Everyday at 4:00 PM I would sit with my outsource email assistant and get a list of who its from, what the email was and respond to all the emails I needed too (I get hundreds, but only 5 to 10 need my personal response).  I found being focus on each email for a few seconds or minutes was a lot more productive then spreading it throughout the day and I was less distracted.

So the BIG QUESTION – Can you live without having a personal email?

No, you cannot live without email completely, you do need a personal email in today modern age, mostly for communication with family and asking business questions outside your organization (I don’t communicate to my staff on email, I use a private messenger line) or booking appt (like for rafting and gliding).    you will need a personal email.

However, I will still have my email outsourced that I have used for that past many years and create a personal email which I would only give to family and very close long time friends (very selective and restrictive on this one), rest to Facebook Messages.  Anything that can be filtered like work related friends,  emails from old friends or people who do not email often, will go through the original email set up and not the new one.

What did I learn?

First, the negative responses from others were quite interesting.  I am use to it as the line of work I am is not traditional to any sense and people often its BS or talk, then they wonder how you get the results and envy kicks in (It comes with putting in the work initially).    I consider this blog post and email experiment as work to me.   The responses on this, especially from particular family members were much harsher then normal, but hey most people will just think it not say anything and stay quite.

My responses to both who said it and thought it and did not say it:

There are 2 types of people in this world; ones who build roads and ones who only travel on them.  Have you done anything lately that was not a plan by someone else and you are just doing the work for it?  I created my own path is testing outsourcing email, which was definitely not traditional yet and would go down the build roads path.  Many are happy living down roads where everything they have done, has been done before, that’s cool, I am happy for them.

l do a lot of experiments in my life no one hears about, most are around increasing inefficiency and be more productive working less, this one just happen involve others.

Second, you need a person email as I explained earlier.

Third, having someone clean up your inbox is more feasible then having completely outsource your email.  I get a lot of emails (like several hundred each day), so having someone who can clean everything out and me only doing what is important or critical is a better solution.  I prefer meeting once a day at 4 PM and answering ina  focus set time.

Forth, One of the original reasons I did it was to remove distractions.  I learned checking email is more on the persons discipline and habits.  Some people (like I use too) check is every 2 minutes.  It is to fill the void not to do other more important work.

A friend of mine, Evan Carmicheal suggest having your outgoing on all day and only have it incoming twice a day, this way you avoid distractions.

The real problem here was not email, it was me and my lack of discipline on checking it.   I got stuck in that cycle and needed to break out.

Suggestion on Outsourcing email

When I started this process I spent an hour a day training my outsource email assistant for the first few days and each day improving and improving, getting them to think like I think.  All email is, is a set of commands.  Delete, forward, read, file, respond.  So working with your email assistant at first is critical and keep an eye on what they do in order to avoid mistakes (as they don’t know how you think initially).  This is often forgot and why it does not work (actually this applies to anything with outsourcing)

Conclusion

First; I think everyone needs a personal email;  anyone who is running a completely online email address and living in the modern world and does have a personal email (If you don’t,  want to meet you and learn from you) as I don’t think its possible to go without a email address after this experiment.

Second; discipline and avoiding distractions is the issue, not email avoidance.

Third, focus on emails only and not multi-task will produce better results then writing a email, doing work and talking on the phone (this does not work and its rude to the person you are talking too and company you work for).

If you have got off email or ever tried it, please feel free to share your experience of ideas.

Money seems to be the resource that people are most sought after in this world.  If you do not believe me, do you give up 40+ hours of your time a week and wishing for a raise.   People often working longer hours, doing job they don’t like (ever hated going into work Monday morning or dream of quitting – yeah this is you) or spending time traffic every single day just earn money. Money has its value as a tool for getting us what we want, however it is not the most important resource as we can easily gain and lose money at any time. If you lost your fortune you can go back and earn money again.

However with time, once you’ve lost it you could never get it back again. Each day consists of 24 hours and that 24 hours today is irreplaceable therefore making time a very powerful resource.  I will never get the time that I spent to write this blog again.    Time cannot never be replaced again, we all have the same time in a month.

Having ample time and some money is substantially powerful then lots of money and no time.   With time, can find ways to make money if you want more.  With money, you cannot buy more time.

More time combined with some money is a lot more powerful than still has a lot of money and no time or little. So my question is why do we sacrifice soo much of our life giving up our most important resource, for what?

