Welcome back to Business Unfiltered with Mercer and Jeff Sauer today's topic is planning out an ideal work day. 1:48 : How do you plan your ideal day? How to plan the day. Evaluate yourself and how to be productive. Balancing time and energy to end the day with energy and accomplishment. The importance of time blocking and having control of your time. 7:04 : Planning for the end of the day. The importance of planning for the end of the day. The biggest challenge is planning for more than just one thing. 9:33 : Energy ebbs and flows and how to plan your day. Energy ebbs and flows throughout the day. How talking to people gives Jeff more energy. Code switching and the two-hour block. Two questions to ask yourself. 13:59 : Giving yourself consequences for procrastination. Procrastination and consequences. Getting better at scoping and being realistic with goals. 16:33 : The story we tell ourselves about procrastination. Tinker with the procrastination system and perfect it. Stories they tell themselves to motivate themselves. Setting up a schedule to gamify productivity. Creating a system of positive constraints to push you in the direction you want to go. 21:24 : How to break down your time block into hours. The pomodoro technique and time blocking. The two-hour block and the productivity book. One hour of time blocking for Jeff. How time blocking helps with procrastination. 25:12 : Warming up to the task. Giving yourself 30 minutes of warm-up time. Defining what goes in the two to four hours. Why an assistant is important for prioritizing tasks. Delegating 15 minute projects. 29:07 : How long does it take to do a video? How long it takes to create a training video. Planning for the warm-up. Doing one thing in four hours. The $5,000 rule and blocking off time.

Welcome to the Business Unfiltered Podcast 0:00: How do you define social media strategies? How Jeff defines social media strategies. Focus on one social media platform. The shiny object syndrome and how to overcome it. 3:41: How to choose a channel. How to choose a YouTube channel. The importance of research before choosing a channel 6:22: The value exchange of value on You Tube. Tribal marketing and co-producing content with other brands. The importance of consistent brand content and an exchange of value. On-demand workshops for members in the members area. Consistency is key to membership retention. 11:24: How to use LinkedIn content to draw new subscribers? Using LinkedIn as a channel supplement to email. Using LinkedIn to add value to free channels. 12:49: Why tactical learning doesn’t always lead to social media? Tactical learning on social media vs problem content. Three main niches of social media. How to choose the right channel for your business. How measurementmarketing.io is different from YouTube. 16:33: Is YouTube a tactical social network? YouTube is a social network, but also a tactical network. YouTube is both search and discovery. The difference between email and LinkedIn. How email is like social media. 21:24: How to be tactical with your marketing strategy? How to use Quick books vs Market IO. How to choose the right social media channel. The 10% of society that is not a hunter. Hunting is mostly failure. 25:15: Social media is starting to fracture. Social media is starting to fracture into smaller groups and communities. Building a community. Making a commitment and making it a habit. The new wave of buying power. 29:27: Sketching out the future of the company. The importance of sketching out the future. Using Reddit from a tactical and strategic perspective. Discovery vs search, and how to say no to social media. Three things to take away.

Welcome to business unfiltered with Mercer and Jeff Sauer. 0:00: What does it mean to buy your time back? The idea of buying time back. 2:23: Strategies for buying your time back. Categorize the strategy by category at a time. Hiring a generalist to balance you and your business. Finishing out day-to-day activities. 6:06: A perfect use case for this technique. Invoicing for high-ticket clients. The mental energy that comes from sending invoices. Half of people are still sending their own invoices. How to get paid for invoicing. 9:56: How much does it cost to do video editing? Replacing a bookkeeper for less than $1,000 per month. 10x offloading tasks. Hiring an outsourcer in the Philippines to edit videos. Mental energy is the biggest release. 14:05: Hiring a video editor and executive assistant. Offloading website design and scheduling. 16:34: Hiring an executive assistant. How the idea of an assistant has changed. How to respond to hundreds of emails. Understanding how an editor thinks and what the editor might need before giving it to a specialist. Understanding measurement and how measurement works. 20:48: The best entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. The best entrepreneurs are the best business owners. The book buying your time back. Being an entrepreneur is not farming, it is hunting. The hunter farmer. 24:28: The problem with thinking everyone is like you. Hiring the right team members for the job. The hunter farmer analogy. Nine to one, farmers to hunters. Who can do this for you vs you. 28:52: The importance of having a to do list. Moving up the topic of the V.A. Delegating tasks to others to make it a to-do list. Recognizing the pattern.

