Developing a team helped me to serve more clients as I was getting other people to do some of the work – both paid members of staff and outside contractors.

But the one thing that I struggled with, for some time, was finding the time to spend on the strategy and shaping of the business rather than just working on client projects and marketing the business all the time.

It’s important that you serve your clients and customers to the best of your abilities and make sure that they get HUGE value from working with you and buying your products. However, if you are constantly focussed on the ‘doing’ part of your business, then strategies for growth, sustainability and your future success will go out of the window.

There are many ways that you can spend time focussing on the business without it impacting the work for your customers and clients. Here are just three ways, from my own experience, that you can do this – it’s about finding more time in the day.

I hope they help.

1 – Get up 30-40 minutes earlier each day

We all like to stay in bed… it’s cosy and comfortable – but getting up just half an hour before you normally do, to focus on the day ahead, can become a really precious and important part of your day.

You can focus on personal development, read a book, go for a jog (or walk), take a longer shower or put some music on and think about something you are grateful for, something that you are hoping to achieve and one or two people that you are going to reach out to in your day ahead.

No laptops – No phones – No iPads. No electronic devices in the morning. Nothing that can distract you from spending time thinking about your day and having ‘YOU’ time.

The other aspect of your morning should be all about fueling your body with the right stuff to get you going. Remember to have breakfast, and a healthy one at that.

Although this is not necessarily spending time ‘on’ the business, as a business owner you are the captain of the ship and if you don’t fuel your body right, exercise it and get in the right frame of mind, are you really starting the day in the best possible way?

Since I started this, my work life has changed no-end. Less stress, more focus, more business coming in… it’s something I hold precious now.

2 – Tame the Inbox!

“Your inbox is just a very convenient organising tool for other people’s agendas” – Brendon Burchard

I used to start my day by waking up, rolling over, unplugging my phone from the charger and checking emails – even before I got out of bed. I started the day essentially with other people dictating my agenda for the morning and letting emails set my mood for the day. I used to also have my email open all day every day – when a new message came in, I would jump over and read it, no matter what I was doing.

How many times have you checked your email today? How many emails do you have sat in your inbox, waiting for you to do something with them?

Once I got in the right frame of mind to start my day of in the best possible way (as above), I would then sit at my desk and plan my day, without opening the laptop still. I would review the big projects that I have on, make a list of the priority tasks that must be done that day and also make a list of people that I am waiting on things from and who I need to reach out to that day. This is all advice from Brendon that has changed the way that I am working for the better.

My advice, plan your day then only check your email twice a day. Open your email once in the morning to check if you have received anything that you need to complete your tasks of the day with – then close your email program. Open it again after lunch and deal with what you can, send the emails you need to and then close it again.

Unless you are in a customer service role where you need to respond to things quickly, why check your email constantly? It’s just a distraction. Less distractions means more time and then you can use that time wisely for strategy and planning, not just for ‘doing.’

3 – Take time to physically remove yourself from the business

Conferences, events and training programmes can help you remove you physically from your business and put you in an environment where you have to focus on the subject being presented or indeed on learning a new skill that you can bring back into the business. Choosing which events you attend is sometimes a challenge, but whatever you choose, think about the outcome you want from the event and how it will make your business more efficient, more profitable or a better place to work in.

Recently, taking four days out of my business to attend a conference, helped me shape my thinking and renew my own focus on what I was really all about. And what I wanted to achieve in business.

Coming back, implementing a routine in my day, taking the teaching that I learned at the conference and applying it in my work, together with the rest that came the day after the event (whilst I led by the pool in the Californian sun), helped like I could not have believed.

Start by approaching your local networking groups, chambers of commerce and ask people if they know of any worthwhile events and conferences that they may be going to. Your time invested in these events will help you with personal and business development, plus it will give you opportunity to meet new people too.

Time out of the ‘doing’ has helped me develop a clear vision for the business and I know where it is ‘going’ – more than I did before.

