Renegade Millionaire Blog

The book titled “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy caught my attention so I downloaded it on my Kindle. Even better, Darren Hardy started in business as a real estate agent in California, so it’s easy to adopt his ideas for our businesses, because he has walked a similar path. Today he is the editor of Success Magazine.

The idea behind his book is that our daily actions can be compounded into an amazing life. However, we have to plan these daily actions and ensure they will lead us where we want to go. We cannot haphazardly go through each day. We have to make specific actions that will compound over time and we have to put a great deal of thought into these daily actions. This isn’t the case for most people. Most people go through each day following the same routine without thinking about compounding. From the book…

“The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What’s most interesting about this process to me is that,
even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don’t feel significant.”

Think about how an investment compounds overtime if the income is reinvested into new income-producing assets. Imagine what would happen if you applied this compounding strategy to what you do on a daily basis?

Here’s the formula you can use to compound your actions into an amazing life from the book:

“Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE”

Darren wrote about how one small change in your daily routine can have a very large ripple effect throughout your entire life. The cool part is that you can compound this ripple effect by being consistent with the new daily action.

“Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior
that over time becomes a habit.”

This means to change our lives we must examine our daily actions under a microscope. The reason why is because these daily actions are compounding whether we realize it or not. Go to Darren’s website at: http://www.thecompoundeffect.com and click on the “Free Resources” tab at the top. Now look for a worksheet titled “The Weekly Rhythm Register.” Download this worksheet and print it out.

I have started using this worksheet and have found it to be extremely helpful. On this worksheet, you can list the new actions you will take on a daily basis. More importantly, you can track each
day throughout the week to monitor if you’ve completed the new action, or not. Remember, the key is to compound these actions by being consistent. You cannot compound your money if you don’t reinvest the income generated on a consistent basis. The same thing applies with your daily actions.

NO CONSISTENCY = NO COMPOUNDING

This little worksheet will help you compound your daily actions because it helps you stay focused. You list the new daily habits you want to form and use this simple worksheet to track your progress.
You can list actions you want to take on a daily basis and actions you want to take on a weekly basis. As an example, you can list actions for…

People in your life (parents/spouse/kids)
- have dinner with my family each night
- date night with spouse each week

Your health (exercise/vitamins/nutrition)
- Eat less than 50 grams of net carbohydrates
- 30 minutes of weight training/cardio

Your business (lead generation/conversion)
- Set one new client appointment each day
- Generate 10 new leads each day
- Test new lead-generation advertisement each week
- Test new lead-conversion script each week

Self improvement
- Complete the Weekly Rhythm Register each day
- Read inspirational book – 30 minutes a day
- Journal or summarize ideas/lessons learned – daily

The best way to use this worksheet is to think about the goal you want to achieve and work backwards with your daily actions. Be very strategic about
what you do on a daily basis. One of the most important sentences from Darren’s book is:

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.”

Your business or income will not change in 2012, if you don’t change something you do every day.

In 2003, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Imagine the impact this must have had on every aspect of his life. Everything must have changed from this point forward. His life would never be the same. If you know someone who has fought, or is fighting cancer, you probably have an idea of how significant a “cancer” diagnosis is to every aspect of their lives.

Here is what Jobs accomplished AFTER his diagnosis:

2003 – iTunes
2006 – Apple TV
2007 – iPhone & iPhone “Apps”
2008 – MacBook Air
2010 – iPad
2011 – iCloud

If Jobs was able to spearhead all of this while battling pancreatic cancer, what might we accomplish?

It’s obvious that Jobs spoke the truth in his 2005 commencement speech:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Hopefully, you’re not fighting a life threatening illness and thinking of what Jobs accomplished while battling cancer may bring some perspective for what you might accomplish.

Additional Reading:

Infographic Highlighting Jobs Major Accomplishments

How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part One)

How Steve Jobs Transformed Apple (Part Two)

Over the years, I have tried to hammer home the importance of sending a newsletter to your database. In fact, in my Renegade Millionaire Strategies for Real Estate Agents book, I included an entire chapter that detailed how I structured my client newsletter. I didn’t just send any old newsletter. I copied the template for the highest circulating paid magazines. The idea was to look for commonalities and use these commonalities in my newsletter.