Having time will allow you to take a last minute vacations (which with the flexibility of time is substantially cheaper), spend more time with family, do whatever you want to do when you want to do it and if you have feel like working just take today off.  Lets be honest, that dream trip is not that expensive.

What would be easier? One – to get away from work for one week or Two – save a little bit of money.

Dream vacations are not that expensive. People save their whole lives take a lifetime trip to Thailand, Italy, Hawaii or all-inclusive vacation. The cost of these vacations are not that expensive (even cheap if you have time flexibility), what is difficult is getting the time off to go. If you’re working or even own a business you have to coordinate with other people on their schedule, ask permission an Aussie just become a headache.

My goal is have more time, then make money.  Not to just have more money.

TIME is the one resource once it’s gone of never come back.

- Last minute trip

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Some people should not go without a gift this holiday season and if we dont help, that that may be the case.    So I am looking for your help to raise money for Toy Mountain (Salvation Army).

The Deal For You

If combined I can collect over $1,000 in donation, I will match the $1,000.  Now my goal is to raise a lot more then that between now and Dec 16th, 2010.

So far I have raised a couple hundred dollars, so please donate and I will match the first $1,000.

ABOUT THIS CHARITY

What Charity Are You Donating Too?
Toy Mountain of Salvation Army. This is a very special charity close to our hearts during the Holidays. Many of us have been through or are facing harder times, however no child should go without a toy of gift this Christmas. Every child should experience the magic of this Holiday and have the joy of open a gift of their very own.

Why This Charity?

No Child should be without toys over the holidays. And Toy Mountain has been bring smiles to children’s faces on Christmas Morning each year.

We want to make sure that every cent you donate goes to a needy child this Christmas and this is why we have chosen Toy Mountain because your donation will go straight to the children this Christmas. Most charity take about 10% to 20% in administration fee’s and have a lot of red tape. Salvation Army is substantially better then most.

I like to know that the donations we make are reaching those who are in need and so my wife and I do things a little different. I will talk to Jeff a especially hard working Salvation Army Representative and I ask him which toy donations are most needed this year for the children and we buy for those children for which there is a shortage of toys. So we donate that.

This allows us to give gifts they need the most. This allows us to make sure that our gifts have the greatest reach with what we donate. I strongly encourage you to donate too and help those in need.

Why Are You Doing This

I believe that as a group, we can raise a lot more then just me ALONE. If as a group we can raise over $1,000 to donate to Toy Mountain, I will match and will donate an additional $1,000. This also is a step in reaching one of my life goals of starting a charity, where as a group we can raise more and also continue to raise long after I am gone. I believe that it is easier as a group to donate 1 million dollars a year, instead of a single person to donate 1 million dollars. My goal is to raise $3,000 dollars as a group, so please open you hearts and help a worthwhile charity this Christmas.

PLEASE DONATE

Any Mount Helps

This movie based on a home schooled boy who is very good at shinny hockey and his journey.  It stars Olivia Newton-John, Stephen McHattie and Noah Reid.  It also starred Nelly Furtado and George Stroumboulopoulos; who has a very small part in this movie.

This was a post production review of the movie, the final theater release may differ.

The movie was truly Canadian to start and that may narrow the demographics to Canada with the opening scenes.  I think the story after that can apply to a bigger demographic and anyone who is a hockey fan will truly enjoy it.

I personally enjoy musicals and I enjoy hockey and this movie was the perfect mix.  It has a solid story line, showing many different angles on this next Sidney Crosby road to success.

The ending was brilliant; one of the main issue is the choice weather to play organized hockey due to the violence int he game; Farley, a home schooled kid who only played shinny hockey for fun would have to fight if he wanted to play organized hockey.   His personal believes were not to fight.  The battle between if he should play against his believes or do whats needed to make it in hockey? Both ways he loses, well I wont tell you how it ends, but in this movie there are no losers.

Overall this was a great musical movie; solid story, great acting, the many comparisons between home schooled vs public school, fighting vs not-fighting, shinny vs organized, romantic love vs finding the right person and the list goes on makes this film is well worth checking out.  The movie releases in Canada on October 22, 2010.  Tell me what you think.

You can see a lot more pictures on Facebook, I will share with you some of the highlights here.

We met gold medal winner Maelle Rickers the way after she won a gold medal for Canada. This was pretty cool to meet a gold medal winnet atht he Olympics where she won it in Canada….

