Time Management for Marketing and PR Results
Posted: Friday, November 26, 2010
by Drew Gerber
Publicity Results
In July of 2009 Michelle Tennant Nicholson of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., sat down to speak with Karen Leland, author of the "In An Instant Series" and contributor to PsychologyToday.com and Huffington Post. Michelle and Karen discussed Karen's book Time Management In An Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day and Michelle promised to incorporate Leland's top time tips throughout August 2009, the first month Tennant was 40 years old.
Michelle Tennant: This is Michelle Tennant and I'm with Wasabi Publicity. I've been doing PR for about 20 years and we periodically do teleseminars for a variety of places and the bottom line is publicity results. How do you get more publicity results inside your life and inside your work and your platform, your book, your service, your nonprofit, whatever you're doing?
And that's really the nature of what we're gonna be talking about today and I generally like to just kind of keep it a little loose. Keep it a little causal in these calls. We do have live callers on the phone with us today. They're muted. So when they're ready to ask a question or just, you know, make a comment or be part of the panel even, they can hit Star 6 to unmute themselves.
How I generally like to do these calls is really first discuss some key areas that we're all struggling with as marketers. Maybe you're a business owner. Maybe you're the head of an organization. Maybe you're a publicist or just an ad executive or marketing professional.
But when you're actually taking messages and giving them to a public target, whether it's through the media or through advertising or so forth there are always things that we have to grapple with. So that's really the nature of why we have a special guest with us today and her name is Karen Leland.
And so let me tell you a little bit about Karen Leland. Number 1, she's a featured contributor of the Huffington Post and PsychologyToday.com so for sure make sure you check her out there. But she is the best-selling author of Time Management in an Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day.
I'm especially interested about this because as someone who runs two companies, I have a very full life with really interesting hobbies and so forth. I'm always got that little nagging complaint of, "Oh, I'm just too busy to get everything done."
And on top of that, in my spare time I'm still working on my these cause I just have a commitment to ongoing growth and development throughout my entire life so I'm really interested and so it's also a special time for me because we're here at the end of July in 2009 doing this recording and next week I turn 40. On Wednesday.
So the other thing that I was thinking about for today's discussion is I'm actually gonna take on some of Karen's tips and then actually blog about them and how they're making a difference for me through the month of August at threecolortothemedia.com. So, Karen, no added pressure or anything like that. I'm actually gonna take some takeaways. Okay?
Karen Leland: I love it!
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Good. So what else do I want to say about Karen? She is the president of Sterling Marketing Group and that helps authors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to build their brand with PR and marketing. She's also a frequent expert for the media and has been on the likes of the Today show, Good Morning America, CNN, the New York Times, Fortune, and even Oprah.
So we are just really delighted to be able to have this conversation with you, Karen. You really are at the top of your game and I really want to have a really in-depth conversation with you.
If you're joining us and you're in front of your computer and you want to read a little more about Karen, definitely go to her website which is SterlingMarketingGroup.com and it's Sterling with an "e". And then also she's got these really cool productivity pads which are called TimeTamer.com. So check those out while we're talking. And really a big, huge welcome, Karen.
Karen Leland: Thank you. I am so delighted to be here, Michelle. You know I've been an admirer of yours for a long time.
Michelle Tennant: You have?
Karen Leland: Yep.
Michelle Tennant: Oh, I love that. Go ahead and stroke my ego today. I didn't even know that.
Karen Leland: I know who's in my field. I know who's in the field of PR that I'm in and I keep an eye on those people and I know how to separate the wheat from the chaff as they say.
Michelle Tennant: I love it. That really makes my day and so to that end, as you know two top professionals in their mutual fields, I really want to get into how do we really address this busyness? That really sucks our productivity and especially publicity results.
I hear all the time from business owners, I say, "Look, I don't know that you need a publicist and you need to pay our PR firm thousands of dollars. Why can't you do it yourself?" Because I really am a firm believer do it yourself until you actually need a representative. Maybe you're getting to a point with your public platform that it makes sense to have a publicist. Maybe you should be doing it on your own and I think it really varies depending on the business or the organization or the service or product.
So what do you say to people that say, "Karen, I just don't have time to make media calls. I just don't have time to even do that."
Karen Leland: I think we have to start with sort of the bigger picture in the context.
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Good.
