Getting Organized with Apple Notes

Every year as a kid I looked forward to school supply buying day. The one day a year my opinion on the Lisa Frank Notebook I would choose was valued. While those blue lines on a white page and your favorite pen (sparkly gel pens for me) aren’t going anywhere, there is a new generation of note-taking apps. Think of a 10,000 page notebook with separate tabs for various areas of life and work.

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Here are a few examples of the ways I use Apple Notes every day:

• Photos of handwritten notes

• Business Cards

• Marketing Ideas

• Leads

• Photos of Kid’s Artwork

• Recipes to Try

• Random Thoughts

• Vacations Memories

• Food Journal

• Restaurants to Try

• Passwords 

The best part? It's all searchable! (Even the handwritten stuff and the text in the photos!)

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Today’s Digital Notebook tools are designed to alter what your idea of a notebook is while keeping simplicity and portability front and center.

Apple Notes, like any number of amazing note taking apps can be used on any device to grab almost any kind of file including photos and audio clips. Everything is synced and indexed for better searching. It will even pick up and index the text on a sign in a photograph. Evernote even is capable of helping you plan a trip gathering itineraries together, saving emails, sketching with ipad or iphone, store recipes, and even drop PDFs and other files for searching or sharing.

I only use Apple Notes specifically because I use the Apple Ecosystem and it makes sense for me. I also like Evernote and various other note apps I have tried over the years. I am also using Good Notes on my iPad for handwritten notes and PDF edits. It is amazing… Hoping Apple Notes incorporates some of these features soon so I can go back to just 1 note app!

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In addition to the list above, I use Apple Notes for the these two unique uses as well:

CRM Customer Resource Management is something most business owners forget about and don't realize how much time it could be saving them! I have a single note for each client. I add their accounts, passwords, code snippets, Quote dates, phone and email logs, etc. I can easily search and find their info in a second.

Memories I always have my phone. My photos go into my phone and then get loaded into my computer for storage. But what about all those other memories, the ones the camera missed? What about a list of the places you ate, the sights you visited. Not to mention, some of my best inspiration comes when I am on vacation. I keep vacation notes in Evernote so that when I plan another visit to the same area, I can visit old favorites as well as uncharted territory. I also use it as a resource for friends and family when they visit the same areas.

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Suffice to say, Evernote is my most used app. (On my phone, tablet and computer. Don't have your devices handy? Did I mention it is a web app too?) Comment below and let us know the many ways you use Evernote. (PS: the Free version is good, but the Paid version is BETTER! Trust me!)

I am a Marketing Minimalist.

I am pumped about this!

This year I will be doing 75 (discounted) Power Days for small businesses to help them Do Less and Achieve More.

I cannot tell you how long I have struggled to get this message out there and now I am finally seeing how that can be done.

I became a minimalist in 2019. I began cleaning out my cupboards and under beds. In closets and on the walls. I decluttered and DeOwned thousands of items. So much so that I filled my brother's car with more items than he needed to start his own household. Since then, I have gotten rid of many carloads more to the donation center, and even more stuff has left my home via friends, family, and Facebook marketplace.

I consider myself a minimalist.

It is not for everyone, but it has given me so much more freedom and a place I can actually relax, I enjoy being, and it didn't cost me anything but a little bit of time. I literally cannot measure the mental stress that has been lifted from my personal and professional life since starting on this path.

What I did not realize, until I heard Cal Newport say it on a podcast, is that I am a Marketing Minimalist. Always have been. I have to give Cal the credit here. He wrote a book called Digital Minimalism where he details many of the principles I have been teaching for YEARS! (I have also been reading his latest book about Email. That is a whole OTHER story!)

I haven't felt so validated since I heard Mike Machalowicz speak about Parkinson's Law. (Podcast Episode coming soon!)

I know you probably know what I do, I create 1 year of marketing content in 5 days. And do you know the most common response to that? "WOW, that seems impossible!" And for today's typical entrepreneur YES, it is impossible. But not for the reason you think.

It is impossible because we have been living on and running our businesses on "Digital Junkfood"(Coined by Cal Newport) never stopping to do the deep work necessary to actually run a business. We are constantly context switching and making our brains dumber in the process. When we do that, our brains get out of shape and our cognitive function is depleted. And yes, Social Media is also making us dumber.

