{"id":1669,"date":"2013-07-07T02:24:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T09:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/?p=1669"},"modified":"2015-02-11T03:50:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T10:50:58","slug":"independence-day-products-for-productivity-masterminding-barbara-ling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/independence-day-products-for-productivity-masterminding-barbara-ling\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day, Products for Productivity, Masterminding, &#038; Barbara Ling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another high temperature week here in Arizona&#8230; but very productive since it keeps me inside! So, yesterday I did a Google hangout \/ Vlog but it&#8217;s Friday now and I&#8217;m finishing up the actual post so you&#8217;ll have the text below (cause I&#8217;m one of those who likes to have both!)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RaD3V7WEi3k\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So for everyone here in the U.S&#8230;.\u00a0Happy Independence Day!<\/p>\n<p>And for those of you outside the U.S., I hope you took advantage of our celebration as a reason to have a cookout and a good time with your own family\u00a0and friends!<\/p>\n<p>It hit 109 I think yesterday,\u00a0which is actually the coolest it&#8217;s been all week so we didn&#8217;t mind.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>A Much Needed Personal Note<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how many of you heard or how\u00a0far the news has gotten, but while the holiday is usually a big celebration, it&#8217;s also been a very sad week here in Arizona.<\/p>\n<p>We lost 19 firefighters last weekend in a fire near\u00a0Payson.\u00a0It was a very elite squad of twenty guys who build firewalls to keep fires from spreading&#8230; so they get as close to the fires as is safe to do.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an investigation pending, but the belief is that the fire simply turned too fast because of the Monsoon winds that were blowing around.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say there are many people grieving while the holiday celebrations are happening.<\/p>\n<p>And given that we&#8217;ve had no rains for quite a while, most cities around this area have banned personal fireworks this year, sparklers included.<\/p>\n<p>I just didn&#8217;t feel it would be right to not acknowledge these guys that died.\u00a0Most of them, with the\u00a0exception of one who was 43, were between the ages of 21 and 32.<\/p>\n<p>So for the families there, I hope they know how many people are saying prayers for them.<\/p>\n<h3><strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">Product Creation Challenge<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>This is the only blog post I&#8217;ve done this week\u00a0because I&#8217;ve still been busy with Tiffany Lambert&#8217;s (used to be Tiffany Dow) <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Product Creation Challenge<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest thing is getting my\u00a0ducks in a row about the direction I want to go and how to connect the projects I&#8217;m working on so that my branding starts coming together.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Mindless Mapping Method<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Technically I suppose, this is my\u00a0second\u00a0product that I&#8217;ve gotten done during\u00a0this challenge. But since my first one was already\u00a0in the works with the exception of a sales page, I don&#8217;t feel like it&#8217;s fair to count that one.<\/p>\n<p>So, if any of you hesitate for a single second to beat yourself up over not having gotten your first done and I&#8217;m on my second due to a technicality&#8230; and I know at least one person will cause I do the same thing to myself&#8230; well&#8230;.\u00a0DON&#8217;T.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all I can say is don&#8217;t (and the more often I say it to you, the more often I hear it myself as a reminder for ME not to do it either!)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1687\" alt=\"Mindless Mapping Method\" src=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/mindlessmapping3D-2.jpg\" width=\"160\" height=\"252\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But the <a href=\"http:\/\/MindlessMapping.com\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Mindless Mapping Method<\/strong><\/span><\/a>&#8230; I DID create during this challenge.<\/p>\n<p>I have the PDF done, I got the three\u00a0initial templates done this week and my\u00a0graphics are finalized.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t really started marketing it yet though. But\u00a0I did have a gal\u00a0in a private group I belong to ask if I&#8217;d\u00a0be willing\u00a0to do a custom template so she could market it to her group with her own time management product she&#8217;s launching.