Here is the speech she gave right before we met her

Here is a picture of us with Maelle Rickers (who won a gold for Canada at Vancouver Olympics 2010)

The first hockey game seeing Jagr live, this game was Czech vs Slovakia.  Then we also was Sweden vs Belarus & Quarter Finals (USA vs Switzerland).   The games were very exciting and lots of energy.  The Canadian fans were all going to the Swiz after the USA beating a couple days before. GO CANADA GO!!!!!

We watched the Canada vs Switzerland at the popular Cactus Club, here is the place going loud when Crosby scored the winning goal in the shootout.

Here is the biggest high 5 I could find, I loved these gloves.

FANCOUVER, This is the Yahoo zone for fans to come in, I loved the same and they took some cool pictures.  Some reason they messed all our pictures up and we could not see it online, but it was pretty fun to visit.  Fancouver…..This is in yaletown where we stayed.

Would you believe me if I told you this next picture was real, if so, lets talk about some land in Florida that I got….a cut our on Granville

This is the introduction to Our Lady Peace coming on stage at the Richmond O Zone.

They are bringing out Lord Stanley Cup which will come home to Toronto soon. This was Live City Downtown in the Canada Place. We started the line up here, the olympics were a lot about long long line ups, so we mastered lines by the end by creating new ones a few minutes before they are ready at the start of the event. Since there is little time between events, they only start line ups a little before and no one knows where it starts. So we offer to start it, this worked 3 times having us a lot of time

Here is a picture of Tim, Sam and I with lord Stanley cup, the mounty told he, she has to smile for 7,000 pictures a day

The torch in the day time, the wife may have night pictures on her Facebook profile.  You can see the mountains in the background, I LOVE the mountain views from downtown Vancouver (if you were with me in Vancouver, did I mention that, kidding)

I guess I got my sports mixed up, baseball meets winter olympics

On our way to Russia House (The Science Center) which was nothing exciting, however the walk was pretty nice and all along the water people were showing there Olympic spirit

Being Canadian, we are known for our mounty, so we had to get a picture with them.  I was trying to tag her on Facebook, but could not find the mounty.

We had to see Whistler, the village was pretty nice to walk through and the view was amazing here are 2 videos of the view we got

The view is nice and yes I had to do a fun picture up there, here are a couple pictures from Whistlers.  I dont even like beer, but there is something about being in Whistler that makes you have to have a Kokanee with a great view of the mountains

Stanley Park is a lovely walk, about 9 KM around the whole work.  It is known for its todem poles

This is only a small part of the pictures and what we saw in Vancouver for the Olympics 2010.

GO CANADA GO!!!!!!

Cheers,

Mukul

This is people you want to be friends with, not just meet once or know, I am talking about being friends with that you can call up and be like, Hey Donald, I am in town, lets get a coffee.

To here are 5 people I would like to be friends with.

Tim Ferris – He takes a lot concepts that are pretty simple however effective when in comes to life style design, which I think is pretty cool, one of his idols which I am reading now Seneca talks about not saving it all til the end, to enjoy life and how we waste soo much of life and thats why it short.  After reading 4 hour work week, my idea on business design and life design changed.  I am not saving it til the end, Olympics here I come.

Donald Trump – If you have read or studied anything by Donald Trump, you would understand he values time, fan of quality, has extreme discipline and believes in doing what he loves.  My thought here is that if I can have a friendship with The Donald, it must mean, I am a value to his time which would come from me valuing my own time and self.

Robert Kiyosaki - He is very good at making complicated methods and making them very simple.  His books are quite often are overlaps in material of other books he has written, however to drill across the core points are values.  If you want to change your physiology, he is the man to see.   I have had 2 changing points in my life after reading his material, years ago when I picked up Rich Dad, Poor Dad and about a year back when I read Rich Dads Guide To Investing and immediately made changes for me financially which is how I am doing it now.  The concepts are simple, it takes work and are totally doable.  He does not look at easy street, doing the work and meeting his the goals.

Marshall Mathers – Also knows as Eminem, this guy understands marketing like no one I have seen before.  The image he portrays and marketing he does is just brilliant.  Lady Gaga cannot do a # on him with her outfits.  He is very open about it, however he knows how not to kill his 15 minutes and to maximize is at the same time. Marshall Lets be friends.