Karen Leland: If you think about a Monday morning, and whether you're a PR person or whether you're a publicist within a company or whether you are a small business owner. There you are. You're typing an email. You're on a conference call. You're replying to an instant message. You're grabbing your morning cup of coffee. You're answering your cell phone but you're doing all that stuff at the same time.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah.
Karen Leland: All at once. And so you look at the research. One study by the family and work institute found that like a full third of Americans are overworked but even worse than that 50 percent of the people they surveyed said that they're handling too many tasks at the same time or they're frequently interrupted during the workday. Another study, again just to give you a perspective by Day-Timer, reported that something like 60 percent of workers feel rushed at work and 50 percent say they accomplish only half of what they planned.
So if you just look at the general environment we work in, and this kind of Web 2.0, 24-by-7 multitasking, do less with more world, is it any wonder that people even really intelligent, highly motivated, highly skilled people have trouble staying focused and using their time and energy to gain ground on important marketing and PR efforts? I mean it's not unusual that that's a struggle that everybody has.
Michelle Tennant: Well, I think also we all joke about it with our circle of friends and associates. I heard in the workplace, "I have ADD. Or maybe I'm schizophrenic." They joke about these mental illnesses and I would assert that most of us, you know, there are some of us who do have mental illnesses. But there's a greater number of us just using that loosely and it doesn't really warrant us saying that. It's just an excuse I think.
When I find myself like I'll say to my husband, you know, "Oh, my God. Today was so busy." And then he'll say, "Well, honey what did you do?" I own my own businesses so I have rule over my own time and then when we get to what really transpired that day he uncovers interesting things like my pedicure or taking the dogs to the river, you know. Or, "Well, I went out for sushi for lunch and just talked a little too long to my .
Karen Leland: Those things are really an important part and that's kind of a whole other topic but just to make the point. Those things are part of creating a balanced life and so I think it's very important for anybody that does marketing and PR to realize that you can't be all social media all the time. You can't be on your Twitter and on your Facebook and on your LinkedIn and blogging 24 by 7. You will have no life.
So I think the key is really how well you are at setting time to work and to focus on PR. How really can you avoid distractions so that you've got that time to focus? To get word out about your book, about your business, about your product, about your service.
And I kind of have five things that I recommend people do to do that. Five simple things that I recommend people do to do that.
Michelle Tennant: I want everybody to stay tuned for the five tips but before we jump into that, one of the things that I'm really curious about is your bird's eye view of how time management has changed over the past few decades.
Karen Leland: Well, that's a great question and I think one way it's significantly changed is it used to be the model of time management used to be that you had a to-do list. Right?
Michelle Tennant: Right.
Karen Leland: Write a to-do list for the day and there would be whatever, five or ten items on the list or maybe 10 or 12 items on the list and you'd have three projects that you were simultaneously managing. And you'd work during the day and you'd get through if not all of your to-do list, most of it. And then you'd go home feeling like, "All right. I got 90 percent of the stuff done and I worked on my three projects and I'm done for the day."
Well, that is not the model any more. No one has a to-do list that's only ten items long. Most people have now what I call, you know, it's like a rotating to-do list. It's like a blog. It's a long, long to-do list that you can just keep scrolling down. And instead of 3 projects they have 15 projects.
It's a little bit like when you were a kid. You remember Pez candy where you'd lift the head off the Pez and you'd lift the little Donald Duck head and a little Pez would come out?
Michelle Tennant: Yeah.
Karen Leland: It's like that. You lift the head and the Pez comes out but one Pez just keeps following after another. So I think one of the significant changes in time management is that people don't manage their time any more by a narrow to-do list everyday where everything gets done. Usually everything doesn't get done every day that you think you should or want or need or have on your list to get done.
So it's changed a lot in terms of people being able to focus on very specific areas that they want to concentrate on in a particular period of time whether it's during a day or during an hour because there's so much information now and there's so much to do and there's so many project. You know those 3 projects are now 15. That 10-item to-do list is now 100-item to-do list or more. That people have had to really change the way they manage their daily to-do. And that's a significant change in time management over the last even seven or eight years.
Michelle Tennant: I think that's a really huge paradigm shift for us all to really get present to because I think sometimes that is a function of just a crappy to-do list. Like I've gotta prioritize better. Or I've got actually, you know, like there's always this mentality of I've gotta do more better. More focus. More focus. That kind of internal self-coaching dialogue that sometimes doesn't work. It doesn't really help.
So what do you think is I'd love to, you know, what do you think the biggest time crime is?