<\/p>\n<p>My initial templates are geared towards\u00a0bloggers in general. She&#8217;s working with Kindle authors and writers. \u00a0So, I\u00a0created the custom\u00a0template for her and I sent that over to her see\u00a0if\u00a0there&#8217;s anything else that she thinks\u00a0her audience might want to keep track of.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m waiting to hear back on that and in the meantime, I&#8217;m working on figuring out the marketing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m working on the\u00a0outline for the first 3 Hangouts. I think I mentioned that in last week&#8217;s video.<\/p>\n<p>I hadn&#8217;t actually done them this week because I\u00a0wanted to make sure that the custom\u00a0template done for the gals product\u00a0launch,\u00a0so it&#8217;s time to get started on\u00a0those.<\/p>\n<p>Once I have the basics prepared, there are a few people in my hangout mastermind group that want to be a\u00a0part those. I love that cause it&#8217;s always good\u00a0when you have people who have live questions about stuff I might not have thought about yet.<\/p>\n<p>The other thing I&#8217;m working out is the whole OTO thing. i&#8217;m not a big OTO person. I\u00a0prefer to have ALL the\u00a0information in my product and know\u00a0what the up front price is.\u00a0Other people seem to\u00a0not mind OTOs as long as you let them know up front what they are and what they cost.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what to offer as a bonus yet either. I was considering using my<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-1688\" alt=\"Niche Research Packs\" src=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/nichepacks3D-6-807x1024.jpg\" width=\"148\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/nichepacks3D-6-807x1024.jpg 807w, http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/nichepacks3D-6-236x300.jpg 236w, http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/nichepacks3D-6.jpg 1215w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 148px) 100vw, 148px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Niche Research Packs<\/strong><\/span> as either an OTO or a bonus since both products are\u00a0designed to save\u00a0people time in building and keeping track of their business.<\/p>\n<p>But,\u00a0not everyone does niche websites, so it may work better as an OTO&#8230; that way only those who can use them would buy them whereas it wouldn&#8217;t be viewed as a bonus for those who DON&#8217;T do niche sites.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Other Projects<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>I set up a\u00a0new Pinterest account this week because I&#8217;m planning so many\u00a0hangouts. I was looking\u00a0for a\u00a0place where I could\u00a0USE those hangouts. I did this for two reasons.<\/p>\n<p>First, I want to be able to\u00a0offer my services for hosting other people&#8217;s hangouts.<\/p>\n<p>Second, I&#8217;ve been reaching out and finding a lot of great people who know about product creation, mind mapping, productivity and\u00a0such, along with some really great products,\u00a0tips, &amp;\u00a0shortcuts. I wanted a place to highlight what I&#8217;ve been finding. I figure if they&#8217;re offering such great information, other people should know about it!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1692\" alt=\"Google Hangout Hosts on Pinterest\" src=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/HangoutHosts.jpg\" width=\"146\" height=\"146\" srcset=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/HangoutHosts.jpg 346w, http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/HangoutHosts-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/HangoutHosts-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 146px) 100vw, 146px\" \/>I have boards that I&#8217;m working on adding pins to&#8230; So I&#8217;m adding people who have really great, eye-catching Twitter or Facebook backgrounds and people that are experts in\u00a0their fields who\u00a0offer really\u00a0great,\u00a0useful information.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;ll let you know up front&#8230; I&#8217;m doing research before they get added. I&#8217;m not just finding something that looks really cool and throwing it onto a board (that&#8217;s what my personal Pinterest account is for!).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m looking for who\u00a0I may eventually want to\u00a0network with.\u00a0But even if I decide not to or I DON&#8217;T want to&#8230; these are\u00a0people and products that my name\u00a0and reputation will be associated with once I add them.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m checking. When I find people that\u00a0I think are really cool, I&#8217;m going\u00a0online to check out their Twitter account, Pinterest account, Facebook page&#8230;\u00a0Any place I can find\u00a0them to see if people are interacting with them, liking them, NOT\u00a0liking them, etc.