Feb
19
More Hours By Tomorrow
Today, I want to talk about time.
I went to see Seth Godin on Tuesday. (Thank you, Julie from Women Unlimited! Well, thank you, Julie’s son, who picked my name, clever boy.) It was an hour of presentation and then two hours of Q & A. I asked a question.
(Side note: If you find yourself in an auditorium with a guy who wrote a book on being remarkable and you’re too short to get noticed, I highly recommend removing your shoe and waving it around in the air.)
My question to Seth was this:
I won this ticket today, and when I told the people I knew about it, I got so many emails from people saying, “Seth? Oh my God, I LOVE him! He always answers my emails, even the stupid ones.”
You’ve got the blog and you’ve got Tribes and you’ve got book readers and you’ve got people just writing to ask for help. How do you find the time?”
His answer? He doesn’t watch TV and he doesn’t go to meetings. Frees up about six hours. He says he answers about 200 emails a day, which over the course of the year equals a little over 70,000 emails.
Frankly, I was kinda hoping he had a staff of 16. Then I wouldn’t have to feel so damn guilty.
I’ve been trying to do the right things. I set up AwayFind, which has been a little bit of HOLY-CRAP-THIS-IS-AWESOME. (Send an email to naomi@ittybiz.com to see how it works — super cool.) I’ve got The Lovely Jess, who is saving my life, one day at a time. Jesus Christ, I pay money to a PROFESSIONAL NAG. (You can’t make this shit up, people.)
But I can’t get it all done the way it is right now.
So I’m on IM with Dave — we’re doing a new hush-hush thing together and we do this every day under the guise of business development — and I’m complaining about it. He says something along the lines of, “Did you or did you not receive a free review copy of every product I sell?”
(He, by the way, gets up at five every morning to do this and manages to be both chipper and intelligent in the process. I am sitting there bleary eyed and whining at ten.)
I’m like, “Well, yeah.”
He’s like, “And do you know what they’re about?”
It’s early, so it’s taking me a minute. “Um, time management?”
And then I realize, HOLY FUCK! I do have every product he sells! And they’re about time management! Which I suck at!
So I took a look. A long look. Like, a really long look. (OK, I took such a long look that I had Jamie’s poor wine-addled laptop going for so long that I burned myself on it. Real burn, blister and all.)
And I thought I’d tell you about them.
Why am I telling you? Because I don’t need the money.
When you read one of these reviews and buy a product, the reviewer gets a cut of the price. Some people give very honest reviews of stuff (Hunter and Michael are both very good, for example) but a lot of people lie because they’re desperate for the cash.
I don’t need your cash and I don’t give a shit what you buy, if anything.
I also understand that if you are not reaching your goals, you don’t have the time to read The World’s Most Comprehensive Review so I’ll just tell you what you need to know and let you get on with your day.
What’s Holding You Back? is an ebook about stopping your stupid mental shit from holding you back. It is long. 172 pages long. And it’s $12.95. (I’ll tell you right now, you’re never going to see me giving you 172 pages for $12.95.)
What I loved:
The chapter on distraction. The worksheets. (Accountability, baby!) The real life examples. The way he very gently tells you that YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG but then gives you nice, easy ways to fix it. Plus, it’s thirteen bucks, for God’s sake.
What I loved less:
It’s long. I probably would’ve liked to use a printer. Considering the price of the book, I should’ve just bought a damn printer. But yeah, it’s long.
Becoming An Early Riser is probably my favorite. It’s extremely accessible, cheap, and insanely practical. It’s about making a couple of tiny changes and capitalizing on your momentum to make monumental change. You don’t have to go to a three thousand dollar seminar, you just have to do a few things and you’re rocking. (Plus, Dave is on IM with me at 5 o’clock every morning. He obviously knows his shit.)
What I loved:
Bite sized chunks, baby. When I bought the Frank Kern thing, my biggest complaint was the size. I am a busy person. I do not have time to sit down and watch a 90 minute video. Dave has arranged this into mini-lessons that you can listen to all in one shot if you’re a keener, or you can just do two, four, eight minutes at a time. On the train, in the car, while the baby’s emptying your purse. (Not that I’ve done that or anything.) And it’s TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS. I am taking a forty minute train ride later and that is going to cost me $27. Let me tell you, I got a lot more value out of Becoming an Early Riser than I will out of that train ride.
What I loved less:
Frankly, there really wasn’t anything in this I didn’t love. In order to not leave this field blank, I’ll tell you that I hate ZIP files. I have a feeling that the industry is not going to change based on my dislike of the files in question, but I’m putting it out there to the universe anyway.
30 Hours A Day is for the people who are Very Serious About This Shit. This is not for the feint of heart. This is Dave telling you exactly how he does what he does. This is the last ten years of Dave’s life — the coaching programs and the books and the seminars — all packaged up in a way that makes sense. Without, you know, the coaching and the books and the seminars.
What I loved:
This is the real deal. This is not some “I’m short on cash so maybe I’ll make an e-product”. He lays it all out there. My favorite sections were “bulletproofing focus” and “managing interruptions”. (You can see where my weaknesses are, I’m guessing.)
What I didn’t love:
If you’re broke, you can’t afford this. (It’s $147.) If that’s the case, try Early Riser instead. Also, this shit requires commitment. You don’t just put on a CD and listen to it once as you drift off to a peaceful sleep. If you want to change your life, you’re the one doing the changing and no amount of audios or PDFs are going to do that work for you.
Never Procrastinate Again is a more specific program for people who don’t have vague time-related issues but are hard core procrastinators. You know who you are.
What I loved:
I’m going to rip this one straight from the sales-page-that’s-not-a-sales-page. “You won’t be told what to do (but not how to do it). I hate programs like that. That’s why I go into solid detail – and even show you by example in the video – so you can see how to apply these strategies in real life.”
You ever notice how you’re reading a book (generally written by an expert) and it says things like “Eliminate distraction” and you’re like, “THANK YOU, EINSTEIN, but do you want to tell me HOW?!?!?” (OK, maybe that’s just me.) Dave doesn’t do that. Also, it’s pretty cheap — $37.
What I didn’t love:
Procrastination specifically isn’t a big problem I have. I just don’t know how to focus. So this was the one I personally needed the least. I can’t tell you what was awesome and what was lukewarm because I’m not the target market for this product. But a lot of my clients have it and like it.
Dave is a member of the new-business generation. This means he gives great service and does not turn into an asshole if you want a refund or need support. So buying from Dave is unscary and risk free. This is one of the big reasons he’s my partner on several projects — he gets it.
So if you’re thinking you need a few more hours in the day to get your IttyBiz off the ground and tell your boss to go fuck himself, give Dave a shot.
All of his products are on his UnSale Page. (They’re not on sale, per se. Just the price is going up because he appears to have only just realized that his prices are the cheapest in the industry and that’s really dumb.)
Go. Now. Buy, don’t buy. But look and think, because YOUR TIME IS IMPORTANT and getting your shit together with time is the only way you’re going to break the chain.
