As a day job dweller, what’s your scarcest resource when it comes to building your business?
Let’s all give the answer together: Time!
When you work full-time (or more!) for someone else, where do you find the time for your entrepreneurial endeavor? (Hint: You don’t. You make time.) So instead of doing something — anything! — you wait for the magical 2-hour window to appear in your week so you can finally sit down and work on that novel or create that fan page. But that magical window never appears, so the work never gets done. Sound familiar?
Until someone invents a magic window that gives you more time (I’m the first buyer!), here are 30 things you can do in 15-minute chunks to help build your business:
- Sign up for Twitter.
- Add an image to your Twitter account and change the background (I use my logo and check the “tile” effect).
- Let Twitter go through your address book and find your friends. Follow them.
- Use twellow or just tweet it to follow 10 new people who are part of your ideal audience / your favorite bloggers / people with similar interests as you.
- Tweet links to the last 3 good articles/posts/videos you’ve read/watched.
- Respond to 3 tweets that are in your feed (Remember, Twitter is about conversation!).
- Schedule two promotional tweets, whether it’s a link to that day’s blog post or a call to action.
BLOG
- Write a (short and sweet) post (i.e., post an image with a quote, pose a question, or embed a video that resonated with you).
- Record an “About Me” video.
- Add your favorite blogs to the sidebar.
- Put links/widgets to your social media accounts in the sidebar.
- Create drafts of all your post ideas. Leave ’em there for a rainy day.
BUSINESS BUILDING
- Do a brain dump of all your business ideas and chunk them into 15-minute action steps.
- Practice saying your elevator pitch aloud, so you’e comfortable and confident when someone asks, “What do you do?”.
- Contact one blogger to ask to do a guest post on their blog.
- Ask your happy clients/customers to write a testimonial for you. Have them describe why they hired you/bought your product, what they enjoyed about your product/working with you, and what the result was.
- Sign up for Timetrade or Tungle to make it easy for people to schedule an appointment with you.
- Create an email signature with your website/social media links/logo/title.
NETWORKING
- Email 3 people you know who would be interested in what you’re selling and/or have direct access to your client base. Let them know you exist, and ask them to pass your info along.
- Sign up to be on your alma mater’s alumni email list.
- Comment on a blog post that resonated with you, going beyond, “That was a great post! Thanks!”
- Let LinkedIn go through your address book and find your friends. Ask them to connect.
- Update your resume.
- Update your online links.
- Go to the Groups section and sign up to be part of your alma mater, any unions you already belong to, or search via keyword for any groups that look interesting.
- Answer a question that’s been posted or respond to a comment that’s been left in your Group.
- Ask people you’ve worked with to write a recommendation for you.
- Create a Facebook Fan Page.
- Ask your Facebook friends to “Like” your page.
- Host a contest where your first 100 fans will be eligible to win.
See? There’s no need to be intimidated by your business building list and/or the time you have to work on it. You can complete this entire list in just one month, and 15 minutes-a-day every day adds up to almost 2 hours a week.
As it turns out, the magic window you were looking for was there all along!