<\/p>\n<p>And if I run across people who have negative things being said, I still go see if I can find out why on my own. Not everyone is going to like everyone else&#8230; that doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re bad people. So I like to investigate and not\u00a0just go by people at face value.<\/p>\n<div class=\"scbb-content-box scbb-rounded-corners scbb-content-box-gray\">If you run across any really cool people or neat graphics somewhere, please, feel free to drop me a note and say &#8220;Hey,\u00a0you may want to consider these guys for your\u00a0boards.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>My initial goal is to eventually add one per day&#8230; to\u00a0take five minutes and highlight that specific person on a hangout. Initially I may be doing two or three a week until I get faster at it.<\/p>\n<p>Then I&#8217;ll be including the information on my <a href=\"http:\/\/YouTube.com\/DebiJ365\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>YouTube account<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, Pinterest account and my blog. That way they get plenty of back link love for being good at what they do.<\/p>\n<p>While I&#8217;m doing this, I&#8217;m going to be tracking my traffic as well. I want to know what the difference is between using Pinterest vs. just my blog in the way of traffic.<\/p>\n<p>For example, so far this week, with just\u00a0joining communities on Google+,\u00a0creating a new Twitter and\u00a0Pinterest account&#8230; and then\u00a0doing my hangouts&#8230;\u00a0without blogging at all,\u00a0I&#8217;ve gotten\u00a025 new Twitter followers in the\u00a0last six days, and 41 new people over at Google+\u00a0who have circled me.<\/p>\n<p>Not bad&#8230; and I&#8217;m meeting really helpful people!<\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Masterminding<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>This past week (which was July 3rd when I recorded the video), I joined a mastermind group with Barb Ling called Facebook Espresso.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t known Barb for very\u00a0long. I&#8217;ve known aBOUT her for a lot\u00a0longer than I&#8217;ve been\u00a0following her, but\u00a0she has discounted the product for the holiday. I don&#8217;t know how long she&#8217;ll be running the sale so if you&#8217;ve been wanting to figure out Facebook for your business, you may want to check it out.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I&#8217;ve been ignoring\u00a0Facebook. I&#8217;ve used it for years for family, friends and high school buddies, but I&#8217;ve mostly ignored as a business tool.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not that I haven&#8217;t played with it a bit on that side. But\u00a0I don&#8217;t like switching from page to\u00a0page\u00a0to make sure that my business posts are separate from my personal posts. And I don&#8217;t want to inundate friends and family with business (or business associates with my personal views for that matter).<\/p>\n<p>But I attended a webinar with Barb and she has some GREAT ways to Facebook to simplify the socializing aspect of it for business, as well as incorporate it into what I&#8217;m already doing&#8230; WHILE moving my followers OFF Facebook (so changes over there will never damage my ability to stay in touch).<\/p>\n<p>In just the webinar alone, I learned at least three new things about Facebook that I have never seen before.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a three week course. The information is already online so it won&#8217;t take three weeks to go thru it if I want to move faster. I have access to a private\u00a0mastermind group with Barb and her folks that I can ask\u00a0questions of and get to know.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jvzoo.com\/affiliates\/info\/46161\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>mastermind I\u00a0joined with Zane Miller<\/strong><\/span><\/a> a few weeks ago has been\u00a0EXTREMELY useful,\u00a0so I felt this one would be a\u00a0good idea for where\u00a0I&#8217;m headed.<\/p>\n<p>I spoke with Zane,\u00a0who has been my\u00a0Google hangouts mentor and we were talking about my launching my Mindless Mapping.<\/p>\n<p>During our talk, we took a look at the products I&#8217;ve done and the ones I&#8217;m working on and figured out that I&#8217;m\u00a0an organizer.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve known that for a long time, but\u00a0I hadn&#8217;t really thought about it from a\u00a0business standpoint. And the thing is, I only organize things\u00a0that I\u00a0care about.<\/p>\n<p>So as far as other stuff&#8230;\u00a0bills, dishes, and other day-to-day stuff that doesn&#8217;t really float my boat&#8230;\u00a0they might be organized and they might not. Sort of a &#8220;If I get time, I&#8217;ll get around to it.&#8221; kinda thing.