Karen Leland: Well, I think there's a couple of really huge time crimes and one time crime is for most people, and particularly people in PR, or people who are trying to do marketing and PR is procrastination. Is a huge time crime.
Michelle Tennant: I think then hopefully you've got those five tips to help us because I know all of us are guilty of procrastination. We don't like to admit it but we all are.
Karen Leland: All of these things that I'm gonna talk about will help with that.
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Good.
Karen Leland: So the first thing that I recommend people do to kind of avoid distraction and find time to focus on their PR and their marketing, and again these are all really simple and easy to do. People just don't do them
And the first one is you've really got to have a system or a way to capture all marketing related ideas and actions. So here's what happens. Just think about what happens when you're running too many programs on your computer. You know it usually slows down or freezes up.
The same is true for your brain. There's really a limit to how much you can hold in your brain at one time and how much you can focus on. So getting stuff out of your head and onto a PDA or paper or into your computer helps free up your mental state.
So let me just give you one simple example. So this morning when I looked at my email, when I opened up my email Inbox and I looked at just the top ten. I just randomly took the top ten emails. Seven of them were opportunities for PR or marketing action. Seven of them.
Seven out of ten were things I could potentially take on for PR or marketing. Including reading a white paper on social media that I had ordered. Taking down contact information for a resource I needed to enter into my address book. Responding to a question from a book publisher about referring authors to me for PR work. Listening to a web seminar I was registered for and missed.
Responding to an invitation to have my book reviewed by a blog, a big blog, and responding to an offer I wanted to pitch regarding my PR services. And then the last one was responding to a request for me to do a virtual book tour proposal from another author. Okay?
So those are just in five minutes of reading my email, ten emails, those were seen PR or marketing actions. Now, one, I can't do all of those on the spot. Right? And nobody on the call can. No one on the call can open their email and do every marketing action they see on their email at one time.
So I can't do them all on the spot. I don't want to try to remember them because that's taking up mental real estate. I don't want to leave them in my Inbox because then my Inbox becomes junked up with a lot of unfinished items and I'll forget about them and they get buried.
So some of those items are big and some are small and some are high priority and some are low priority but they all need to be captured and organized and not in my email Inbox. Again, I just want to say it because they can become easily lost in my email Inbox and then they're just so much noise.
So by taking the time to capture all those open marketing items and writing them down somewhere or writing them down in the computer and putting them on a list called marketing items. Like for me I use a program called OmniFocus. That's just the one I use. There's lots of different programs that you could use.
But the best practice is to have a tool that lets you quickly capture all those things because when you're able to quickly capture them they're down. You've got them. They're out of your brain and even before you decide what to do with them you've gotten them out of your head and you freed up your attention.
I'm gonna talk about what you can decide to do with them in a minute but capturing them is really a critical tool. And the tool could be a yellow pad, a sophisticated software program, a simple to-do file in your computer, a time management book or anything else that serves that purpose.
Michelle Tennant: And I just want to really give a shout out to Google because and I'm not sponsored by Google. I don't get paid by them or anything like that but for years I tried different programs. I even did Act or Goldmine or something like that. Outlook. All those programs and they would always fail me in one way or another because I'm so virtual. I travel and I have a virtual setting in my business models.
Gmail was a godsend. I love Gmail because you can actually label it's different than just putting them in a folder. You can actually label them in a way and it's free. And then it actually intertwines with a calendar so if somebody's out there really struggling right now with a system, I have really found Gmail to be really quite something.
Karen Leland: That's great. And I also want to say if anybody wants some very specific information on how you organize your email, I did actually a Huffington Post piece on this a while back and I have to find the link and I'll let everybody know on the call before the call is over.
Michelle Tennant: And then also what you can do Karen is if you can send it to me then I can actually blog about that, you know, in my next month as I'm actually integrating your tips.
Karen Leland: I will do that. It was a piece called, well, I don't remember what it was called but it was about how to organize your email so I will send it to you.
Michelle Tennant: Okay.
Karen Leland: Okay, great. I will shoot that to you. Making a little note. See? Capturing that marketing item right now.
Michelle Tennant: And also it's interesting. I'm gonna evaluate what's working for me and what's not working and what's really working is a little book that I carry around that has one pagers of all my clients so that in a moment's notice if like sometimes happens Good Morning America calls me and says, you know, what do you got?
