If you work from home and want to know how to be more productive, or if you work from home and want to accomplish more by doing. . . nothing (yes, nothing), be sure to check out this week’s reading roundup: what’s new in entrepreneurship. And whether or not you work from home, if you want to sell more, write better, or be more confident, keep reading!
The Best Indicators Of Selling Success Might Not Be The Ones You Track Today
Some entrepreneurs spend a lot of time tracking metrics, and while tracking metrics is important, if you’re tracking the wrong ones, you’re not only wasting a lot of time, the overall success of your business will be impacted as well.
This article by Ian Altman published on Forbes gets into the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter the most to anyone in sales. He starts off by addressing the common mistakes that sales professionals make when it comes to tracking performance, and then gets into the KPIs that matter most, along with when CRMs hurt more than they help.
You can read the article here.
4 Ways To Remain Productive When Working From Home
I've been working from home for the past five years, and for the most part, I love it. In fact, one of the big draws for me personally when it comes to self-employment is the opportunity to work from home.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm an introvert or for some other reason, but I actually find that I'm more productive when I work from home, compared to working in a traditional office environment. But not everyone has that same experience. If you're a freelancer or have some other type of business that enables you to work from home and you're struggling with productivity, this article published on Entrepreneur.com has some great tips to keep in mind. You can check it out here.
If You Work From Home, Do This Every Day
In keeping with the working from home theme, this article also published on Entrepreneur.com has a great tip on one thing you should do every single day if you work from home and that is. . . nothing. I know, it sounds counter intuitive, particularly since I'm sharing it right after the article on being productive when working from home. But believe it or not, having periods of doing nothing interspersed with periods of intense focus actually results in greater productivity.
The methodology that I personally use is a bit different than what this article gets into, but I can personally vouch for the overall effectiveness of this approach to productivity, particularly when working from home.
Bedtime rituals that are hard to adopt, but will pay off forever
There is a lot of talk about morning rituals for good reason. Every successful entrepreneur I know has a solid morning routine. But it can be almost as important to have some solid bedtime rituals in place as well. In fact, I've found that if I have a solid before-bed-routine and a solid morning routine, the rest of my day is almost guaranteed to go well.
This article published on Business Insider lists seven bedtime rituals you should consider. I personally recommend starting off with just one or two, and then adding one at a time. For me personally the hardest and yet most beneficial one is to unplug completely from all electronics. I try to do this an hour before lights out. This is tough, especially since I even use my computer to journal. The one exception that I personally make to this is that I read on my Kindle Paperwhite before bed. I recommend the Paperwhite since the light is much softer and since I can't get sucked into email or watching videos since the only thing I can do on my Paperwhite is read.
By the way, if you missed Patrick's article and video on morning rituals that I'm sharing below, be sure to check it out.
Developing Employees’ Strengths Boosts Sales, Profit, and Engagement
One of the things that Patrick talked about in one of this week's videos was the different roles within a company, and how it's important to know what role(s) you are best suited for. This is important, because you'll always do better if you're playing to your strengths.
If that's true for you and me, isn't that also true for your team? This isn't just about keeping team members happy. It goes deeper than that and ultimately impacts the profitability of your business. You can read all about it in this article published on Harvard Business Review.
5 Brutal Truths About Real Confidence (and How to Get It)
Are you lacking on confidence? The bad news is that as this article published on Inc.com states, real confidence can't be purchased or sold. That's the first of the five brutal truths about confidence laid out in this article. Here are the other four:
- Real confidence has to do with how you carry yourself.
- Confident people have compassion, insecure people don't.
- Real confidence has no shortcut.
- Only people with real confidence can achieve their true potential.
These are some great points, and I especially like the last one. Go here to read the entire article.
I also wanted to share this video and article published here on PatrickBetDavid.com on the topic of how to gain self-confidence. It helped me to think about this topic in a totally different way.
https://www.patrickbetdavid.com/self-confidence/
10 Tips to Improve Your Writing Skills
Regardless of the type of business you run, you likely have to do a lot of writing. Think about it. Even if you don't have a blog and haven't written any books, you probably write a lot every day, whether that be in texts, emails or social media posts. Obviously, the bigger the piece of content, the more important the quality of writing. I definitely take more pains when writing a book than when writing a blog post, much less, a Tweet.
Regardless of the type of writing you do, it's important to put your best foot forward with your written content, and this article published on Small Business Trends provides 10 tips for improving your writing skills. In my opinion, one of the best tips is, "Take a break and come back to it later." There are times when out of necessity I have to publish something very soon after I finish writing it, and I can pretty well guarantee those articles have more typos. But if I allow at least 24 hours after completing a post before proofreading it, I'm likely to catch those typos before the piece goes live.
3 Ways to Be Unforgettable to Everyone You Meet
I think we all want people to remember us. After all, how good it is to have our name come to mind when someone is looking for someone that does what we do. For example, if people need to hire a writer or editor, it helps tremendously if my name is the one that immediately comes to mind. But how do you become that person that everyone remembers?
This article published on Addicted2Success gives three ways to be unforgettable to everyone you meet. When you read this article you'll find that the tips all focus on doing things that make the other person feel valued.
And of course, in case you've missed any of the posts published this week right here on PatrickBetDavid.com, be sure to check them out:
What can entrepreneurs learn from Iron Man? Read this post to find out how he turns a common saying around.
Are you worried about not having enough financial capital to start your business? If so, check out these 9 forms of capital for entrepreneurs.
The bigger your vision is, the more important it is for you to build a team. In this video, Patrick talks about 10 different roles within a company.
Enjoy your weekend reading. 🙂 And if you have suggestions for other blogs for entrepreneurs that you'd like us to follow and perhaps select content from to share, please leave them in the comments below.