Until I started my business again in August of last year, I wasn’t really a big fan of self-help material and all mumbo-jumbo that comes with the “Guru” lead industry. The Internet marketing world is full of wannabe gurus, and so say experts telling people how they can make lots of money online with quick push-button solutions to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams – and every place that I turned there were people promising the Earth and delivering nothing! I wasted so much of my own money and time.

Last year I picked up a book by Brendon Burchard – the Millionaire Messenger. It’s a book that teaches you how you can make a difference by sharing your advice, knowledge and skills to an audience that is hungry to know more about what you know. No easy solution to make money, it was going to be hard work.

After reading it, I opened the IM Elite Internet marketing mentoring program, which has helped a handful of people identify how they can productise their knowledge into online systems, membership sites, products and live events that can really serve people who are stuck in some way. I haven’t really promoted this or pushed it strongly, because I needed to shape this into a program that can really help a lot of people.

After attending the Experts Academy conference in California recently, run by Brendon, I came away with a renewed focus of exactly what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. If you didn’t read my blog post from last week click here to read it and find out exactly this shaped the direction I am now going in.

Whilst I was there was also fortunate enough to get a free signed copy of Brendan’s new book called The Charge. I had ordered my own copy through his website where he is still giving away hardback copies of his book for free, all you have to do is pay the postage. This new book is helped me to realise that there are many driving factors in my life that will help me to succeed as well as driving factors that will hinder me from succeeding.

After getting halfway through the book already, there are many things that I need to make sure that I’m doing in terms of making choices in my life and my business that will enable me to succeed. Tactically I have to implement strategies to enable me to think differently, act differently and realise that I can use my God given talents, skills and abilities to serve and help others around me.

As a sceptic of the self-help industry and someone who really avoided all of this kind of stuff, I can’t recommend his new book enough – and if you want your free copy then you just have to jump over to’s website and order one here.

As a Christian I believe that God has given me everything that I need to be able to walk the path that he is destined for me. And I know that in Him I can do all things because he gives me the strength to do them. Books like Brendan’s and others that give guidance and help in a tactical way to implement strategies for better business and better achievement, don’t draw me away from my beliefs but ultimately bring me closer to them to enable me to live how I’m supposed to be and do what I’m supposed to be doing.

If you feel like you’re stuck in any way and you just want to chat, then jump onto twitter, skype or ping me an e-mail. My promise to you is that I’ll help in any way that I can. If I can’t, then I’ll point you in the direction of somebody that I know who will be able to help. For now, I say, jump over and get your free copy of The Charge and maybe will catch up again sometime soon. Take care.

The biggest threat is not another one of the current competitors, but there are rumors being reported that there could be a new player about to enter the search ring.

Can you guess who?

Google have been trying to throw everything they could at us in terms of social with Google Buzz and now the slightly more successful Google+, mixing in our preferences and social activity into our search results, the biggest player in the social media world looks set to enter the search engine market- Facebook.

According to Masahble, photos have been leaked of Mark Zuckerberg’s laptop with a much larger search bar at the top and other rumors suggesting that the features including linking our friends likes and locations to our search, could see them enter the fight to be top dog. It seems that “A team of more than 20 Facebook engineers” are working on this project with an ex-Google programmer.

As probably the most used website in the world, could Facebook’s partnership with Microsoft essentially see the Bing search engine linked to this to create what could be a serious competitor to Google? Could we see the monopoly that Google has over search, finally crumble under he heavyweight of Facebook?

It’s all a bit secret-squirrel particularly with all the fuss around the FTC investigation over the purchase of Instagram, but in my opinion, if anyone can hit the search engine giant with something that will really compete, it will be Facebook. Whether this is a good thing or not is something we will all be chatting about soon enough, however, a serious competitor in the search engine space should do nothing more than help improve the functionality of search to give users more choice and better features. Competition is great!

Let’s see what happens over the next few months.

What are your thoughts on this? Are the privacy issues an issue? Should Facebook be using our data and information like this? Could it be a good or bad thing?