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0when you&#8217;re talking about\u00a0my\u00a0photos, my\u00a0photo albums (yes I still have real,\u00a0hard copy albums),\u00a0and my scrapbooks (which\u00a0are also hard copy),\u00a0my cassettes&#8230; Yes I still have those too&#8230; but I\u00a0have DVDs and CDs as well so&#8230; \u00a0back off&#8230; I KNOW how old I am! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Anyway&#8230;. those things&#8230;\u00a0they mean something to me. They&#8217;re things I\u00a0care about.\u00a0So\u00a0I keep those extremely organized.<\/p>\n<p>And\u00a0my business&#8230; when I create products or offer other people&#8217;s products&#8230; that&#8217;s important to\u00a0me.<\/p>\n<p>So everything that I&#8217;m doing,\u00a0from mind mapping to Pinterest to\u00a0Evernote and more&#8230; everything is in regards to keeping yourself organized,\u00a0increasing your productivity, staying focused for at least 15 minutes at a time.<\/p>\n<div class=\"scbb-content-box scbb-rounded-corners scbb-content-box-gray\"><strong>Side Note:<\/strong> Most everything I do I either do for 5 minutes or 15\u00a0minutes. There&#8217;s not much in between. I&#8217;ve found that I just work better that way. I might do two sets of 15 on\u00a0something or even three sets, but I do it\u00a0in 15 minute increments. I just\u00a0find that it keeps me more focused.<\/div>\n<p>OH! Speaking of focus and productivity&#8230; I found a cool new toy this week!<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember where I found it offhand but it&#8217;s called The Email Game.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who get a lot of email and start to feel overwhelmed by it at times (I have over a hundred thousand emails in my account), this is SO helpful.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s and online tool and I know they have a Chrome extension. I use Chrome, so I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s available for Firefox or IE. You&#8217;ll have to check that out.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m gonna cover it in more detail on a\u00a0hangout later this week but basically, it&#8217;s a fun way to get control over your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>You can start it at any time when you have a few minutes and set it to do 30, 50 or 100 emails at a time. That keeps it from becoming a chore for you.<\/p>\n<p>But it accesses your emails and lets you make instant decisions about what to do with them.<\/p>\n<p>For me, I typically start on my emails but I find myself opening them and then not making a decision about them. Then by the end of the day I still haven&#8217;t done a\u00a0darn thing with most of them.<\/p>\n<p>If that sounds like you, you definitely wanna check this out.\u00a0But like I said, I&#8217;ll do a hangout on it too and go over how it works.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>Finally!<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>I think that&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve got. It&#8217;s been another &#8220;record on Day 1, blog on Day 2, finish on Day 3&#8221; kind of post&#8230; because I got wrapped up in these dogs I&#8217;m sitting. There appears to be something odd going on but I won&#8217;t know for sure till mid-week so I&#8217;ll get back to you on that one.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you had a fun and safe\u00a0Independence Day!<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I had to record the hangout twice. Apparently I managed to hit the mute key again on my computer the night before I recorded so I spent nearly 20 minutes\u00a0talking to myself.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s ok though. That means I&#8217;ve just officially become a member of the\u00a0club we&#8217;re creating over in my\u00a0hangouts mastermind group! &#8220;The Silent Recorders&#8221; Club!<br \/>\n<div class=\"scbb-content-box scbb-rounded-corners scbb-content-box-gray\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000\">Your Turn:<\/span> How did your week go? Did you accomplish what you set out to do? Did you give yourself a break if you didn&#8217;t?<\/strong><\/div><\/p>\n<p><em>Subscribe to my list so you won&#8217;t miss out on any of my subscriber-only specials! And be sure to include your links in the comments below. I use <a href=\"http:\/\/debij.com\/commentluv.php\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">CommentLuv<\/span> <\/strong><\/a>to link to your blog so you can build automatic back links that Google will love! \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another high temperature week here in Arizona&#8230; but very productive since it keeps me inside! So, yesterday I did a Google hangout \/ Vlog but it&#8217;s Friday now and I&#8217;m finishing up the actual post so you&#8217;ll have the text below (cause I&#8217;m one of those who likes to have both!) So for everyone here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions\/2115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/debij.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}