I am not a superhero, I was just as overwhelmed and busy and held hostage by social media as you are. But I have learned to harness its power and contain it. And even learned to leave it.

"Yeah we know, Elizabeth. But we have to use it to run a successful business."

Saying that is like saying drinking a coke a day is the only way to survive in the modern world. (We all know this is bad for so many reasons.)

I say NO.

Am I committing Business Suicide? Maybe. But probably not.

I strongly believe, and only because I have seen it happen OVER AND OVER, that there are so many ways to run a business in today's world, why do we have to be miserable doing it?

I am known for my crazy experiments and this year, it will be my mission to share how I am leaving social media behind, yes, even LI. And the alternative methods I am using that are making me more successful and more intentional with my business.

Even businesses who depend heavily on Social Media can use it in alternative ways they never thought possible without breaking the bank or their minds.

All while Doing Less and Achieving More.

Are you ready to say NO to the status quo?

Have you tried this? Why do you think it would or would not work for you?

Are you ready to claim one of those discounted power days and get started on your own journey?

“What Do You Do?”

“What do you do?” The dreaded question heard around the world at networking events and meetups. It is inevitably the first question you get when you are introduced to a new person in a business setting. Outside of business, no one cares what you do and there is usually a context of relationship by the person who introduces you to new people. You are their spouse, family member or friend. They do the hard work for you by describing you and often why they are introducing themselves. But in business? YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN KID! So what do you say?

If you have a strong, connected brand, you know EXACTLY what to say. It is concise, descriptive, and has an air of mystery or intrigue. If your brand is a logo your mother's sister's friend's step-son in college did for you with your favorite colors and you only have that one blurry version on Facebook as your profile, then honey, you don’t have a brand. 

Take a moment to reflect on the brands you use every day. Look at your appliances. Your TV/remote. Your computer. Your phone. What do these brands have in common? They are solid. They know who they are. They know “What they do”. They also all got you to spend more than a few dollars on their product. Why? Was their messaging clear? Did they get you with the price? (Commodities usually do, but that is not the point here.) Were they highly rated? Did you see an ad or hear about it from a friend who had one? Think about brands and what they represent. They represent people who create something that is worth talking about. Worth spending money on and time with. 

You spend a lot more time with your laundry machines and dishwasher than you probably know. If they didn’t know what they did, would you have purchased them? Probably not. If a washing machine doesn't know if it washes clothes or washes dishes, you probably would move and look for another one. 

The same goes for your Brand. Know who you are and what you do. This is quite simple, but shouldn’t business be simple? I think so. 

Stay tuned for more insights on branding, websites, social media, email marketing, and much more.

Marketing Changes 2022 ... Getting Started! 2022

Thank you for being here. You showed up! I wanted to take a moment and lay out what I plan to cover in this monthly installment of the "Do This First" Newsletter. In 2020, I started a book. Didn’t we all? It has been sitting on my computer for almost 2 years. ⅔ finished. Yep. I have been sitting on gold. It is called "Do This First" and it is a list of 365 Tasks that you can do daily to dramatically improve your business. These simple 5 min marketing tasks are sent as a digest every Monday. We all know that if you take one small step every day, it makes a huge difference over time.

In light of all this... at the end of 2021, I decided to make some drastic moves with my marketing, social media, and business. 

Have you thought of what you could do with your unfinished book? Have you thought of a paid newsletter serial?

First, I am only using LinkedIn. All of my accounts, with all other platforms, are removed or deleted. Yup. Scary, but in a good way. I am seeing so much more engagement on LinkedIn for the type of content I produce. #winning

Are you on too many socials?

Second, I am offering more free resources. I have this newsletter which is live on Linkedin and my New Substack Subscription (More on that below). I will be releasing a new topic on the 15th of every month. Some months will come with a challenge, or with an insight into one of the pillars of marketing. I will be covering branding, websites, social media, blogging, email marketing, and podcasting. I will spend 2 months on each topic covering a lesser talked about aspect of each. 