Those that know me well will remember the highs and lows of the marketing and branding agency I started a few years ago. They will have seen me as a director for an online marketing agency and for those that have followed my journey further, last year I started my own SEO and Internet marketing company. Internet marketing and helping business succeed online is my passion. I was diversifying and trying to serve everyone with what I could, but really that was the right decision. Could I really serve everyone?

In the time I spent away at Experts Academy talking with people listening to the teaching, receiving the training, all about how to really focus on what my core message is, what my values are and what I want to be doing in business, I realised that my true passion was that of helping start-up businesses get the foundations in place for real success.

Yes, Internet marketing is a passion for me I love social media, SEO, e-mail marketing, website design and I even get my hands dirty at times doing the graphic design and coding work myself. But really, the branding and marketing, the strategy work behind the scenes bringing all of this activity together and serving with my knowledge and experience – that’s really my passion. That is really where I want to be. That is really what I want to be doing.

Last year I started writing a book. It was my story about how I succeeded and how I failed, plus all the lessons learned (and am still learning) along that journey. I was focusing purely around Internet marketing SEO, but really the core message of the book was about getting the foundations in right for a successful business. For a successful start-up business rather.

My passion and ultimately my vision is to help transform the start-up community in the UK and beyond, to enable businesses to really succeed, to get the foundational elements in correctly and to try and avoid becoming yet another failure statistic in the economy.

I’m excited about the plans that I have for the next 6 to 9 months and the programs and products that I’m creating that will help serve this community. I’m excited about the connections that I’ve already made with many people who can see how my skills could be used to serve their audience, and I will be looking to partner with others to help serve mine. Many of my networking contacts will be getting calls will be getting e-mails (so you’ve been warned!) over the next few months to see how they can help to serve the start-up business community.

So that’s really the update from me and what I’m doing. HodgesNet is still there, however over the next couple of months I am streamlining the products and services to really serve start-ups, small businesses and entrepreneurs with Internet marketing solutions that they can afford and that will really work for them.

I’m really looking forward to working with many people who want to take the plunge into self-employment, start a new venture or to help improve any start-up that has got going. My aim is to help start-up businesses avoid making some of the mistakes that I have made in business. I don’t want people to have to go through similar experiences that I went through, to experience the emotional turmoil that I experienced, to become yet another statistic or do anything other than really succeed in business.

If you want to contact me at any time just hit the contact tab at the top of the page or get in touch with me on Twitter or Facebook. I will always personally respond.

I’ve found my niche and my passion… what’s yours?

My passion is really about helping start-up businesses succeed. What’s your passion?

Are you niching yourself enough to understand what it is you should be focussing on? If you need to find your ‘thing’ grab Rachel Henke’s book The Niche Exper – www.rachelhenke.com/nicheexpertbook as a starting point and go from there.

There are numerous professional bloggers available to hire from right across the web. When it comes to creating a reputable blog for your business, it becomes hard for you to decide which blog to read and then which professional blogger to contact to work for you. There are dozens of qualities you should look for.

You can employ a professional blogger to post guest blogs on your site, that name them as the author and link back to their site, or simply employ them to ghost blog as you.

My company, HodgesNet, offers professional blogging services from journalists, creative writers and blogging experts. Take a look at our professional blogging packages.

Whether it’s for our own website or for our many blogging clients, blog posts that we pull together are concise and have high keyword density, which is important for being found in the search engines (SEO). We are consistent and stick to the topic, even though we continue to provide regular updates. On our own blog we always reply to every comment – event my blog here, I will always aim to reply within a matter of hours. Interacting with you audience is of extreme importance.

With a combined 45+ years of professional blogging services across the team of bloggers that I have assembled, experience also counts for a lot also. Understanding what makes a blog post interesting, well structured and engaging enough to have a reader wait for the next post is key.

How to get started with our Professional Blogging services

1. Make a list of 5-10 keywords or topics that you would like us to quote you on for professional blogging

2. Send this list to us at team@hodgesnet.co.uk and include your contact details so we can get in touch with you and chat them through

3. Send us a link to you blog, website or relevant products and services so that we can link up the content of the blogs to what you sell

4. We’ll send you a price – Starting from just £20 per blog post

5. Come back to us and confirm how many blogs you need, how often and away we’ll go

If you would like to speak to me or any of the team about our professional blogging services, please call 08432 894 402 or use the contact form on our website.