And then I can just go right through all my news angles. Each client I'm gonna have something like five to ten news angles right there for each client inside my book. And that's really easy to carry if I'm traveling. So if they call me on the fly I'm like ready at all times and it's got little folders inside each it's like a regular notebook with like the little plastic pages so I can put the one-pager on one side and then just current notes or things to be done at the back. So I both have a digital and then also I love to write so I have a need to actually write things down on paper as well.
Karen Leland: Most people do Michelle. Like I keep a paper and I use it digitally. So most people use different tools. A multiple of tools.
Michelle Tennant: But I found that really great because then I don't have to keep it in my head. I know where it is at all times and it's easy enough to travel with. It's highlights. It's not everything and their mother. I leave that for my digital but it's like a bird's eye view at any given moment.
Karen Leland: And I will say that once you've gotten into the habit of capturing those to-dos, the next habit, and this is so critical I can't even like tell you how critical this is. People have to learn to make quick decisions about what they're going to do with them and I have my kind of what I call my fab four.
And my fab four are do it now. If it takes two to five minutes just get it done on the spot. If you've got an email and you've got a potential client who says, "Hey, can you send me your electronic brochure," that takes like 30 seconds to respond and say, "Hi, nice to hear from you. Here it is." If it takes two to five minutes, just get it done. Okay.
My second one in the fab four. Schedule it for later. If you don't have time to do it now but it's important and you know it's important and you know you want to get it done. Open your calendar and time box it. Actually plan it. Open it up and on Wednesday put in, "Work on x'". That's one of the really critical ways to do it.
The other thing is delegate it. Is there somebody you could hire to do that item or someone who works for you who could handle it? Get it off your plate and onto theirs. That's what assistants, virtual assistants, PR people, that's what those people are for.
And then the last thing is, and this one is my favorite. Abandon it. You know learn to tell the truth about what is simply a good idea and what you're actually committed to doing. People do not distinguish between what's a good idea and what they're committed to doing. And there are so many things that come into my Inbox and I know for so many other people there are so many things that come into their Inbox that they think, "Wow, this might be a really neat marketing idea. Or a really neat marketing or peer avenue to pursue.
But when you look at it as it stacks up to all the other marketing and peer opportunities, if it's not significant enough or important enough or close enough to your goals to justify the time you spend, learn to just abandon it.
One of the things I did in my Twitter starting tomorrow. My whole thing tomorrow in my Twitter is gonna be about how to relieve pressure and one of the things I say is if you want to relieve pressure start abandoning things.
I obviously don't mean irresponsibly not doing things that you've committed to other people to do or that you need to do legally. I mean things that are good ideas that have been hanging around but when you tell the truth you really aren't gonna take the effort or energy to do. I think that's a very empowering way to do that.
Michelle Tennant: I have a really good example about that. So Sunday I was just getting back from a two-week vacation and I worked on Sunday so that I could just kind of get a jump start on Monday. And I had a friend call me and she has some type of multilevel marketing opportunity. Now I learned a long time in business to listen and thoroughly respect all business opportunities that come my way. You know? I mean no matter how crazy they may sound at first I'm gonna listen to the opportunity.
So it came via email and via phone and I gave it probably five minutes on the phone, ten minutes max and didn't even really need to organize it in my email but I listened to the opportunity. There was a video to see and then I made a note to actually talk about it with my business partner on Monday. So at this point I'm investing 15 minutes tops.
But I thoroughly thought it through and then declined it. And then my business partner was behind declining it. Why? Because I'm not gonna, you know, with multilevel marketing some people can make it work if you're really committed to talking about those opportunities but I'm a publicist. I'm not interested in calling up my friends and family.
And my business partner he like said to me on Monday. He goes, "I know this is a friend of yours. But are you really gonna make phone calls to your family and friends to sign up for this? And also our business associates. Can you really see doing this?" I said, "No." He said, "Get rid of it." He goes, "Abandon it."
Basically. He didn't say it in your words, Karen, but that's basically what he was saying. But, I still honored the request. I didn't upset my friend. And I told her good luck with what she's doing and I thanked her for bringing it to my attention but that it wasn't a fit for me.
Karen Leland: Yeah. And what happens is most people don't want to choose and so what they do is they say, "Well, I'll think about it." And they don't give an answer and so then the person calls them a week later and they say, "Well, I still haven't decided yet." And then the person sends them an email and they still haven't decided and so then it just becomes an incomplete item that's hanging around taking up your time and the other person's time.
