PP 032: Separating Personal Life from Business Life with Alex Jeffreys
Connect with Alex Jeffreys
Alex Jeffrey’s Website: https://www.MarketingWithYou.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexJeffreysCoaching/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alex_Jeffreys
Easy Profit Auctions
Telefunnels
InsideMarketing.com
Resources Mentioned
Episode Transcription
KIM: Welcome to another episode of Positive Productivity This is your host, Kim Sutton. And, today I am thrilled to have guest Alex Jeffreys from Marketing With You with us. Welcome, Alex!
ALEX JEFFREYS: It is a pleasure to be here, Kim. Thank you for having me.
KIM: Oh, yes, and thank you again. I know I already said it once, but gratitude is a great thing.
So, Alex. I found you – well, not really found you – I discovered you online – I guess discovered is the same word, but hey it’s Positive Productivity, not perfection! A few months back, we were in a few of the same programs together, and I became really inspired seeing some of the videos that you had online telling your story about how you got your business started. For those who aren’t familiar with you, would you mind sharing a little bit about your story and what you do, today, in your business?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Absolutely. So, it really depends who the audience listening in to this is, would be – there’s several stories I could tell that would hopefully inspire the listener to get the most out of this 25, 30 minutes we have together.
My story’s pretty much, you know, left school with no qualifications… I remember being 12 years old, saying to myself that I’ll be a millionaire before 30. You know, as I was growing up then from my 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 year, left school with no qualifications, dead-end road pretty much was the outcome for me. Lived in a pretty bad area, one of the biggest Council states in Europe – it was actually the biggest council state in Europe at the time – and so, you know, in all our prospects, me pretty much going to work on a building site for the next 10 years of my life.
But the whole time, I was an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know where I was going to put my skills. I didn’t know where I was going to adapt, but I just knew that I was destined for something, even though nobody else believed in me. Think my mum was the only person who believed in me, but you know, we always say that – your mom always thinks of your child, right? So everybody didn’t believe me. I was saying out loud to people I would be a millionaire before 30, and here I am making 300 bucks a week working on a building site.
Come across eBay at 24 years old, started to – I found a niche on eBay which was my passion at the time – which was motorbikes – started importing motorbikes from China. I built this eBay business, and then made my first six figures back then.
And then I started to really study about marketing. So I realized marketing was the leverage point of any business, so I started to study into that marketing, which really led me into this whole community of Internet marketers. And I ended up going to a seminar in Alabama, and the main thing that I took away from that seminar was, the trainer said, “You know, if you can make money, you can make money. But if you teach people how to make money, you can make 10 times the money.
And I thought, “Wait a second. I’m making this money on eBay. Maybe I could actually start teaching my systems and processes to others.” So I set out and wrote my first book, called Easy Profit Auctions. We launched that at the end of 2006, and within the first year, we made a hundred – just shy of $100,000 of sales of that book, which I found amazing.
And now I deducted, “I’ve gone from this making money on eBay to now making money on a website selling my book.” So there’s a whole other experience I had to go through that. So I wrote another book explaining the journey of that year, and it’s called Post Launch Profits. And like, you know, it was telling everything that I did to come up with the idea, picking a niche, creating a product, packaging the product, writing the sales material, generating the traffic, and then following up with the customers. And I basically wrote that book, I had about 10,000 people download it the first week, started blogging to those people, and I realized that there was this, you know, a buzz around me.
So I ended up launching my first coaching program then, in 2008. 650 people joined that coaching problem in the first week, with 500 bucks a ticket, so you know, it made a third of a million dollars in a week. And I actually then, you know, pretty much lived like a rock star for the rest of the year, because I’d never come into money like that. So you know, I upgraded my life very quickly, blew through that money, did the same thing again next year, you know, made a few hundred thousand dollars in a very short period of time, filled all my clients, created more success stories than any other program that was out there.
So you know, I hold my head up high that I’ve created more success stories in Internet marketing than anybody else that we know of. You know, so many millionaires have come out of that program, so many people who made six figures, five figures, people who just quit their job – so it’s been a phenomenal success out of that program.