I would love to provide a testimonial from one of our clients, but discretion is the name of the game. Ghost blogging or professional blogging is all about helping the client to get their message across and syndicated in social media or email with a minimal amount of input. Let’s chat as see what we can do to help.

Whatever type of business development and marketing activity you do for your business, face-to-face networking still remains as important as ever, even with the emergence of social media in recent years.

Events with your local chamber of commerce, 4Networking group, NRG business networking event (or many of the others out there) will remain as important as ever for many businesses’ marketing.

This may be strange coming from an Internet Marketing guy like me. Should I not be banging the Social Media drum as hard as I can, telling you that you need to do everything online? What many people fail to realise is that effective networking can happen online alongside and in addition to traditional networking.

In her book, The Financial Times Guide to Business Networking, Heather Townsend says that…

Effective business networking is the process of building up mutually beneficial relationships for your career or business

- I couldn’t agree more. This does not stop with just face-to-face networking over breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Social media and online networking tools are a great addition to any networking strategy and understanding how to use them can be tricky. Finding the right people to connect to that can help you and your business (by being “mutually beneficial”) is sometimes like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

If you want to start somewhere, start with Twitter. If you use Twitter to start identifying contacts, potential suppliers and even prospects, you can engage with them though following them, chatting with them and answering their questions. You can also watch from a ‘distance’ to see who and how they interact with others.

Within Twitter you can use the search feature to find people talking about services that you can provide, products that you sell and with the advanced search, the geographical areas within which you do business. The secret however is not in looking so much for the products and services you provide. Search for the problems and questions that people are asking that your business can fix or answer.

Search for the problems and questions … that your business can fix or answer

There are many applications and social media management tools out there that can help you manage your Twitter presence with ease. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are just two of 1,000s available for you to use.

Within each application you can set up columns or streams that are based on search terms that you are looking for. You can even add groups to your Twitter account (even including people that you don’t want to be seen as following!) to start managing the people you are wanting to follow and monitor.

Engaging with people on Twitter, having a conversation, providing solutions to problems and answering questions will help you to be seen as a go-to person or expert in your niche. Without realising it you will build a relationship with others that you choose to engage with, but the one rule for successful Twitter networking is engaging with others that will be of “mutual benefit” to you or your business.

To find our more about social media and how to use it best in your business, check out my Social Media Insight Day on the 26th April 2012.

Blogging is a powerful tool that you can use to market your business and publicise your expertise in your field. The biggest benefit of blogging on a regular basis is that it will allow you to create more awareness about your products or services, right across the Internet.

When you start blogging, you need to make sure that you stand out from the millions of blogs out there and that your blog attracts and converts as many visitors as possible. Here are some quick tips to help you on your way to make blogging more effective for you and your business.

In summary…

There are dozens of more tips and advice that I can give on blogging for business. At the end of the day, the only element that will truly matter is your content. Your visitors’ decision to take action will ultimately depend on what they read. In order to convert visitors into buyers, subscribers or advocates for your blog, you must effectively convey your point and then have a call to action. This may be as simple as “Add your comment below” or “Subscribe by doing….”

Blogging built my reputation as an Internet marketing professional and was one of the reasons I was able to leave my job to become self employed again. Build your reputation and start positioning yourself as an expert in your niche today by setting up your blog and get going.

Social Media and Blogging Insight Day

If you don’t know where to get started and the whole thing baffles you beyond belief, take a look at my Social Media Insight Day on the 26th April 2012 that I am running with blogging Queen, Alison Neale and Video guru, Jay Blake.

Alison will be going into more detail about blogging, will help you to plan your blogging and maybe even get you started in a practical workshop on the day.

Spaces are limited and are being booked up as we speak. Don’t miss out.