You are far better to just be more decisive about deciding quickly you're gonna do something, schedule something, delegate something or abandon it. If you train your muscles to get good at deciding quickly you find that your focus and your time to get PR activities done is actually greatly increased.
Michelle Tennant: And then you have that energy which is one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is you often teach about energy. And so talk a little bit about that. What do you mean by how does energy relate to time management?
Karen Leland: Well, if everyone on the call thinks about how you feel when you check an item off your list or you yellow it out or you pick it out on the computer, usually there's a release of energy. A sense of human energy. That feeling of like oh, I got it done! Just a burst of energy.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah.
Karen Leland: And so what happens is that when we complete things or when we have closure on things we generate energy. But the corollary to that is when things are unfinished or incomplete or when we have a lot of incompletions or a lot of things that are not closed around us it tends to drain us of energy.
And so what happens is a lot of people because they don't decide about things, they just have things hanging out in their Inbox and it's sitting there hanging out on their desk or hanging out on their to-do list forever it creates a lot of incompletion which actually drags, it creates a spiral of incompletion which is like a negative downward spiral of incompletion that drains your energy versus an upward spiral of completion because you're getting things done.
And so what happens is that when people don't complete stuff they don't actually they drain their energy and the problem is you don't necessarily complete things by getting them done. You complete things by knowing where you're at with them and that's a very important distinction.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah. I love that and one of the thing that, you know, people always say, "My God, you've got so many things going on and how do you manage all that?" And I think that for me I really just look and see, you know, I don't have to complete it all today.
But what I do need to complete today is is it moving forward? Or have I at least thought, you know, is there a date and time that it will be moved forward if not today?
Karen Leland: Right. And that's another way of saying do you know where you're at with it because if you know where you're at with it that's what's powerful. And by knowing where you're at with it, I mean you know that you've got it scheduled; you know that you've got it delegated. You know that you've decided not to do it. You know that you put it in your calendar for next week. You know that it's on a list somewhere.
That's how you generate that sense of energy and I will say that another way to generate that energy, and this is particularly true with big marketing and PR projects. Because what happens is we all tend to take on these big PR and marketing projects and we sometimes find ourselves procrastinating on them and the trick is to generate the energy to move you forward you have to break those bigger marketing and PR projects down into smaller pieces or smaller kind of chunk sizes is what we call it.
Because that helps you take action more quickly and easily but it also counters that overwhelming feeling of having too much to do. So let me just give you one example.
One of my clients was doing a total overhaul of her website. But every time she went to work on it she sort of became like a deer in the headlights. It was just too much for her to confront at one time. So her solution was that what she did was she broke the bigger project of overhauling the website down into what we all in our company mini tasks.
Meaning she asked the programmer first to create a Contact Us page. And when the Contact Us page was done, then she went and her next mini task was to rewrite her bio for the about page. Then when that was done, she went and she worked on her blog categories. And she just took one little piece of it at a time
Instead of thinking about the whole website, I mean she had the big picture of how they wanted to redesign it. But instead of getting overwhelmed by the big picture of it she just picked one little thing that she could do in a half-an-hour time period and she did that.
And so there's a lot of power when you have a big marketing task or a big marketing goal or a big PR goal that you're working on not to wait until the end of it to generate some experience of completion or satisfaction or accomplishment or energy. But instead to get into the habit of really breaking it down into smaller pieces no matter how seemingly insignificant they are and then to get into the habit of enthusiastically and enthusiastically is the important part. Taking credit for any action you complete.
So the big item doesn't have to be 100 percent done for you to experience the pleasure of closure or to generate energy all along the way by recognizing the aspect of it that you finish because when you do that then you're generating an upward spiral of completion and energy versus a downward spiral of incompletion and lack of energy.
Michelle Tennant: Awesome! Okay. So there's two things that I'd like for you to do, Karen. One, I want you to summarize the tips, the five tips again and make sure that I have them correct because I'm only coming up with four.
Karen Leland: We haven't talked about all the tips.
Michelle Tennant: Oh. That's why. Okay. So the fab four was just under do it now, delegate, abandon it and then there was one that I missed.
Karen Leland: Do it now, schedule, delegate and abandon are not the four habits. Those are just the fast four that you can use for under capture.
Michelle Tennant: Oh, got it. Under capture. We definitely need her book don't we everyone? Okay. And then we'll have to actually then schedule in time to get it read and all that.