And then pretty much, it just grew and grew and grew, and every year, just like become more and more passionate about coaching entrepreneurs and small business owners. And pretty much, that’s the story there. So I hit my first million, I did hit my first million before the age of 30 is, I guess, the point there. And you know, with a lot of hard work and determination and belief, you know, I believe it’s possible for anybody. Especially if I did it, Kim.
KIM: That is so huge. And one of the – I’m going to back up a little bit. One of the stories – and I took off my headphones, and I was watching the video, and I made my husband re-watch it with me – and the story I remember was that you and your wife were were struggling. You had one child, maybe two, I think one was in the hospital, or one had just been born, and didn’t have money to pay for parking. And just the big leap that you took – and I think it was, actually, to get to that conference in Alabama?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yup.
KIM: And it blew my mind. Because, I know a lot of us have those moments where we don’t know how we’re going to cut it, how we’re going to pay for the electric bill before it gets shut off. But we know that something needs to be done in order for the next big step to come. So, what was that point that – or, do you remember what that moment was that made you really realize that you needed to take that step?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah. So what happened was, you know, first of all, when my eldest son – I’m 35 now, to just give reference to time, you know, where all this is going on, so I’ve been doing for 10 years. That story is about nine years old now. And, you know, my son – when we found out my son was being born, I realized that I was living in my mum’s house with my future wife, my wife to be. I’ve got a child on the way, and I’m making 300 bucks a week. And, I knew it wasn’t going to cut it. You know, I was in a bad area, a lot of people were going to prison around me, were getting into trouble around me.
I didn’t want to be a part of that. I was willing, I had a burning desire in my belly. I was willing to do the work to get ahead in life. And I remember just reading books – and you know, I’m dyslexic, so it’s very difficult for me to read – but I was willing to put in the time. I was willing to put in the effort; I was willing to go that route.
And, like I said, when I hear that story – about how, if you can make money, you can make money. But if you can teach people how to make money, you can make 10 times the money – that was really the transition point for me to moving into selling information, which then later led to coaching people.
But before that, the eBay business – you know, I was working on a building site, and I would come home every night, and because a friend of mine introduced me eBay, the very first day I typed in eBay.com – didn’t know what it was, it was this big auction house, didn’t know what it was – the very first time I went onto eBay and looked at it, I saw there was a gold mine. I just knew that, eBay, you could buy and sell stuff on eBay. And I knew, from that point.
So I just studied everything I could about eBay, like how to put auctions together, how to maximize your auctions, where to source products from, where to actually – how to sell them, how to deliver them, how to fulfill them. I mean, pretty much, I just – I immersed myself, Kim, is the answer.
KIM: Right. And I can – I’ve seen that even reflected out of some of your videos that I’ve seen in the past couple months. I’m really excited for you. I’ve seen you move to San Diego, right?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yup.
KIM: And I have to tell you, I absolutely loved one video where you gave a tour. You showed where your office was, and as a mompreneur, I love the fact that there were toys. I mean, you don’t hide the fact that you are a person, right? And you’ve got family, and you’re working. Your office is in your home, correct?
ALEX JEFFREYS: So I actually have three offices right now, just so I can bounce around. So I have a home office, then I have a condo where my business partner lives, like work from sometimes, and then I’ve actually just moved into another office away from both of them, so I’ve got my focus time and productivity time all on my own.
So I’m actually in an office outside of my house right now, and the simple reason is, you know, we got guests… Just to give reference, we moved to San Diego recently, several months ago, and I’ve got two children, so my one child doesn’t go to school, so my wife is a stay-at-home mum.
So I – actually, a year ago this month, we got rid of our company in its height – we’re making several hundred thousand dollars a month – and we actually made the decision to get rid of the company, and start over fresh and move to San Diego. So I’m now a startup company.
And you know, I’ve got my children coming into my home office all the time, my wife coming into my home office – I actually have family and friends staying with us right now; they’re all hanging out by the pool or the back garden.
I just needed somewhere to go and focus to be productive, because I am driven. I really want to grow the business. So I work from home sometimes, I work from my partner’s condo sometimes, and when I want peace and quiet, I work from here.