There are many reasons why you should send a newsletter to your database. I’ll summarize a few of them here:

1. To build and deepen your relationship with prospects, past clients and current clients
2. To lead generate for other sales opportunities (ex: promote an investment property)
3. To share great content that helps create expert positioning
4. To have fun and entertain
5. Market other businesses you own or affiliate programs for additional income (disclose all compensation)
6. To test different email subject lines to see which ones get opened the most (convert the best ones to headlines for your advertisements)
7. To share news articles, stories or videos that may help convert a prospect into a client
8. As a cool way to generate new leads through JV relationships with other businesses in your area

No matter how much I preach about the importance of newsletters, I cannot get agents to send them consistently. I guess newsletters are viewed as too much work. This is why I include a weekly email newsletter for my Master Marketer members. All they have to do is copy the newsletter and paste it into their email program and it’s done. I honestly view sending a newsletter as THE most important task for your business. It is more important than generating new leads.

In #8 above, I wrote that you can use your newsletter as a tool to generate new leads through JV relationships with other businesses in your area. The basic idea is that you promote other businesses in your newsletter. In turn, these businesses promote you to their database giving you access to their best customers. In reality, it’s a proactive referral program between you and the other business owner.

In my email newsletter template, I feature a banner advertisement at the top. This banner advertisement is simply a picture file format, like a JPEG. I create these banner advertisements on my computer and upload them into my email program. It’s pretty easy and very effective. Check out this screen capture video where I share exactly how to create a banner advertisement:

VIDEO (How to Create a Banner Advertisement)

In this video, I talk about creating banner advertisements for affiliate programs.

However, in this article, I’m suggesting you use banner advertisements to promote other businesses in your area. The basic idea is that you can create a banner advertisement for another business in your area. Include their logo, phone number and offer. Have the banner advertisement link to the business’s website. Use this banner advertisement in your newsletter and promote the other business for free. Now have the other business promote you to their database for free. This way, you’ll be helping each other generate high quality leads without spending a penny!

Now, if you decide to use this strategy and I hope you do, you have two choices for the advertisement used by the other business to promote you to their database:

1. Focus on Quantity of Leads: With this approach, the idea is to use an advertisement that generates a lot of leads. The goal is to maximize the number of leads generated. For example, you might offer a free list of foreclosed homes because this offer typically generates the highest response.  This will maximize the number of leads generated. These leads will all go into your database and you can keep in touch with them each week via your newsletter.

2. Focus on Quality of Leads: Instead of maximizing the number of leads generated, focus on attracting the highest quality leads possible. In my business, the highest quality leads came from free classes. I offered various free classes to the public and those who attended were very serious about buying. Class attendees typically became clients and used our services for their real estate purchases. Instead of teaching a live class, you could also automate this by using webinars.

A weekly email newsletter delivered to your database gives you the opportunity to promote 4 different businesses in your area, one each week. This means you have the opportunity to have these 4 businesses promote you to their databases, too. Who knows, you may be able to hit your marketing goals simply through this JV marketing strategy. All you have to do is turn your email newsletter into a JV lead generation machine.

Additional Reading:

How to Automatically Convert Prospects Into Appointments

How Real Estate Agents Can Create Money

The Book That Changed My Life

I recently read an article on Lifehacker.com where the writer shared Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. The author, Brad Issac met Seinfeld and asked him how to become a better comic. Seinfeld’s answer was…

“Never Break The Chain”

Seinfeld went on to suggest that the way to become a better comic was to write jokes every day.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

By writing more jokes, you would become a better joke writer. The reason why is because what you focus on improves. Seinfeld went one step further and suggested using a large wall calendar to help reinforce the daily habit of joke writing. Each day he wrote jokes, he would mark a red “X” on his wall calendar:

The key, according to Seinfeld, was to never break the chain of “X’s.” This simply means that Seinfeld forced himself to write new jokes every single day. This one daily focus helped him become one of the highest paid comedians in the world.

As I read this article, I remembered something Dan Kennedy shared with me years ago. Dan told me that business owners should do something every single day to get new clients and customers. In fact, this is what Dan does personally. He does not let a day pass without doing something that will bring in a new customer at some point in the future. Dan is always thinking about what he calls – “The Future Bank.” The “Future Bank” is the income and wealth that will be created from a new customer and the only way to build the “Future Bank” is to focus on increasing it every single day.

By combining Seinfeld’s calendar idea with Kennedy’s focus, we can create more profitable businesses. Simply Google “calendar” and print out a calendar page for each month and keep it on your desk or wall. You want to be able to see this calendar all of the time. Set a goal to do something every single day to get a new client. Each day you do something to get a new client, mark you calendar with a red “X.”

NEVER BREAK THE CHAIN OF RED “X’s!”

Additional Related Reading:

How to Automatically Convert Prospects into Appointments

How Real Estate Agents Can Create Money Out of Thin Air

Want to Own an Oil Well?