Click Here To Secure Your Ticket Before They Sell Out

These changes that are now public right across Facebook and something that businesses should be taking a firm hold of. Using the Facebook Timeline for business to tell your story is what you should be thinking about. Events, milestones, featuring customers and clients, telling stories from your office, can now be presented in a much better way.

The biggest myth about the new Facebook Timeline changes is that custom tabs are dead – which means no more user interaction.

With the old Facebook Page we use to be able to create a custom landing page that people would land on before they saw our Facebook wall. This meant that we were able to code a lead capture form, present a video or encourage people to hit the ‘Like’ button with a big red arrow.

We can’t have the custom landing page now, it will always land on your timeline view – however all is not lost. If you create a Facebook App, you can add this to your favorites section with a call to action in the image that will then link to the app page and look just like our previous love of custom landing pages.



Favorites can be found under the new Cover Image.

When visiting on our my Facebook page – www.facebook.com/anthodges.fb – you will see a ‘Start Here’ image. This links though to a landing page that looks like this.



No change from how we use to be able to present custom pages and tabs on our old Facebook pages – we can all customise them however we want!

These changes to the Facebook Timeline and the ability to now tell a story rather than just promote content will weed out the poor marketers and promote those that do engage more with their audience.

The Facebook Timeline changes are designed for every business, not just the big name brands, and you don’t need to have 100’s or 1,000’s of likes and fans to make it work for you. You just need to learn to engage your audience with more interesting content and you’ll be quids in.

I will be holding a Facebook for Business session as part of my Social Media Insight day on the 26th April 2012 at the Basepoint Business Centre in Swindon.

The Social Media Insight day will be a full day of training and insight into the world of Social Media and how you can develop a comprehensive strategy for your organisation or business.

Click here for more information and to book

The heros of yesteryear have not disappeared completely, but there is less news about the person trying to develop a cure for cancer than there is about David Beckhams new tattoo or Caroline Flacks romance with Harry Styles. But are these the real role-models that we should be looking up to? Should society be trying to copy them or should we be valuing ourself enough to stand and be who we are supposed to be?

In the world of business, the millionaire Dragons, Sir Alan or the comb-over legend that is Mr Trump as well as many others are the people that are looked up to inbusiness. But where are the approachable business leaders of today that we can get alongside of and learn from real hands on, 1-to-1 mentoring and coaching?

I am talking about the need for real guys and girls that are really making it and are prepared to spend time with you, showing you how they really make their money. The people spending time helping many other toachievemore in life. These are the role-models we need today.

The biggest problem that stops many many owner managers, self employed individuals or the unemployed, to become role-models in society or business, is that of real low self worth or self belief. It hinders their ability to really make it and end up just trudging through life.

Valuing yourself, your knowledge, and your story will give you the get up and go to make things happen – and not just for you.

Sam Walton, the US entrepreneur that founded the Wal-Mart was once quoted as saying Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of those they interact with. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.I believe that everyone has the capacity to do this, including YOU.

StartBelievingIn Yourself – Quick Exercise

If you struggle with a sense of low self-esteem or believe that you have nothing to give or to be able to position yourself as a leader or role-model in any area of life, complete this simple exercise to help you develop a high level of self-belief.Get out a notepad or three sheets of paper and use each page for notes that you are going to make on these three areas:

1. Yourself - If you are in business today you are successful. You are working to make a living for yourself. You are master of your own destiny. Be proud of the fact that you took a decision to risk starting your own business and that you can say today Im still here. But business is just one area. What about the rest of your life where you have achieved things and overcome adversity?

Action: At the top of the first sheet of paper, write the words My Achievements – then make a list of everything in life that you have achieved. Swimming badges to PHDs, bringing up children and doing a first aid course. Think about everything and write it down.

2. Your Knowledge - You know stuff – things that many other people dont. Yet there are probably 100s if not 1,000s of people that want to know what you do. They want to learn how to fix problems they have in their lives. They want to learn how to satisfy desires or needs. And you can help.