I have also released my Pro Toolkit, Free Library, 5 Day Challenge, and the One Page Business Plan Course all FREE on my website: http://getabsolutemarketing.com/free 

What are your free resources? Are they easy for your clients to access?

Third, I have started a Paid Subscription. My Do This First Newsletter will be available on my website as a membership option for only $7/mo. Check it out here: http://GetAbsoluteMarketing.com/shop

Have you tried any subscriptions yet? Free or Paid?

Fourth, I will be traveling to speak at conferences locally and in the US. I have 3 in the books already! Check the website for all the dates and info and how you can sign up to attend: http://getabsolutemarketing.com 

Are you traveling to speak this year? Let me know where you are going by replying!

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter and I hope you will get a golden nugget out of each edition!

Content Ideas Clients Love

Comparisons

Comparing you client’s product or service with a similar product or service offered by a competitor is a great way to highlight the perks of working with your client over the competition.

Contests

Clients love contests because they help generate buzz about their product or service, and can get people so excited about the prize that they become a customer even if they don’t win.

Calculators

Helping your client incorporate a calculator into their website can give them an interactive way to show their site visitors why their product/service is the best choice by comparing the time/money/resources used both with, and without the client’s product or service to show savings.

Lists

List posts generate crazy traffic because they are idea generators. Lists are easy to put together, quick to read, and so tempting to click on.

Why Posts

Posts that provide detailed explanations for how things are in a particular industry or climate allow the client to express their opinion on a particular issue, while highlighting their expertise in their industry.

Metaphors

Using metaphors to explain a phenomenon or topic can be a great way to make an overdone topic feel like new.

Resource Roundup

These posts are a great way to bring attention to old client content, and they’re super simple to create.

Demo

Demonstrating the functionality or process of a client’s product or service is a simple way to highlight the benefits of the product or service to potential customers.

Polls

Polls are a great way to boost engagement, start a conversation, and draw traffic to your client’s social media channels or web page.

Quizzes

Quizzes can serve so many different purposes, from highlighting the value of a client resource or product to reinforcing the education provided through content marketing and blogging. The possibilities for quizzes are endless and oh so fun.
 

What’s your favorite kind of client content to work on?

Top 5 Events for Lead Generation

Lead generation is a time consuming but necessary aspect of running a business. While you could spend all of your time on LinkedIn messaging people in your network and hoping for the best, events are a great way to build genuine connections that can be transformed into leads down the line. These are my top 5 events for lead generation.

Workshops

Workshops are a great component to incorporate into a course or conference. Here you conduct a breakout session to teach more in-depth on a particular topic, highlighting your expertise and encouraging future collaboration

Meetups

More casual than a conference, meetups are a great way to bring together a group of like-minded people in your area, make connections, and show your leadership abilities to future potential leads.

Webinars

Marketed as online events, webinars typically require that attendees sign-up in advance. Once the webinar is live, you teach or speak on a particular topic, usually with a presentation, with a brief pitch or sales section at the end to encourage future inquiries or sales.

Live Chats

A more casual form of a webinar, live chats can happen on Instagram stories or Facebook live where you simply talk to your audience, answer questions, and position yourself as a leader and a resource in your industry.

Sponsored Events

If you are at a point in your business where this is feasible, sponsoring local events or conferences is a great way to generate leads by putting your business at the forefront of attendees’ minds.

What’s your favorite way to generate leads?

The Simple Way to Create Tricky Content

Landing pages, how-to guides, website copy. There are certain kinds of content that are bound to trip you up along the way. This usually results in these projects sitting at the top of your to do list yet somehow never getting done. But why do we have this tricky content? What’s stopping us from getting it done?

The Problem: Tricky content is difficult because it is lumped under a big and daunting task.

We all have them. Our overarching goals. I want to build a new website. I want to offer a new service. I want to launch a new product. So we put them on our to-do lists. Just like that. It’s daunting to see. This is the problem when we look at our goals as tasks instead of a series of tasks leading up to our goals. You can’t cross it off of your to do list because it isn’t a single thing to be done, but a series of processes and tasks that must be strategically completed in order to reach a goal.