KIM: That’s huge, and I can’t even imagine selling a business like that that’s doing so well and starting again. But I’m sure it’s very exciting. So, what are some of the productivity tools or methods that you’ve learned about as you were growing your past business, that you’re using in your business now, that are really helping you on this journey upwards and onwards with this business?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Great question, and you know, if anything – for me, productivity is the key. So, you know, the number one thing that I always do is, I start with the end in mind. So I’m – you have a year ago, and then I break that down to a 90-day goal, and then that goal can have different projects underneath it, and each project has different tasks. But what tends to happen is, people get overwhelmed, and people become busy fools – and they go forward, and they just add things to their plate.
What I’ve realized is, you reverse engineer – so we’ve got a 90-day plan, and then I’ll look at that 90-day plan and say, “Okay, this is what I would like to achieve in the 90 days. Now what am I going to do in the first month?” And I write out another sheet of paper what I’m going to actually work on in the first month. And I can put the plan away – I can put the 90-day plan away – and I just have a month plan.
And I look at that month plan, and that sits on my desk. And I say, “Okay, what am I going to do in the first week to actually attack this plan?” And then I look at what I’m going to do in the week, and now I’ve got my week to-do list.
And if you think about this week to-do this has come from a month to-do list, has come from a 90-day to-do list, has come from a my year goals. So, then I’ve got my week to-do list, then I say, “Okay, what am I going to do tomorrow.
So what do every single day is, I “plan tomorrow, today”. Every day. So at the end of today, I will look at my week to-do list, and I will now plan out tomorrow, so it’s all prepared. And I’ll work through tomorrow’s to-do list, and at the end of the day, I’ll “plan tomorrow, today.
And I’ll keep doing that all the way to the end of the week, and then on a Friday, what I then do is, I do “reflect and project”. So I look back at the past week. I say, “Okay, this is why I said I was going to set out to achieve. What did I do? How did I accomplish it?” And, you know, this may have to move things around slightly.
Then I look at the next week, and I say, “Okay, here’s my month to-do list. Do I need to bring anything from last week forward because I didn’t accomplish it, and do I need to bring anything from that month plan to-do next week.
So then, basically, that’s how I operate. Okay, so I “plan tomorrow, today” every day, every week, I “reflect and project”, and at the end of the month, I’ll then look at that 90-day plan and see if it’s still viable – because sometimes, things change, right? So that’s pretty much how I operate. I reverse engineer from the year, to the 90-, to the month, to the week, and then every day, I “plan tomorrow, today”, and I get to my to do list that way.
I try not to distracted by things, hence why I’ve moved to this office. I try to not procrastinate, I try to – staying productive is the best way to keep the squirrels away. So, you know, a lot of people follow shiny objects because they’re not really focused and busy. I like to keep myself so tight and busy that I have no time to be distracted, and I have no time to procrastinate, because I’ve got such a tight schedule.
But then, I like a lot of freedom. So I do that, Kim, because I like to have a lot of long time off. I don’t work weekends, try not to work the evenings, and so forth, and I like doing other activities.
Now, a tool that I like to use is something called WorkFlowy. W-O-R-K-F-L-O W-Y, I believe it is.
KIM: Yeah, yeah.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, WorkFlowy.com. So that’s what I used to manage everything that I do right now. So my to-do list right now, is in there, I would have never remembered that we had this interview if it wasn’t in my WorkFlowy. You know, because I don’t use a calendar, I basically run all of my to-do lists out of WorkFlowy. It just said “I’ve got a podcast with Kim”, so “oh, okay”, and then I connected with you on Facebook. So, great tool.
Then, with regards to teams, we use Asana to manage the team. So, if I’m delegating any projects to anybody, we do that inside of Asana, and they’re really the two tools that I use for productivity right now.
Then, I’m old-fashioned, so I use pen and paper. So on my desk right now, I have lots of pen, you know, lots of paper and notes that I just – like, scribble my notes ,and then I can just write them up later. And that’s it.
KIM: Oh, absolutely, that’s so great – and, yeah, I’m a pen and paper person as well, as well an Asana person – but I keep hearing about WorkFlowy, and I hadn’t tried it out yet. I think I just got the last nudge I needed to get in there.
So what does your team look like, Alex?
ALEX JEFFREYS: So, right now, we’ve got a small team – so we’re a startup again, we’re scaling. You know, last year, my biggest month was $400,000 – just over $400,000 was the best month we had. And we were seeing that we were having a lot of scale issues. It was very difficult to maintain that level, so my average month was about $250,000 a month.
