In this post we will be talking about the why every successful entrepreneur will at some point, have to limit their “avenues of access”.
James says:
When you start out online you crave for more attention. Blog comments, invitations, free software reviews, etc…. You wish that more people would pay attention to your cause and support what you are embarking on. Of course once you reach a certain point of momentum…
…Then reality sets in!
Just when you get the attention you deserve things can easily tip the wrong way. Next thing you know everyone wants a part of you. Skype gets chocked up, facebook becomes the easy way for inbox inundation and emails start to flood in. Family members, friends and strangers all want to take, take , take.
Be ruthless with time and gracious with people…
One of my mentors taught me to be very careful with how I invest my time. So lately I have been culling back and pruning the avenues people can contact me. When you realize how people can reach you through twitter, SMS, telephone, facebook, gmail, forums, support desk, Skype, mail , door knocking, blog comments etc…you realize that a huge prune back is the only option for keeping your time preserved. It is not their fault – they only see what they take not what others take. Remember to be kind to people!
Dean says:
I couldn’t agree more. It is almost a catch22 situation… for months, sometimes years, we crave opportunity, connections, and attention, and then, almost overnight, we hit critical mass, and suddenly it goes from an advantage to a hindrance.
James and I try and answer almost every email we get personally, but tools like IM, and Skype, even Facebook chat (which I have since disabled) act like revolving doors.
From my experience, people of value often value other people’s time, and unfortunately the opposite is true.
I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I have had these sorts of chats on IM and Skype:
Mr X: Hey Deano, sup?
Dean: Hi there, what can I do for you?
Mr X: nothing, just thought I would chat
The above may seem like friendly, and harmless banter, but it is a distraction, and studies suggest that even a small distraction can take 20 minutes to get back into the flow again.
So remember, “just a minute” is actually over 20 minutes in reality.
I love people, it sounds cheesy, but I love to connect, help people, talk with people, but sometimes there has to be a limit.
James says:
‘Open Day’
After restricting my inbound pipelines to just paying clients and close insiders by stripping out everyone I don’t recognize or care to deal with there will of course be the occasional “lets do coffee”, “Can you check this out” or “Can I run an idea past you” contact. Rather than drop everything to attend this request (I have been too generous in the past) I am now having one day a month I call ‘open day’. That is the day I tell people they can contact me. It may sound rude or harsh but if I just attended people when they want I get NOTHING done and I cannot help my own clients. It will probably be the 15th of each month.
The next step
My next step is to go into a virtual lockdown and outsource or switch off the various avenues by which I communicate with people. I will choose a medium that works best for me and that will be it. It is ridiculous to try and manage all the available contact points by myself. I’ll let you know how it goes! the idea is that it will increase the value of my communications with the people who I say yes to.
Inbox woes
My current observation is that the inbox is what causes the most problems in Internet Marketing success. Dean and I will be teaching you how to deal with that soon!
Dean says:
I like the “open days” idea… it is a great way of being available to people, but on your terms.
I did notice that James is planning to remove all non-friends from Facebook, which I think is something that is going to become a lot more common in the near future.
Personally, I am able to monetize Facebook fairly well, and I must confess I also use it to flirt with the ladies… but who knows, maybe one day I will follow the same path.
We are in an era where there are so many tools and apps etc that bring the world together and connect us in so many new ways… I think the real key is ruling these tools, as opposed to letting them rule you.
As for inbox management, this is something James and I have been working on a lot recently, so if you would like to get first notification on such tips… subscribe for IMfusion updates in the box at the top of this page.
Have Your Say
What are the things that annoy you about the industry? Leave your comments below.
Until next time…
Dean & James
PS: I hope I remain on James’ friends’ list, I might have to bribe him with a cappuccino 
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Dean here…
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Dean
Hey guys, love this new site and the synergy between you two! ‘the golden venn diagram intersection’! you might be in beta mode, but you guys are the alphas of internet marketing and personal branding to me. your #1 fan, barbs
Thanks Barbs,
Much appreciated.
Dean
Thanks Barbs!
That means a lot
James
Great site so far:- Which one of the three points when joining isn’t true?
1) Shocking Creative and Personality Marketing Exploits
2) 7-figure Business Systems and Formulas
3) Because we are Darn Sexy
* Note: One of the above is not entirely
true… but join for free anyway”
Because I can’t work it out.
Thanks for your generosity
I’m learning rapidly from many angles about time and resources management….less input… more output… and arranging my life and business strategies to work for me in the long term…
This post gives me another nudge in the right direction…
Always refining…every day…
I know that as I build my business I’ll be in more and more demand..and I want to get the systems in place now so it’s all running as smooth as can be by that time….which won’t be long.
Plus, being inaccesible to a certain degree makes ‘em even more hungry, right?
Thanks for your insights guys… Always appreciating lessons from those who’ve been there and done it…
Re Tracey’s comment
‘Which one of the three points when joining isn’t true?’
3) Because we are Darn Sexy – obviously!