The Solution: Break it down

So you want to build a new website. Instead of opening up squarespace or wordpress and scrolling through themes for hours on end, grab a pen and paper. How many pages do you want your website to have? What will they be called? Do you need an about page? Do you need copy for your services? Are you going to take your own pictures or use stock photos? Will your website have a blog? Once you answer all of these questions you can break it down even further. Will you design your website or will you hire a web designer? Will you write your own copy or will you outsource? The more questions you ask yourself the more detailed of a breakdown you will be able to give yourself, and the more easily you can check the mini-tasks off of your to do list, and the more quickly you will be able to create the content that was tripping you up.

It seems too simple to be true, but it’s really that easy. You can’t reach the top of a mountain just by deciding to get to the top, you have to take steps, just like you have to take steps to reach your goals.

Why People Hate Emails (and how to make them better)

From product promotions to client inquiries, you get an insane amount of emails every single day. Like, way too many to actually open and read. So what do you do? You skim through your inbox, open the ones you have to then delete or flag the rest. You don’t have TIME to read the dozens of promotions from all of the blogs you follow, and chances are, your email subscribers don’t either, ESPECIALLY if you are flooding their inbox on a daily basis.

The number one reason your emails aren’t being opened is that people are overwhelmed.

So how do you fix it? You can’t change the number of emails that your subscribers get from everyone else in their inbox, so how do you reduce that overwhelm and ensure your emails are the ones that get opened?

The short answer? Send fewer emails.

When you send fewer emails on a more consistent basis, it may feel as though your subscribers are going to forget about you, but the reality is, when you’re sending multiple emails per week or even per day, your subscribers are glossing over your name and pressing delete - or worse, flagging them as junk mail. By decreasing the number of emails you send to once a week or even once a month, you're changing the association that your subscribers have with your name from daily noise, to an occasional treat that sticks out from the rest. Add a seductive subject line and you’re well on your way to a sky-high open rate.

It doesn’t end there though. You have to make sure that your emails are chock full of information so that the next time you wind up in your subscriber’s inbox, they know they are about to click into an email that is well worth the time spent reading it, and they’ll be looking forward to your emails in no time.

4 Steps to Marketing Success

Hi, my name is Elizabeth Pampalone, and I wanted to talk to you today about marketing. Mark Missigman asked me to do a blog for him and I thought, I'm much better at speaking than I am at writing. So I am an entrepreneur. I'm a website designer by trade, and I've owned several companies over the years. I wanted to share about marketing and how I use that to help other small business owners in the North Florida area, and around the world. I have people that come to Jacksonville, Florida where I live to work with me because I do websites a little differently than everyone else. I actually build websites in one day. This week actually I have some people coming from Ohio, from Texas all over the place just to see me and do their website in one day.

So, I have a couple of things that I feel like are really important to your business. If you are a small business owner, or you were thinking about becoming a business owner, here are just a few things that you would want to do to diversify your marketing. I know there's a lot of people that say, "all you need to do is start with a Facebook page", or "all you need to do is start with an Instagram account" and in some cases that can be true. But in most cases, especially for service-based entrepreneurs, you really want to make sure that you are diversifying how you're marketing so that you're not trying to put all your eggs in one basket, and expecting that to give you all of your return. So the first thing I believe that every business should have is a brand. You might say "how can I do that if I'm doing multilevel marketing? Or maybe I'm working for a company that's already existing."

Or you're just maybe doing affiliate sales, because that's really big right now. Even if you're doing just one of those things. Or maybe you just say, "well I'm too small to have a brand. I don't really need a logo. My name is my logo, or I have a photo of my dog and that's my logo." Those things aren't really going to help you to be recognized as a solid foundation for the future. By brand I mean not just a pretty logo, your brand is so much more than that. It really is the feeling and the idea that a person gets when they just see your logo. Now, the logo is that trigger point. It's something that's visual, something that people can remember, but it's not necessarily the whole brand itself. So when you're thinking about starting a business or if you have a business already, and you don't have a brand, you really want to focus on that and see if you can get that piece completed. It's going to help you be recognizable to other people. It's going to help you to solidify your colors, your fonts, and all those little pieces that can really get annoying and varied in the future as you move forward with your business. And you want to be consistent, people love consistency. It helps them to realize that you are consistent and that you are going to do what you say you're going to do.

