and having the two of you go back and forth doing that for a while. But the video is more personal. A Live video is even better, and an in-person voice conversation beats even that.

I didn’t get much into what is content when you talk to someone on the phone. With the leads I have purchased they previously visited a website and filled out information, and if they make it through the first call to an email or an appointment for a second call then those will be the content.

So you’ve connected with people, you’ve added content, what else do you need to do daily?

Expand Your Reach

You need to expand your reach, or your audience every day as well. This could be getting new subscribers to a newsletter, new friends on Facebook, new people you’ve spoken with on the phone. Or views of videos, comments on posts from new people you haven’t connected with.

One thing I am doing is adding 10 friends a day. I also approve most of the friend requests that other people send to me.

One of my mentors does not recommend adding friends but rather engaging on their content so that they will want to add you, so this is something I am working on doing now.

You have a limit of 5000 friends but if you are engaging with your friends regularly you will not need to get close to this limit to have a lot of reach with your posts on Facebook. I have been told 2000 friends is plenty. I am just about to cross the 1000 friend threshold which means I am halfway there.

The Power Hour

This is a popular term – the power hour is when you are supposed to be doing this whole complete process in 1 hour. I have struggled with getting my time down this much. It still takes me longer to make my connections.

The Power Hour is a good way of saying, here are the most important revenue-generating activities you need to do every day, and you can do them all in one hour. Very good concept for people working a business part-time.

I just have to work at getting faster at doing it myself. Focusing on one thing at a time is a big key.

You can easily get distracted on Facebook. I find writing down what I am going to do ahead of opening Facebook really helps me. It is so tempting to respond to a message write away, or scroll down the timeline right away, or watch a friend’s video, but these are not part of the Power Hour, as I have learned that term. They are things you can sneak in a little bit at a time, throughout the day, however. Still important to do.

Daily Method of Operation – part of running a business

You need to have your daily method of operation, and be consistent about it.

You would do that for a job, so make sure you are doing it in your business too.

I hope you have found this information to be helpful.