Will Smith – Looking at Will Smith, you may notice he has been a star most of his life right? Well what you do not see with him is that he understands mastery.  Anyone who is successful has put in there time, even though it looks simple on the surface, well Will Smith is one who I believe understands mastering a task.

Well that is 5, I can list more, but here is the short list of people.  Hey Tim, Donald, Robert, Marshal & Will next time you are in Toronto, give me a call, lets do lunch.

Cheers,

Mukul

When setting up a wordpress, I wanted to share my list of Wordpress plug-ins that I add to new websites

AddThis Sidebar Widget – This allows people to share your website with others (please share this one)

All in One SEO Pack – This allows more effective SEO to be built in

FeedBurner Widget – This allows people to add you through a RSS Feed

Google Analyticator – Tracking Stats

Google XML Sitemaps - This allows Google to see a proper Sitemap

Personal Favicon – This allows Wordpress to use your personal favicon (which is the little image in the tag)

Pretty Link – Makes your links look better

Secure WordPress – Cleans up some small errors and makes your website more secure

Twitter for Wordpress (optional depending on website) – Allow your Twitter messages to be updated on your wordpress page

Next time you make a wordpress website, please stop by here and remember to add these plugins

If you have not joined my email list for updates on my blog posts, PLEASE JOIN IT NOW.

Cheers,

Mukul Verma

PS – I will be doing most Internet Marketing related tips and blogs including traffic generation, videos and so on atInternet Marketing Crunch (once the websites ready)

The 5 methods I discuss are used to bring long term consistent traffic that you can grow into more traffic.  Lets dive right into them;

I am showing you this image, because this is prove that the 5 methods I explain work.  The blur are affiliates and niche market websites, more on that later.

1. Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing)

When optimizing for this traffic, there is 2 parts to it; on-site (20%), off-site (80%)

Offsite – When using the other 4 methods here, you are building an online presence and back linking to your website.

Onsite – Make sure to have your keywords in the following places;
o Title
o Description
o Metatag
o Header or H1 Tag
o Image Tag (if applicable)
o Last paragraph on your page

This can be more detailed, but that is the basics.  I am personally a fan of using the big keywords in the industry for my home page, you can use long tailed keywords for other pages or blogs on your website.

2. Video Marketing

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a strong writer, but am big on video marketing and it makes me money every day.

A few brief tips on  Video Marketing.

- Make sure you are adding valuable content, dont just be spamming,

- Constantly be adding videos (I add videos that I made over a year ago, just spinning them differently)

- You want to market your videos with all the guidelines discuss on SEO.

Video Marketing is a #s that can be deceptive compared to other marketing means. For example (I will show proof on my blog, not in Warrior Forum as it may not be the place and seem like bragging, I believe that someone should walk the talk and want you to know these methods work). For 76,000 visitors to my website, I have  to have over a million views on You Tube. That may seem like a low conversation rate, however consider that it is easier to get more views on You Tube then on EzineArticles. The end of the day, it is a consistent stream of traffic leading to consistent income.  Look at if Video Marketing adding to your bottom line.

3. Affiliates Partners

This is huge in bringing you a lot of traffic. It is also a #s game and relationship game. You need to consistently work on attracting new affiliates.  Personally I am not as much on the chase after partners to promote for this example I am showing you, so I use to other methods.  Now if I was, I am sure to have more sales and people working for me.

The best 2 ways to consistently attract new affiliates is;

#1. Your website; each visitor who comes to your website is a new potential affiliate marketing partner, you do not know their relationships and who they know.

#2 Customers; turn them into sales people, some may love your service and be advocates to market and spread your service. Some may be in the business or the goto person in their community for that kinda of service.

Treating your affiliates well as being a cornerstone to your business is critical, most dont do that.  Some affiliates like the hand holding or phrasing, others (like me), just want give you sales, you give me a payment, I dont want to be buttered up, I just want to consistantly be paid on my results.  Anyways, so know your affiliate and treat them well. One of my mentors, Paul Tobey says I LOVE writing affiliate checks, that is business I most I did not have to go out and chase and made money from.

4. Specialized Websites in Your Industry

These are niche sites in your industry. They can come in different forums from Question/Answer websites, Forums, Blogs, Social website. On an on going basis, you want to continue looking for people who have a problem and your product/service in the solution to that problem on these websites.