That’s why I’m here…
Well, someones got to bring this site sex appeal…
Seems to me that engaging in social media’s a path to frustration. A big A-list blogger in this space – Chris Brogan – hit the wall a few days back, finally realizing he couldn’t keep up. Gary Vee will be next. And the inbox – OMG, the inbox! Won’t be long and I’ll have chopped myself from every guru email list. Yet it seems hypocritical – if I do that what a cheek for me to then go on and build my own list.
I’m a nobody, a starting IM-er, and even I feel the overwhelm that left unchecked inhibits my projects.
Stew, there is a way to solve that. We will be producing the answer shortly!!!
Agreed – Gary Vee takes pride in trying to answering every email but ultimately who wants to do that for a living?
Absolutely… and here is the key, Gary makes more money by telling people that he answers every email, than he does from actually answering them.
Kinda like people who donate to charity and then write a zillion press releases to promote it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that was his motive from day 1, as I try and personally answer every email too, but he has added benefits for doing it, that most people don’t
Dean.
James & Dean. The root problem is the human condition! As your post stated, people want to associate with online gurus, hanging off their every word, and SM platforms have well and truly opened that door. It’s an easy trap to fall for. But as CB’s experience proved nobody wins. A big SM event in my country soon is using Gary Vee as a drawcard – to do what? Keynote for 1 hour or something. Hello! I’d go only if he was giving 1 hour’s worth of NEW ideas. But more realistically I’ve got enough to implement from his old ideas for now.
Everyone’s mesmerized by the “make money online fast” mantra. I fell for it, so have millions of others. Unfortunately the gurus milk this weakness, yes?
– Stew
I’m really interested to hear your tips for controlling the inbox. As I write this I glance over the next tab and see a whopping 7269 unread emails. Of course, I’m a tad different because I like to keep track of who’s promoting what for my website review pages (I list all the people promoting), but it’s still daunting each day to get up and see another 50 or 100 email added when I only clear 10 a day due to time constraints.
I just can’t seem to keep on top of it, yet resist just unsubscribing from everyone in case I miss out on that nugget of information or really cool product that could ACTUALLY help me…
Melani, You won’t have to unsubscribe and you can filter your review emails to skip[ the inbox and go straight into a label for spying. This will allow you to build your databse and also keep your inbox clean for the real emails.
It is much easier to filter emails by using a special name and email address for those emails. This will give your filters a clear sign to apply the rule. Gmail is great for this.
I can’t live with out my Gmail… in fact I now have *counts fingers* oh god four Gmail accounts lol! Only one of them is hit by the spam stick however – it’s my “catch all / give out when I want a freebie” email.
I manually filter my emails at the moment – a folder for each product. I could probably delete them once I’ve got the information, but I always wonder “what if” I need to call back on it some day, so I hold onto it. With so many new products being pushed every day, not to mention the so called “freebies” that are nothing more than list builders / pre big launch snags, I feel like I’m forever creating new labels lol.
Melani,
You can divert all the gmails into one and then have labels to deal with the non urgent non important fluff. I don’t use many labels at all since the search function is so powerful.
Once you have ‘trained’ gmail it is very clean and easy to manage.
Hrm, maybe I need to look into it more. I love the search function, it’s how I find all the other related emails once I have one ready to move out of the inbox.
My four accounts aren’t the problem as I have two computers on at all times – my laptop houses my personal and blog gmail accounts, both of which don’t see a lot of action (poor things), and my PC has my main catch all and my new site gmails. It’s my catch all that’s the problem, it’s plagued by new emails every few minutes, most if not all, are sales pitches of some kind.
By the way, I just realised I am completely derailing your blog post! Sorry!
Thats ok Melani,
I imagine a lot of people are interested in our ‘Inbox relief” when it comes out. Deano trimmed tens of thousands of emails when we tested it on him. I managed to shift 4GB of email with it…..
It flat out works.
To get started, create a label for ’spy’ and whenever you get a marketers email use the ‘filter messages like this’ and make them skip the inbox, apply the ’spy’ label. Now you can just tab on the spy label to see all the marketer crap.
4GB?! Dayum, that makes my 220MB feel pretty small lol. I’m definately interested in your inbox relief when it comes out as it’s one of the main distractions and ’shoulder weight’ issues I have.
Do I need to give you my email if you already have it on your other list?
This blog is a unique email list and only ever broadcasts blog post updates or IM fusion related subject matter. Dean and I also have our other blogs with different email lists.
Hi James and Dean crap email has been a big problem for me in the past.Subscribing to different gurus to see what they are up to. next you know you’ve got so much email you end up missing the ones that are important. I turned off the notifications from twitter and facebook after one morning when I had about 300 emails in my inbox,should have just renamed my inbox as junk..
Like the way the site is coming along.
Welldone
Graeme
Thanks Graeme.
I’ve been testing email management as you know, and I survived the latest launch (and next week is another one!!) with a clean inbox. Inbox relief is coming out soon to share the lessons!