The second thing that I believe every business owner should have is a website. You want to have the brand first because that gives you the essence of your business. The feeling, the emotion, what you do for people, but in a visual format. Your website, now you might think, "well, I don't need a website. I have a website. I mean, I have a Facebook page, I have a Twitter, I have a whatever, Instagram", you still need a website and here's why. How many times have people asked you, or they will if you don't have a business yet? People are going to ask you things like, "Hey I saw that so-and-so got that information from you. Can I have that information?" Or, "where is your pricing?" Or "can I get a one-sheet from you?" They're going to ask you for information. "How does that work? Where can I get this information later after we have this phone call, or this conversation?" So, you're going to have all these questions that come up over and over. And it's going to be really, tiring for you to sit and repeat that all over and over. So what happens is when you have a conversation with someone or you're looking into a lead, and you're getting to know a lead, you want to make sure that they have this information available to them after you talk to them. In a format that's going to be easy for them to access, and easy for them to share with others. So maybe you do some work for them, they say that's great. Maybe they never even saw your website and they hired you on the spot. Perfect. Then hey want to tell their friends, this person did my pavers, or this person helped me with my website. Whatever it is. Then you're going to want that to be shareable with the world so that they can share it for you and kind of become your sales ambassadors. So your website is an important piece that a lot of people try and skip over and they don't really think it's important to every business, but it really is. And it can save you a lot of time. Your website should work for you. It shouldn't take away from your time. It should not make you work harder, it should work for you.

The third thing that I think every business owner should have in their marketing plan and their diversification of their marketing is an email list. Now, an email list is going to be important because when you have that website, you've got a space to say, hey put your email in here and I'm going to contact you later on. People do this, a lot of people do this. It's kind of insane. You think to yourself, I've never done that, but I bet you have, bet you they gave you something like, here's a how-to sheet on something, or here's a checklist on something. When they say, I'm going to give you this freebie, and you're like, sure here's my email if it's free. And that's what you're selling, is you're selling your email address for that freebie that you're getting. And so now you can use this as a business owner on your side of things, and you can actually go ahead and make a freebie. I do this with all my clients that come through our branding process. I help them make a freebie that they can give away on their website so that they can get those email addresses in return. This is a great way for you to connect with customers and people later on so that you are staying in contact with them, but you're not over annoying them or bombarding them. And also unlike social media, you actually have a direct connection with that person rather than it being some indirect connection where they may or may not check Facebook or Instagram every single day.

The fourth thing, we're on number four is networking. And I'm not talking internet networking, I'm not talking going on Facebook and answering questions in forums. I'm not talking about going on Reddit and doing all kinds of things. I am talking in person, good old fashioned rubbing elbows with the community networking. And I love this method so much, because it has brought me so much success it's ridiculous. So, it's very, very effective. And sometimes it seems like it takes time to get it rolling, to get it moving. But I will tell you this, the returns are incredible. So you want to make sure that you've got this as part of your plan. You don't want to neglect this. And you might think, well, I don't live in an area where networking is going to be effective for me. Or there aren't any groups around where I am. Oh my gosh, I can almost entirely bet you that there are. Even within, let's say, a 30-minute radius of where you live, or where you work, or whatever your central location is. There's about probably over 100 groups within your radius of 30 minutes from your house. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, I am giving ... This is scientifically proven. And I can tell you exactly where that would be unless you live in somewhere Montana, or Utah, or something that's really ... Where you have tons of land around you and it takes 30 minutes to get to the Walmart. So otherwise, even if you live somewhere that's a rural area, I bet you there are networking events you just don't even know about them. So one of the ways you can actually access a lot of these events .. There's probably a lot of events you had no idea were happening every week or every month. And that would be meetup.com. So if you're not familiar with meetup.com, you should go check it out. It is a free service. And as a small business owner, you can actually run a group. I know Mark is starting a group, which is so exciting. And you can run a group to bring people to you. So that you can educate them, and help them, and train them, and potentially have them as clients. Or you can actually go to these groups and find out these groups. A lot of them are free. A lot of them include food, you go to have lunch with people. Maybe you pay for your lunch, but you don't have to pay a meeting fee or anything like that. Some of them have meeting fees. It just depends on the group. But they are so, so effective. I actually did a little exercise, a little experiment for a whole year. I networked three times a day for one year. Isn't that insane? That was me, and I'm crazy, but it totally worked. It helped me to become well known in my community. And in my area in Northeast Florida, we have 3,500 events a month. A month. Isn't that insane. You could go to something, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which I've done, breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day for an entire month and still never get to all of them.