How To Find These Websites? You can go to Google or any other search engine and typing in keywords in your industry, I mean big keywords like ‘real estate’, ‘cell phone’, ‘health’ and look at the websites that you can post on and build part of the community. This is not a invite for a spam fest, however to add value to the communitu by answering peoples questions directly which happen to be your product/service.

BAD EXAMPLE – putting a post saying

Hey, look at me, I sell this service and goto www.baddomain.com

GOOD EXAMPLE – responding to a post saying

Yes, that issues can be easily resolves, it would take you less then 5 minutes to do it and you would also get this benefit A, benefit B which give to blah blah blah, check out www.gooddomain.com

5. Question/Answer Websites (especially Yahoo Answers)

Q&A websites are great since you have people begging for what you want. Yahoo Answers I find produces the best in me more traffic, the others still do drive consistant traffic and is well worth it.

There is a eBook in the War Room on Warrior Forum for free on Yahoo Answers, check it out.

For the other Q&A websites, consistently test, test, test or I have your outsource person do it. she first found a bunch of question/answer websites. Then post about 2-3 posts a day for few weeks. You do not want to spam, even if the person asks the question and all you do is answer to one website, you may get kicked off.  Test which bring you more traffic, which ones don’t like what you are doing. I also contribute to the community of answering other questions.

This method can help you find golden nuggets

A few Question/Answer Websites
- answers.yahoo.com
- answer.com
- theanswnerbank.co.uk
- webanwsers.com
- maybehow.com
- blurit.com
- answerbag.com

You can goto a search engine and type in ‘question answer’

6. Bonus Traffic Source

I am not even sure how to explain this, but here it goes.

I got one that is even bigger and that is because of all this work we have done in the 5 main sources of traffic and that is direct traffic. My site like many people reading this do not have a household site like Nike, Wal-Mart, eBay or Coke. I do get tonnes of visitors a month through direct visit. I cannot tell you how, since there is no proof (I have strong believe and stats show it increases when I go more video marketing), however you cannot track it and if you know how, please let me know.  I dont do much email marketing.  This I believe comes from building a brand awareness online through the above methods.

If you have not already, please sign up for my blog updates on the right side, I am giving a free ebook that my team has created.

Follow me on twitter – ‘mukulverma‘ or

Facebook ‘Mukul on Facebook‘

We have met 4 times now and everytime we experience massive growth.   It started off with Daniel who held it and was only of us, then went to 8 people, 13 people and last month we had 22 people show up.  It is great to meet other experienced online business minds.

Details

Who Is This For: This is for people who have a online business and are looking to share ideas and get ideas to grow your own business.  Come have fun, exchange ideas and we all grow assisting each other out.

This meeting, lets have a little fun and put a theme around it and that would be goals for 2010.  Sharing goals with others helps make you more accountable and reach them faster.

You MUST RSVP for this event, please send me a email at: torontoim@mukulverma.com

Hope to see you there, please come by and say hi.

Cheers,

Mukul

PS – If you cannot make it this event, you can get updates on future events at – http://videomarketingintensive.com/toronto-internet-marketing-meetings.html

UPDATE FROM EVENT

The event was a success, thank you for the 20 or so people who came by yesterday to Toronto Internet Marketing event.

Here is some footage that Brad took of what happens when you go around the table at a Internet Marketing event.

I will discuss interesting topics to me from internet marketing, sports, phones,books,  local events or whatever else comes by.  I am not a writer, so if I mix up words or forget words, it is about the content, not the spelling. I would like to keep this unedited.  There is a rule in my company that nothing I write is allowed out without someone else editing it, well this blog is the exception.

I am about to start on creating traffic generation for one of my websites. My January goal was to increase in by 1000 additional visitors a month on going.

Here is the traffic method I am going to using in a nuthshell.

1. Finding Niches industry websites with a market for my service.

2. Social Bookmarking - Build awareness for the website using Digg, Stumble and so on.

3. Facebook Marketing – One of my outsource employee got 90 people joined to our Facebook group in like 2 days, we are going to duplicate her method.  What she did was….

- Create a Facebook Fanpage

- Invited all of our contacts on Facebook

- Invite people with similar interests on Facebook

4. Be involved in Twitter conversations around the websites topic

5. Create a Video, load it on You Tube and Flickr video and bookmark these websites

I would repeat all these steps for atleast 3-6 pages on my website (or product or service)

Well time to get to working on it, please leave your comment below on your favorite traffic method.

Cheers,

Mukul