And it was very difficult to maintain the $400,000, let alone, you know, get to 1 million a month. And I’m a very driven person, and I would like to hit that million-dollar-month and then be consistently generating a million dollars a month. And that’s something that’s driving me, is targets like that.
So we realized that we weren’t going to do it the way we were set up previously, so we made the decision – we actually hear the story called “Burn the Boats” about Cortes, and you know, there’s a story about – maybe people can Google and read up about it, I won’t take the time up now.
KIM: Yeah, I’ll Google it and put it in the show notes.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, and as soon as we understood – soon as we hear the story of “Burn the Boats”, which basically, the short and skinny is… There was – because they went to Mexico to take over the gold – there was three options, you know: fight for your life, die, or retreat. And, you know, Cortes realized the people were scared, and they may retreat. So he actually said, “Burn the Boats”. Now there’s only two options, you know: fight for you life or die. Well now there was only two options, people fought for their life, and they actually took over the Mexican gold.
So we hear this story, and you know, it’s maybe a 50-minute story the way it was explained to me. And I looked my business partner, and we literally shook hands right there and then – and this was actually a year ago, three days, so 368 days ago right now – we literally shook hands, and we said, “Okay, let’s burn the boats.” Because we realized that, if we wanted to get to the next level, we had to get rid of what we have now, you with me?
So we made a very brash decision to get rid of the team. There was about 25 staff that I had at that point – 25, 30 staff – moved to San Diego then and started up. And we’ve just been, started business this year.
So it’s me – it now looks there’s me and my business partner, we have a technical person, who basically does all of our funnels – graphics, funnels – we haven’t even got a client support person at the moment, which will be the next person we hire, and we just hired a video crew to basically follow me one day a week to create content, so I can post content online. And I think we have another technical person, and I think that’s it.
Oh and then, Katie, my wife, she just helps with the books, makes sure all the payments and everything match up, and she just does all of the books for – my accountant, or my CPA – and… that is it. Yeah. So we’re a very small, lean company right now.
KIM: Wow. So what is – and I apologize if this is personal, but – how deep did “burning the boats” actually go? I mean, when you’re making profits like that, just letting them – or I guess I can’t really say profits. That’s what you were bringing in every month, so we can’t even say that that was profit every month. But “burning the boats” could mean going as far as just spending whatever money you had, so you had no choice but to really start everything from scratch. So really, how deep did you “burn the boats”, right?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Let’s put it this way. I watched some video – we had a video crew following us as we were closing everything down – and I was watching back with the footage over the weekend, just received a lot of the footage. And there was – one of the videos that I was in, I speak about that I had 10 days before I moved to America, and I hadn’t sold anything in the office.
I had this, you know, office with all of the furniture I hadn’t sold, and sold any of my stuff in my house. I hadn’t sold my cars – I had two cars to sell – I hadn’t booked any plane tickets. I didn’t have a house to move into in America, I didn’t have any schools for the children, in America, I had to set up a new company in the same time period… I mean, I literally went out on a limb.
So when you say “burn the boats”, I pretty much… You know, we got rid of the company and our – you know, we had a great life the UK. But me and my wife both wanted to move to San Diego, so I was like, “Okay, we’ll just start fresh. We’ll move in – me, my wife, and two kids – and we’ll figure out a house and everything when we get there, and figure out schools and everything, let’s just – let’s go.
And it was literally a fresh start, so we got rid of everything. So I mean, when you say, “How deep?” Guess that!
KIM: No, that’s good, no, I just mean like – for people who are starting over, though, they might not necessarily have any money to come with, but you at least had some money to come with, which is a great thing.
So I do want to, I want to be respectful of your time. What type of mindset practices do you use in your life? Do you use any to help yourself stay motivated from one day to the next? I mean, I know you have your plan, and that’s great, but do you have any tips or tools as far as staying positive – and keeping a positive mindset – that you can share?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, absolutely. So I never used to have a “gratitude list”, but I wrote one recently – ah, I’d say a few months ago – I wrote one out, and it’s maybe about… just in my phone, and it’s maybe about 30, 40 lines of things I give gratitude for. And I read that from time to time, and that really get keeps me focused and positive.