Action: Make a list on the second sheet of paper, under the title of Things I Can Do, of all the things you know how to do. Things that you can apply knowledge to. I would be able to write things like, play the guitar, ride a bike, use Photoshop, speak in front of large groups of people, market a business properly. These should all be driven out of the knowledge you have in areas of your life. Things that you have learned to do, or find naturally able to do. It might be difficult at first, but try. Once the lists starts to shape it will just flow.

3. Your Story - This is the glue that hold it all together and the nectar that will attract people to you. Unless you have lived in a cupboard all your life, you will have experienced love and heartache, times of good health and poor health, gain and loss – and so much more. People are emotional beings, some more than others. It is the expression of emotion through story telling that will keep people engaged. Mix this into experiences of the lessons from learning all the things you wrote on the second sheet of paper and you have something that people will be able to identify with and want to know more about.

Action: Think about where you are now in life. What decisions did you make or what circumstances have led you to this place you find yourself in now? On the last page write at the top My Story and start making bullet point notes about milestones in your life that were your life-changing moments. Think about why you started your business in the first place. Think about why you do what you are doing now. Think about what you did in the past and why you did it, and why you dot do it now.

Once you have done this, read it all aloud to yourself. Speak it into yourself.Start with page three. Tell yourself your story. Move onto the next page and then speak aloud all the things that you are able to to and potentially be able to share your experiences of these things with others. Finally, read page one aloud. This person has achieved so much in life and this person that is able to share their story, knowledge and experiences in life with others to help them achieve much more for their lives.

Is it only ecommerce businesses that are responding to a changing climate in how consumers are making buying decisions online?

Over the past couple of weeks I have met a number of business owners and self-employed individuals at various business networking events. Each of them had a website, which was good, but I after the events I visited their sites and had to pick up the phone to three of them.

I arranged to meet them for coffee, my shout, as I wanted to help them see how a real Internet marketing strategy could add another income stream to their businesses – there were simply not making full use of it.

These three business owners, two of whom sell products in a mainly business consumer focussed environment and the other, purely services to small businesses, all have flat websites with the same format – Home, About Me, Contact Me, My Products, My Services.

Last year I was asked if I would like to present a workshop and speak at the Direct Commerce Show in London, where I talked about businesses needing to major on making much more of the products and benefits of the products to build loyalty. Rather than have a ‘Look at me’ type of website that does nothing to help a consumer see how you can solve their problems or satisfy their needs, I showed how real engagement and selling in the right way online could work.

Today, Monday, is day one of an Internet marketing mentoring programme that I am delivering for each of these three businesses – They have joined the IM Elite. Two of my IM Elite students have products ready to sell online, so we are a little bit further down the line with them. For the third new student and I, this week and next is focussed on creating their products – they are a life coach, so they have a lot of the work done already!

Working with online retailers and those that use multi-channel marketing is a really exciting. Technology constantly changes and enables you to continue to evolve your marketing. I always say that standing still and marketing to your target audience in the same way every time, may keep the wolf from the door, but is it actually building you a stronger and more profitable business?

For those who are not selling products online or running an ecommerce business, it can be really difficult sometimes to see how you can make money online. After you have a product to sell, not just blocks of your time, using marketing tools such as Social Media, Email Marketing and Blogging, together with great SEO and PPC strategies, will bring you a greater return from your Internet presence.

There are still so many businesses that use their website as a simple online brochure and are missing out. Make it engaging, publish fresh content online, enable people to buy your products online and be found at the top of the search engines – that way your website will turn from just a couple of pages about the history of your company, a list of services and maybe a phone number, into a real transactional silent sales person for you.

This year instead of speaking at the Direct Commerce show, I have been asked to join the judging panel for selecting the winners of the prestigious 2012 ECMOD awards. I wont be able to tell you who I am judging, or what category, but it is a real privilege to be asked to do this. The ECMOD Awards have spearheaded the recognition of business excellence for organisations engaged in direct-to-customer retailing across traditional and newly emerging channels. I look forward to celebrating with businesses that are really going places with Internet marketing.