How about like when because a lot of people listening, you know, they may or may not be developing websites but I think that what about like actually doing outreach to PR? How can people take more time for PR? In particular building those relationships with media contacts? Can you give an example of that?
Karen Leland: Sure that's a great question. So here's what happens. Is like for example earlier in the week I needed to get a constant contact newsletter out to all of these people that I am in contact with right?
Michelle Tennant: Yeah.
Karen Leland: To promote something, for pure PR purposes. And I have been putting it off for weeks and weeks and weeks and I knew if I didn't do it soon I'd miss the boat. So what I did was I used what we call time planning or time blocking.
I opened my calendar and I said, "Okay, on Thursday from 10:00 to 11:00 what I am going to do is get that press release out." And I literally blocked it off in my calendar and wrote, "Press release on x'". So it was scheduled now for Thursday. It's like a meeting you make with yourself or a date you make with yourself.
And so if people need to actually make more time for their marketing or their PR to do the actual PR activity. Whether it's getting a press release out, whether it's calling a reporter and pitching them a story, whether it's calling a TV station and pitching being on, whether it's talking to radio stations.
One of the things you can do rather than have that be a general todo item on your list is actually to go into your calendar and use time planning or time blocking and put a specific day and time when you're going to work on a specific marketing or PR item. And the time periods that work are from 15 minutes to about 45 minutes are the most effective. And then every 45 minutes or every hour you want to schedule a ten-minute break from the task so you have actually some break from it.
And you don't just want to plan that time in your head. You want to write it down. So studies show that 75 percent of the individuals who set a specific time and date to complete something actually do it and so one of the most important things that PR and marketing people need to do when they're trying to do PR and marketing activities is to use time boxing or time planning.
Michelle Tennant: And then talk to me a little more about the importance of that break because I do practice the blocking out of time but I'm currently doing three hours at a time and then a break. So talk to me a little bit about what you see here.
Karen Leland: The problem with three hours is it doesn't give your brain a chance to rest. and if you look at the science of the brain and I'm not gonna go into all that on the call but if you look at the neuroscience of the brain it's a really good idea to give your right brain and your left brain a chance to integrate and talk and shake hands and sit down and have a cup of coffee together.
And the best way to do that is if every 45 minutes or an hour is to take a five-minute break and that five-minute break isn't a break .where you all of a sudden now are looking at email. It's a break where you get up, you walk around, you go and you have a drink of water, you talk to a friend, maybe you pick up something to read but not your email, not something that's work related.
Maybe it's that you take a break from the task by just stretching. Those five-minute breaks can have a very powerful effect on your ability to then go back reenergized and focused. That's the key.
And the key is that people just don't do that. For me, I'm an artist by training as well as the other things I've done and so often my five-minute break when I'm at my home studio writing like if I'm working on writing an article for a magazine or if I'm writing a book or if I'm working on a campaign for a client, when I take my break often what I'll do is I have like painting and stuff set up.
I'll just take five minutes and I'll do a little sketching or a little painting. Even I'll just do doodling sometimes. It completely gets my brain into a different sphere and it's like it gives it a rest.
Michelle Tennant: Very good. I think that's a great practice. And those of us who need to do a little more physically because we're sitting at a desk all day and there are new reports about how sitting all day can really be as bad as smoking, that maybe it's a time you just get up and jump on a mini trampoline and do just some reps with some weights or something. That's what I think might make a big difference. Just getting physical too.
Karen Leland: Getting physical is really important.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah. Well, that's really great. Okay. Well, so keep going on the tips though since you haven't gotten through all of them. I guess I used the fab four so I'm really interested in what the other tips were. So I've got Number 1 is the
Karen Leland: The first tip was capture all the first habit is capture all marketing related ideas and actions and then take action on them. That was the first one.
Michelle Tennant: Okay.
Karen Leland: The second one is to use time blocking which you got.
Michelle Tennant: Okay.
Karen Leland: The third one is really to make the most of your to-do list. So you know how much of your valuable time and energy is taken up with trivial distractions that have no positive long-term impact on your marketing and PR goals but does have a negative short-term effect on your productivity and your sense of accomplishment.
For example you're gossiping with coworkers in the break room or surfing the net for hot eBay items or cleaning out your pencil cup instead of writing pitches and marketing mavens know that if they resist trivial distractions and face the more challenging and significant tasks before them they have a greater sense of accomplishment and significance and so one of the best ways to do this is look at your to-do list.