However, I myself talk – I didn’t notice this, but I had a guy Mike Moran come and live with me for a while. I actually had him as a copywriter; back last year, he actually stayed in the UK with me for six months. He actually now moved to San Diego with us as well, and he does a bit of stuff with us. But he basically was around me a lot, and he said, “Alex, you know something I’ve come to see is, your self-talk is incredible.
The way I speak to myself or when I record videos to myself, or I make notes to myself, I’m very positive to myself. I tell myself I love myself at the end of any audio message I may do. I tell myself I’m the man, like, “I can do this; whatever happens, you are going to get through this!” So I didn’t notice it, but he noticed it, so I found that interesting. So my self-talk towards myself is one of a great one, because I respect myself, and I love myself, and I’ve never noticed I did that until he told me.
Then I journal a lot to myself, so I’ll journal pretty much everyday. More than likely, every day, I journal to myself about what’s going on, and the experiences I’m going through, and whether… I like to say this: “I made it through adversity, not university.” It’s a quote that I come up with at some point, that – even if you’re going through a hard time, it’s those hard times that shape us, right? So it isn’t all pretty and gravy, because the reality is. any time that I’ve had big success has always come after my biggest failure.
So even when I moved to San Diego, it wasn’t like, “Hey, we start up again!” You know, we moved to a new market, and there was definitely a lot of learning that we had to go through – and that was painful, because we didn’t anticipate so much delay. Like you said, lucky I did come to America with money, because there was a period time that we were really not doing business to try to figure things out. But then, like I said, our biggest failures – you know, our biggest successes – come after it.
So that’s always nice to know when you’re going through failure, to keep pushing, because that’s when the gold happens: when you go that extra mile where most people don’t. They give up.
I’ve read somebody today – you know, somebody gave up – I’d literally read it today: The person gave up before even getting going. Like, how can even be successful if you’re not willing to go through that hardship? Like, I don’t know one story – can you tell me one story where somebody’s become successful without going through some hardship first? I don’t think there is one, unless they’re a rare cases.
KIM: No, not at all.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Then, I watch motivational videos on YouTube a lot. So you know, I’ll just put like a motivational video – I’ll go to YouTube, I’ll put “motivational video”, and I’ll just let it play in the background, and just let that play – and I’ve done that for a number of years. So that’s just something else that keeps me positive.
So really, I’ve got that back gratitude list, which is – I haven’t been doing that for long. I don’t read it every day; I try to. Another thing that I do is, like I said, I’ve got my plan, so it really keeps me focused cause I got goals and targets to go after. I listened to the most facial videos, my self-talk, I journal.
Other things I do is I train every morning, so I go to the gym with a personal trainer every morning, because I’m boxing twice a week, and the pain of that – when I go to the rest of the day, there’s nothing that could be more painful than that session in the morning. Do you understand? Like, whatever else I’m going to go through the rest of day is nowhere near how tough that section is. I have another trainer then, three days a week, so that really keeps me positive because my energy is great.
And I guess, you know – I guess there are enough things right there.
KIM: Alex, what have you done with all their journals, and is this something that you’re – if you keep them, are you planning on passing them on to your kids?
ALEX JEFFREYS: So I just I used to journal with a pen and paper, and I used to think that was so important. But I now journal online, so I have a folder inside Dropbox, and I just have the month, and then I have the date, and then I have the highlights – so I can just quickly skim through it all – and then inside of there, I just make my notes. So I journal now digitally.
What am I doing with my journal. Well, the journal is being kept because I’m to now reflect back certain points and able to put that in my next book that I write. It also – when I read back at my journal entries, it keeps me – there’s another thing, as the positive, is to go back and see where I was in certain places and pain and difficulties, and then read how far I’ve come. That is positive because to see how far we’ve advanced.
And also, it’s great for content, because I normally – because you forget. Because you move forward, “Now things are great”, you kind of forget the three, four months ago that you were in a bad place. And that place is now forgotten, and sometimes, the brain wants you to get it, right?