0:24: What is an sop? SOP, the operating manual of the business. Why sops need to be updated. 2:59: The difference between a sop and project plan. The difference between an sop and a project plan. Keeping an SOP up to date. 5:25: Do you attach sops to every task on a project? The distinction between assigning sops and trust. Putting more trust in the individual. The broken windows theory with subway cars. Taking out the trash everywhere. 10:01: How often do you keep your sop up to date? Building sop into the culture. How to keep sop up-to-date. 12:31: Would you take out the trash? Taking out the trash and paying for it. Similar to taking out the garbage. 16:59: Keeping up to date with technology. Keeping things up to date is a legacy thing. An sop for the podcast to streamline the delivery of the podcast. 19:38: Should teaching be separate from the checklist? Should teaching be separate from the original video. Teach people how to do the job. 22:37: Pleasure to be alive. A quick recap of the episode. A quick summary of the conversation. 24:53: Organizational structure is key. Organization is key to enforcing SOPs. The 1000 list, brand standards and mission vision. 26:45: Define the culture of your company. Championing the new way of doing things. The importance of clear organizational structure and enforcement. Next step is to make it explicit. Taking out the trash is for everyone.

Welcome back to business unfiltered. 0:02: When you should generate leads using cold outreach. 1:33: The difference between spam and cold outreach. The definition of spam and cold outreach. Cold outreach is not a bad thing. Strategies to get over the lumpiness of revenue. How cold outreach could be used. 4:46: Cold Outreach as a way to bring in new people. Using cold outreach as a way to create relationships. Relationships are more important than just sending messages. Spam is a numbers game. Why GDPR exists and why it's illegal. 9:36: Hiring a cold calling person. Hiring a cold calling person multiple times. Shifting from cold calling to account based marketing. 10:52: Account based marketing vs. Cold Outreach. High-quality account-based marketing vs cold outreach. Cold outreach is a way of scaling a business. 14:04: How to know if a copywriter is a good copywriter? How to identify a good copywriter. What to look for in a copywriting coach. Working with one or two clients at a time. Working on referral basis with copywriters. 18:11: Going to the accounting firm Psi. Going on the accounting firm PSI. The accounting firm, PSi. 19:32: How to reach out to accountants. Outreach about two things, tax credit and payroll credit. Cold outreach vs cold outreach. Cold outreach with an offer is a sign that you want to build a relationship. The best relationships. 24:03: The difference between cold and tepid outreach. Tepid outreach is better than cold outreach. The importance of the first introduction. Not cold, but not warm. First impression. Cold email takes a lot of time. 27:44: Cold outreach vs. warm outreach. Wrap up, summarize the conversation. The difference between cold outreach and cold outreach. The scale between cold and warm outreach.

0:00: How do you define your team? How to determine the size of a team. The importance of team size. 2:05: How to shorten the runway for your business? The two ways to get out of your comfort zone. Hiring outside of comfort zones. 4:56: The good news is that you have money coming in. In business, there is money coming in. You have to have faith. 8:30: The first level of decisions are about the founder. The timeline element of the decision-making process. How the timeline affects the decisions. The first level of decisions are always about the founder. Hiring for the person you hired. 13:18: Hiring employees as an expense vs. an opportunity. Being on defense versus being on offense. Hiring employees is not an expense. 14:57: Leveraging a line of credit for capital. Community moneymaker is a moneymaker because of retention. Leveraging a line of credit. The level of certainty that comes from having a long-term plan. Bets on yourself. 21:02: How did you become an agency owner? How Jeff became an agency owner. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone and the challenges. 23:16: Putting all your eggs in the same basket. Putting eggs in the basket and setting yourself back three years. The downsides. The marketing guy wanted to be a copywriter. The importance of team continuity. 26:19: What’s the difference between the two? A quick recap of the episode. A quick summary of the conversation. 27:42: Can I have done this sooner? Trial and error is the least effective way of doing things. Profit center vs expense.

Welcome back to the Business Unfiltered podcast with Jeff and Mercer. In this episode we discuss how do you know if your business is profitable? 0:01: Two strategies around profit. 2:45: Strategies for maximizing profit. Strategies to put in place around profit. A lumpy revenue trap. How to get paid twice a month. The main strategy for profit is margins. 7:13: The difference between an agency business and a training business. Two different business models, agency business and training business. The top and bottom line. Cost of goods sold is 25% to 35%. Healthy business margins are important. 11:39: Reinvesting in your business. Reinvesting in the business to prevent burnout. Taking 25% of leftover money. 14:57: The three ways you get paid. Three ways to get paid, salary, profit and book value. 17:52: The difference between a startup and an agency. The importance of having a minimum salary. 19:35: Profit vs. Expense. Expenses are the number one expense in the agency world. How much to invest in growth. 23:34: The importance of retainer consistency. Retainer consistency of revenue is key. Revenue projections are a big part of predicting profitability. Selling a strategy project as a retainer. Selling the retainer as the continuity and ongoing piece. 28:21: How to qualify leads. Qualifying leads and choosing who to work with. Non-negotiable times to be profitable. 33:02: The fruit tree analogy and its value. The fruit tree analogy to the kid analogy. The low-hanging fruit. Holding it to a monthly profit. Final thoughts from Mercer on this topic.