Right? So the more significant tasks, in other words the tasks that are more related to your goals, your most important goals are the A priorities. Whether they're time sensitive or not and the way to bring those to the top of the heap is that you write down and you review all the items that are on your to-do list for that day that you've got. Cause people still keep to-do lists whether they get them all done or not they still keep them.
And then you determine which of those items would move you the closest to achieving your marketing and your PR goals and those get the A priority. And my suggestion is that you pick three A priority goals a day and no matter what if you can get those done or you can make progress on those you will have a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.
And so part of it is just the simple practice of saying what are my three As gonna be today. What are the three items that if I do them will move me significantly toward the direction of accomplishing an important goal to me and I'm gonna do those today no matter what. If you do that you'll have an amazing sense of accomplishment at the end of the day regardless of whatever did or did not get done otherwise.
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Good. Okay. So making the most of your to-do list. Okay. I can see that most of us are gonna relate our to-do list in a time reference and what you're saying is also how large does it actually move forward the project. That's very good.
Karen Leland: Well, the problem is most people relate to their to-do list by crisis. What fire is going to erupt on this to-do list if I don't handle it today?
Michelle Tennant: Exactly.
Karen Leland: And it's true that when it comes to marketing and PR of course there are things that are time urgent that we have to deal with. There's time sensitive items and you have to get them done but if all you're doing all day long is time-sensitive items and you're not doing any A items, you're not doing any items that move you closer to whatever your goals are, then you won't feel satisfied at the end of the day. You'll just feel like you fought fires all day long and yes, it's good that you got that PR stuff done/
But if everybody on the call thinks about it, most of the PR activities on your list that really move you in the direction of a goal or a project that's critically important to you, that's like a major goal, is not an urgent item. It's just an important item.
Michelle Tennant: Right. Like social networking relationship building.
Karen Leland: Exactly. If it's not urgent, let me just give a good example of this. It's I have got this project that I'm working on with Twitter. Can I give out my Twitter? Can I just say that I'm Karen Leland
Michelle Tennant: Yes, please.
Karen Leland: If anyone wants to find me, I'm Karen Leland. K-a-r-e-n L-e-l-a-n-d on Twitter. I'm working on a big project for Twitter. I'm gonna be twittering about how people can make time for marketing and it's gonna be one tweet at a time I'm gonna do it right? So it's gonna be like a seminar but one tweet at a time over a period of several weeks.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah, that's great. Everybody sign up and then are there any other social networking that you want to give out? Like LinkedIn or Facebook or anything like that?
Karen Leland: I am on LinkedIn. Karen Leland. People can just find me as Karen Leland on LinkedIn and I also started a new group this week actually yesterday on LinkedIn called hold on one second. Called Life Blend and that's about balancing work and life. If anyone's interested in that, they can find me on LinkedIn. And Facebook I use mostly for personal stuff. I don't actually use it for business.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah, yeah.
Karen Leland: Because I can't manage that many social networking things at one time. So my biggest ones are Twitter and LinkedIn and then as you said I blog for the Huffington Post and actually I'm starting my own blog soon but it isn't up yet but if people Twitter me they'll hear about it.
But my point was that this whole Twitter project has taken a huge amount of time because I have to write all the tweets, I have to plan them out, I have to get it done. Now if there's nothing urgent about that because it's not for a client. There's nobody pressing on me to get it done. But it's one of my personal big huge marketing goals. So I've had to make it an A priority to work on it every day.
And so between all the other fires and all the other things I have to do for clients and all the other stuff that's urgent, I've had to make a commitment to do it. And the hardest things for us to do as PR and marketing people are the things that are important to us but are not necessarily urgent. Does that make sense?
Michelle Tennant: It does make complete sense. And I think that's part of the burnout that we feel as publicists is that it does feel like on a daily basis that we're putting out fires even if we're not. It's just the nature of making news. And I think a lot of newsmakers get burned out for similar reasons too.
I think one of the smartest things that I had heard about time blocking was from an editor who and I have taken it on and I think what's really great is the difference between generative work and receptive work. And he would always do his generative work in the morning and then he would do his receptive work in the afternoon which means that generative work would be something like outreach or writing or something that you're generating. And then receptive would be, "Okay, I'm taking phone calls. I'm answering emails. I'm responding to clients."