However, now it’s written down, it’s like, “Oh, wow this is how people are feeling,” so I’m able to create content from that and actually tap into the market and let people know. Because there’s a saying in marketing: If you can explain your prospect’s pain better than they can themselves, they automatically believe that you have the solution. So if you can actually explain that and articulate that pain, that then leads to more people wanting to do business with you.
Because all business is done on emotion backed up in logic, not the other way around, so you have to tap into people’s emotion and get them to realize the pain they’re going through and how bad it’s going to be moving forward if they don’t work with you – so long as you do have the solution to help them.
So that’s that’s really why I use my journal for. Am I going to pass them to my children? No, I don’t think my children are really going to be interested in these journals. You know, maybe they will, but I don’t know. There’s other things I’m going to pass to my children.
I love the fact that you say that you really don’t work weekends or evenings. And I know there’s probably times that there are exceptions, but what has been most key in keeping your relationship with your wife strong?
KIM: I remember, we were having one discussion on Facebook one night, and you were like, “I got to go. Date night.” And I just thought that was awesome. So, I know entrepreneurs sometimes struggle with keeping their relationships as strong as they were before they were entrepreneurs. So what are your tips, is when I’m trying to ask?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, so first things first. Yeah, I don’t work weekends, apart from this weekend – I’m actually putting on an event here for clients in San Diego. So I will be working this weekend, because I’ll be on stage all weekend.
But you know that’s just something I don’t do, is I don’t work weekends. That’s my family time. I do work evenings a lot of the times, but you know, it depends where we are with the business. You know, I’m really trying to get those hours into to build business. And then for instance, last year, I didn’t have to work one evening because it was all set up and systematized. But now where a startup again, and I’m definitely willing to work evenings.
But, there has to be though those times where you spend – you know, you plan time in with the spouse. So this evening, my wife’s going to – like I said, we’ve got family and friends in town – so she’s going to the cinema. I’m going to spend the evening my children, and I’ll make sure to watch a movie and play on some computer games with them.
But I guess it is really just making sure that they know what I’m working for – so if I’m not at home, they know why – and you know, keeping them in the loop. And then also making sure that when I am -I schedule in time with my family – to make sure that business doesn’t get in the way then. So I will not have my wife speak about business, or I will not speak about business when we’re in our free time. It just isn’t, so it’s – we talk about anything else apart from business.
And then, you know, just make sure to do fun things. I’m always – like I said, when I was living in Cardiff. It was a bit like, “Meh. There’s not a lot to do.” Now that we live in San Diego, there’s just so much to do. So we were at the beach on the weekend, we went to a beautiful hotel yesterday and spent time with friends and children, and played games – so yeah, there’s always something to do. So make sure to have fun.
KIM: Alex, you just inspired me, because I can’t imagine when I’m not working – and somehow, discussing working always comes up with my husband. But you just inspired me to really make an effort not to talk about it.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Before, it got to the point where even when I was taking a bath, my wife would come into the bathroom and actually bring something up in the business. Because, you know, I’d be at the office, when I come home, because she’d – like I said, she’s a part of business, she would then say, “Oh, and this.”
And it got to the point where all the conversation was just about business, and it must have been 2010, 2011… It was 2011. I said, “Listen, we do not speak about business outside of business. You can e-mail me. Just email me, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow or something.” And I was very – I was very strict about that.
So, even – I would wake up in the morning – and it’s happened here in San Diego – you know, I wake up in the morning, and my wife would say something about business. I’d look at her and say, “Look… don’t.” And she gets the point then.
So it’s – I think it’s so important not to, because I can speak and talk and think about business 24/7. No question of that. I love it. I love what I do. And then, like you said, there’s that: Why are we doing this? Well, I want a great life with my wife. I want a great life with my kids, and we don’t need to be speaking about business 24/7. So yeah, it’s basically all by e-mail now.
KIM: That’s so huge. I hope you realize how much – or how inspiring that was to me – and I’m sure to a lot of the audience – because I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with that. Wow.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah. And if you do need to speak with your spouse about business, like schedule a time in.
KIM: Oh, yeah. I was just about to say – my spouse, I mean he’s just my emotional support. He really isn’t part of the business. It’s just me sharing, you know, constantly. It’s not just a once, you know, “How is your day dear?” It’s – every time I get an idea and he’s right here, sharing.