This week's episode talks about what to do when referrals dry up for your business. 2:11: The difference between referrals and word of mouth. Word of mouth vs word of mouth. Expectations, expectations and strategy. Top of mind awareness is the key to word-of-mouth referrals. Getting referrals is not a strategy. 5:29: Top of funnel and bottom of funnel strategy. Top of the funnel, top of mind strategy. Separating strategy and tactics. 8:07: Top of mind marketing is very inefficient. Top of mind marketing is very inefficient in the beginning. Podcasts work really well. 10:42: Top of mind awareness and referrals. How to generate both leads and top-of-mind awareness. How to network with super connectors. The next level of the system to replace. The mechanics of running the system. 14:04: It’s actually less expensive than you’d think. The first thing people cut out once they start trying to make money. One out of every 10 things has a chance to go viral. How do you measure referrals? How Jeff measures referrals. The organic percentage of people buying from his site. 19:15: Getting granular with your marketing efforts. Time constraints and time constraints. Top of mind and awareness style marketing. Reach out to people you haven't heard from in a while. Create a system. 21:58: How to leverage referral traffic. How Jeff uses social media as a referral generator. The difference between high-ticket and low-ticket referral traffic. 24:44: Top of funnel awareness and top of funnel marketing. Improving top of mind awareness and top of funnel awareness. The five stages of awareness. The four awareness stages, top of funnel, sales and referrals. Endorsements vs referrals.

This episode discusses the differences, pros, and cons between remote teams and distributed teams within your home country. 4:00: How do you build out a permanent business? Early on, using subcontractors is the only way to bootstrap a business. Remote is flexible and flexible. The ROI of the dollar spent on remote work. How to manage remote teams. 8:25: The importance of the permanence of the role and the benefits of having an in-person team. The importance of the permanence of the role. The benefits of in-person meetings. 10:49: How often do you get your team together in person? How often the team meets in-person and remote. How they manage remote work. 12:43: The importance of having quarterly team meetings. Quarterly meetings with the four team leaders to discuss the budget and problem-solving. The importance of getting people face-to-face with each other. 15:08: Have you ever gotten your team together from around the world? How do you keep the team together? Meeting people from around the world. Meeting with people in person to sell the company. The challenges of in-person meetings with remote teams. The challenge of moving from a remote to a distributed work environment. 20:07: The cost of remote work is expensive. Pushing paperwork is expensive for remote work. Zoom is 65% of face-to-face meetings. 22:03: The importance of in-person meetings. The importance of face-to-face meetings for team building. The biggest challenge in the business, being 100% 100% me decisions. 24:50: How do you show someone you value them in a way that is remote? Empowering the team to make every idea 20% and 30% better. The importance of purpose-based communication. Three times a day, point to a cliff. The importance of speaking up.

In this episode, we discuss how to manage your team members using SOPs, and when they can be leveraged based on your teams growth plans. 1:34: How do you take the repetitive tasks and make sure they are done consistently and to your level of standard and satisfaction? What a strategy is and how it works. The importance of a belief system. The corporate culture of negative feedback. The importance of listening for and evolving feedback. 5:52: How to create a feedback culture in your company. The final frontier, creating a feedback culture. Over-delegating and over-delivering. Working with spreadsheets in the past and the future. Hiring a spreadsheet expert. 9:59: The best case scenario is when you find a diamond in the rough who comes in at one level. The best-case scenario, a diamond in the rough who comes in at one level and jumps on. Specific tactics for the sop. 12:40: The CEO is not going to be the one to do the work, it’s the worker who will. Make it 10% better each time. Create a culture where people feel empowered to make their own. 14:44: What is the balance between delegating too easily and micromanaging? Creating a culture where KPIs are empowered to make changes. Delegating too easily or micromanaging. Focusing on the result, not the result. Evolving templates and making it your own. 18:40: How do you know that they’ve made the process their own? How to measure if someone has made the process their own. How to offload repetitive tasks. 20:51: SOP’s can be a mistake when managing individuals. Jeff shares his thoughts on sops and why they are important. Jeff explains how to balance between teaching and telling people what to do. Breaking down into defined roles makes it easier to find a replacement. The levels of sops, beginner, entry-level, intermediate, advanced and high-end. 26:25: The three levels of hiring: the lowest level, the highest level, and the middle level. The three levels of conversation. Taking ownership of the role and the company. Hire them to get the job done. Hire someone who knows marketing. 29:37: The importance of hiring Rocket Ship people. The importance of hiring a rocket ship. Hiring the rocket ship person. The one percenters and the 10 percenters. Time management and recording time.