So, I want to encourage you to look back at your marketing, and if you're not doing any marketing, here's a plan for you. It's a very, very simple plan.

1. Make sure you have a good solid brand.

2. Make sure that you have a website that backs that brand up, that is really giving you that oomph behind all of that pretty stuff you've got going on. You've got all that education and that information that you want to share with people on your website. And that it's organized well. You probably want to work with a pro on this, I'm just saying because sometimes we don't organize things well when it's in our head. Even myself. And so, it takes someone else to look at it and go, I think you should change that a little bit.

3. Email is so important. Connecting with those people directly, building that list. You probably already have a list. Did you know that you can pull your list from your CRM, from your actual email account, you could just pull those people. You can pull ... And you could send them an email and say, are you interested in connecting with me on my email list and kind of test it out. So that a bunch of people may unsubscribe, that's fine. But you can kind of say, hey, if you want to stay on this list, do nothing. If you want to get off this list, here's a big old button you can do it. But anyway, so that's email. You want to make sure you try and gather all those email addresses that you have. You probably have a ton you didn't even realize. And put them all into your email marketing system.

4. In-person networking. Don't forget to check out meetup.com. And make sure that you are going out there, and putting yourself out there. I know it's really hard to do that sometimes, and creating a pitch is going to help a lot. So if you want to go online and look for some videos, I mean, I've done videos before on how to create your perfect pitch. It doesn't have to be long. I even have a freebie that you can download that's about creating your perfect pitch. It's kind of like a mad lib. You just fill in the blank, which is really fun. But you can create a pitch that's less than 15 seconds long, that really gets across what you're trying to say without being cheesy, or sounding weird, or going on forever like I'm doing right now.

I want to thank you so much for watching this video and reading this blog, so to speak. My name is Elizabeth Pampalone, and I am the Jacksonville Queen of Networking, or just the Queen of Networking, however, you'd like to say it, and I'm also the web design chick with a Website in a Day. Thank you so much for watching, if you have any questions about what I do or marketing, let me know!

I have FREE 15 min phone consults and you can claim yours here.

This is the year you pay yourself more - Here's How >>

Every business owner I have ever known has said the same thing.

I am doing this so I can have more freedom. (Money, time, etc)

When I first started, Every penny came back into my personal account. There was little if any left at the end of the month let alone the end of the year. I was desperate to see these numbers get better but they didn’t until my accountant recommended I start paying myself.

What?

Pay… MYSELF?

What I thought I could afford to pay myself became something of a joke. I started paying myself $300/week. Taxes were taken out and I was given a w-2 at the end of that year. I noticed I was able to leave more and more in my business account. I was able to make do with less and less “owner draws” as money was coming in every week. (This did not eliminate my owner draws nor did I stay at this rate forever, but it was a start!)

I noticed over time, I was bringing in more money than if I had just taken draws and it was more evenly distributed between myself and the business.

I was intimidated by payroll and how it all worked. How could I possibly do this on my own? All the paperwork and filings. I didn’t want to screw it up and get fined!

I struggled through some pretty awful Online Payroll setups before I decided on SQUARE PAYROLL.

SQUARE PAYROLL was a bit more per month than the other guys (now they are the most cost-effective!) But I knew the process would be seamless. So far, 4 years later, so good!

I now pay all my contractors via SQUARE PAYROLL and SQUARE does all the year-end paperwork! 1099s and W-2s are sent out on time and I don’t pay any extra!

If paying yourself MORE this year is on your list for 2020, consider becoming a FULL-FLEDGED BUSINESS OWNER and start taking a paycheck!

For less than $40/mo I am able to pay myself and my contractors in less than 10 min a month. Hallelujah for Direct Deposit!

Did I mention it helped to lower my taxes?