But there has to be a point where we’re not always talking about business, or – for that sake – always talking about kids, which is another thing that we can always be talking about. Like we need to be talking about us. So, yeah.
So one last question: What does a weekday in the life of Alex look like right now?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Oh, good question. So, very different to how it used to look like. I would – so when I first got into business, I got into business for freedom. So I believed that I didn’t need an alarm clock anymore, and I could just live my life as freely as I wanted. And I lived like that for a number of years. I would go to sleep whenever I wanted to go to sleep, I would wake up whenever I wanted to wake up, and I would do as I pleased.
And what I realized was when I was great, it could be a busy mess. So what I started to practice – and now I find this amazing – is that I have more freedom in structure than being free. And I only just learned this the last several months.
So every day now, I’m in the gym – I go to the gym 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. Just alternates every other day, so: Monday 8 a.m. Tuesday 7 a.m. Wednesday 8 a.m. Thursday 7 a.m. Friday 8 a.m. So every morning, I’m in the gym, so I have to get up either 5:45 a.m. or 6:45 a.m. And then I have about a 30-minute drive to the gym, and there’s closer gyms, it’s just I drive my dream car, so I’m happy to drive to the further gym. So I really enjoy driving the car every morning. I go to the gym, personal trainer, shower, sauna, and I’m in the office whether it be 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. in the morning.
And then what I’m going to do then is I’m going to open up my WorkFlowy – and that’s obviously got my day’s to-do list in there.
And the first thing I want to look at is my numbers of the business: How much did we spend on advertising? How many how many applications we generate for the coach-in? How many sales were made yesterday? And how the business look right now? Are we on track? Are we on target?
And then I start to attack my to-do list. I start to go through my to-do list and, if I do not be distracted, if I do not procrastinate, if I do not work on the small meaningless tasks – if I just focus on my main tasks, I can have more achieved by noon on a Monday morning than most do have in a whole week. Because I focus on something that’s highly leverageable, and I could – and I feel great, I could go home if I wanted, but I don’t.
And I continue with the rest of the tasks. I can look after the clients, working through other to-do lists, making sure my teams are okay, and so on and so forth. But you know, it’s – you’re always going to be fighting the “Oh, I’ll just do this first.” You know, you’re always going to be fighting things.
So I’ll give you an example: Today, we sat down – the main task for today was, we sat down and we worked out the logistics for the event on the weekend, the content for the event on the weekend, the experience for the clients on the weekend, the video crew – what they have to do – and the case studies we want to pull out of the events for, like, videos to allow video ads on Facebook and stuff.
I mean, that that was all done by 10:30 a.m. We had a call with our Facebook advertiser who’s helping us with the Facebook advertising, and – oh, I didn’t mention earlier as a team player – and that was an 11 a.m. meeting. And you know, we realized that we’re kicking arse. You know, this week is going to be an incredible week – maybe our most profitable week since we’ve been here – we’ve been here like eight months. So business is really taking off now, finally!
And yeah, I’m doing this interview now, and then – today, I’ve got a – to just tell you, I’m going have a meeting with the video crew after now. I’m going to zero my e-mail inbox with my clients, and I’m going to check out my new funnel, and I’m going to promote my new funnel to my mailing list, and I’m going home.
KIM: It blows my mind that you had all that done – just the first part – by 10:30.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, and we did it over steak and eggs for breakfast, as well – steak, eggs, and coffee. And a local coffee. And yeah, that was it. And I have it written up, and that there was like a main project for the week.
So this week – I look at this week, I have – I’ve got my main to-do list in WorkFlowy. Now: it’s those workshop tasks, which I’ve still got to do – you know, I’ve still got some more things to do this week, like create the worksheets for the event, and go over the content, make sure the content’s flowing, make sure that the schedule’s there, email the clients that we want information from them before they arrive – so we’re prepared, so we can actually give them the best experience possible. I need to shoot four videos tomorrow for Facebook advertising, so I need to shoot four videos. I need to finish my e-mail sequence for my new funnel, and I need to write a new squeeze page.
Like, if I can get those things done this week? Incredible, productive week. Workshop tasks, record four videos, get the emails finished – I’ve already wrote them, but just to finish up these emails – and write the new squeeze page.
If I can do those things, then I don’t care about the rest – all these other things’ to-do list. You know, speak to people, podcasts like this, you know – get my oil changed in my car. You know, check this, check that, go to the bank, this blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Bugger all that!
If I can get those few things done? My business is going to really push forward. So that’s what I always focus on, is those high-level projects. What can I do? And just try and get them done in the morning, then the rest of the day is to do as I please, if I want to continue working or not.
I normally do continue working, though, just to let you know. Again, I’m really pushing this company forward. You know, we’ve got big goals, big dreams, big aspirations.
KIM: Wow, okay! Well, I have to share: I did just realize that I have a WorkFlowy account. I didn’t know about it, but – you have just completely blown me away! I hope you’ve blown the audience away like you have me. Because I am working on my backwards 90-day plan tonight and for the rest of the week.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yes, yes!
KIM: So thank you, Alex. Where can listeners find you and find out more about what you’re doing, find out maybe about this event that you’re having this weekend, so that they can be involved in the future?
ALEX JEFFREYS: Yeah, so if you want to go to TeleFunnels.com, that’s T-E-L-E-F-U-N-N-E-L-S.com. Telefunnels. So that is our new website, in fact as I say this right now, that website is not up online but it should be in the next day or two – I’ve actually got my tech guy building it.
We actually – we’re launching our own podcast, as well, called “Inside Marketing”. That’ll be InsideMarketing.com, so that should be launched pretty soon as well. So you know there’ll be lots of free content over there.
So TeleFunnels.com: there’ll be a great presentation – a free presentations that I’m giving. You can check out, get on the mailing list, there’s lots of follow-up messages, lots of videos and stuff we send out there. Inside Marketing will be our podcast where we will be giving lots of free information over there as well, so hopefully that helps the listeners.
And I hope, like I said, I hope it’s been a helpful interview. You know, I don’t know too much coming into this, what the questions are going to be asked – but I liked the fact you asked about productivity and time management.
And you know, these are the things I – there’s a saying that, “It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.” And the answers that I’ve given to you today are how do – how I go about a lot of things. You know, I find freedom in structure. I find reverse engineering – because everybody feels that plate with too much stuff, but really there’s only one – like I said, if I just did that workshop task today, and I didn’t do anything else for the rest of the day, I’ve still had an incredible, productive day, and I finish by 10:00, 10:30 a.m.
Then obviously I’ve had a meeting, and I wrote up the notes from the “over steak and eggs”, and now I’ve got this podcast with you – but even if I went home now, I’m had an incredible productive day, but I’m not. I’m going to email my clients, I’m going to have a meeting with the video crew, make sure that everything is cool with those guys.
Even if I went home then, I would have had an incredibly productive day, but I’m still going to do some more. And then tomorrow, if I just go to the gym, and I come home from the gym, and I shoot four videos – and it may take me an hour – incredible productive day. Take the rest of the day off, and I’ve achieved more, because those videos are going to drive the business forward.
I don’t need to sit here for 18 hours and do 100 different tasks and feel “productive”. What people do is, they mistake activity with accomplishment, and they feel guilty if they’re not working. But when you realize that there’s tipping points and leverage points of a business. And being busy for busy’s sake is not something that drives a business forward, but it’s the small things that have the biggest effect.
That’s when you find freedom. That’s why you can scale, and that’s why I believe we’re – we have no question, we’re going to hit a billion dollars a month, because we’re very focused on these small leverage points that are going to really stack up on top of each other and have that compounding effect.
And I hope it’s being helpful, I really do. And I’d love to hear feedback from people – if you’ve enjoyed this, please reach out to me. Maybe Kim can put my Facebook details – maybe send me a message on Facebook and let me know what you think.
KIM: Oh, I definitely will. All the links – everything will be in the show notes. When your podcast goes live, I’ll be sure to have that linked up in the show notes as well.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Perfect.
KIM: Well, thank you so much Alex. I have no doubt that it’s been helpful for more people than just me, so thank you times about 10,000.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Thank you so much, and my pleasure. And yeah, anything I can do, just let me know, okay?
KIM: I sure will.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Have a wonderful day.
KIM: Yes, you too.
ALEX JEFFREYS: Take care. Thanks, Kim. Bye-bye.