So I read that and as far as my time blocking I kind of chunk it up that way. Like okay, the mornings are really dedicated to me doing generative type of tasks whereas the afternoon is more receptive to those around me.
Karen Leland: Yeah. Exactly.
Michelle Tennant: Now what about 4 and 5, Karen?
Karen Leland: Okay. And so 4 was breaking your big marketing projects down into smaller pieces. That was 4.
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Yeah. We got that. The mini tasks.
Karen Leland: And then 5 is and this one is so important in the world we live in today and it's learn to use your technology effectively.
Michelle Tennant: Yes. We can talk more about that.
Karen Leland: Yeah. It's a critical issue. Email, voice mail, instant messaging. They're great tools. But when they cause continuous interruptions they can really make it impossible to focus at work and it's like we all get so sucked into I was interviewing one person yesterday for the blog I'm writing for Huffington Post and the person said, "Social media can be a black hole." And I said, "It sure can."
So you really have to draw a line by creating some technology free times. And what I mean by that if you have to learn how to turn off your cell phone. So when I'm out to a business lunch with someone I turn my cell phone to vibrate. I do not answer my cell phone when I am sitting at lunch with someone, business or personal.
Michelle Tennant: I always thought that people do because it really sends a message doesn't it? To the other person that you're just not important.
Karen Leland: You bet. I mean I think that's really, really critical. It's not that they're not important but nobody really wants to hear you talk on the phone in the restaurant. They really don't.
Michelle Tennant: That's true. But let's face it, you know, there's like a subtle communication because I felt it. I was shocked one time. I was in New York with a client and then we were doing a really large event and that event's publicist met with us and through the entire meeting with us he could not stop checking his BlackBerry and my client was furious. And I had to like handle it afterward and I kind of took up for the publicist and said, "Well, you know, when you're dealing with media it's instant. And sometimes you'll miss an opportunity if you're not right on your technology 24/7."
And he said, "I know but for God's sake we met with him for like a half hour. He couldn't just turn it off while me met?"
Karen Leland: I agree and I have to say that I think that one of the big problems when people do that is you don't have their attention and so the kind of things you're talking about don't even necessarily get through in the way that they should and besides being rude, it's actually ineffective.
Michelle Tennant: It is ineffective. and it can waste more time in the long run because you haven't actually spent that creative time or that creative energy with them to maybe problem solve some stuff you know? Yeah. It's really good. It's really good and what about
My brother is a big computer guy. Does lots of coding for large corporations like AT & T. And he got after me one time about not reading my little booklets and I was like for God's sake we get new telephones and cameras and TVs and computers every year. Am I really supposed to sit down and read those stupid manuals?
And he said, "Yeah. You spent the money on that technology. Why wouldn't you want to know how to use it?"
Karen Leland: I have to say I am so guilty as charged on that one because the way I learn is not so much by reading but I learn by listening, by doing and so it's hard for me to read those but I will say that my husband did come in the office one day and he said to me, "How many times have I showed you to do the same thing."
And he's right. I'm not only wasting his time; I'm wasting mine and so taking the time to learn how to use your technology properly is really actually in general a good idea.
There's a couple of other things about using technology well. Learning to use it well. And one of those things is that you also don't want to be hooked to the technology 24-by-7. In our house we have what we call the 9:00 screens off rule. So at 9:00 all screens go off and we be, together. That's how we do it.
Michelle Tennant: That's nice. I like that.
Karen Leland: Otherwise we just end up sitting there being on technology all the time and not interacting with each other. Not cause we don't love each other. Not cause we're not happy to be married to each other. But because there is somewhat of an addictive nature to it. I mean that's the reality.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah.
Karen Leland: And so part of what we are trying to do is we're trying to give ourselves the space to be together and by having that boundary, by saying at 9:00 the screens go off it really keeps us from just going into hours and hours and hours into the night of dealing with our technology.
And again it seems like a simple thing but it's made a big difference for us to do that.
Michelle Tennant: I also love that too because did you see that I think they did it on Oprah last season about where the family just took off an entire week of technology?
Karen Leland: I did. The family would sit there and the kid would be on the computer. The daughter would be on the cell phone. The mom would be playing a video game. I did see that and I was kind of shocked at that.
Michelle Tennant: Yeah. I mean it's really interesting to see what we do. For the past two weeks I was on vacation. I had three teenage nephews come in and we . went whitewater rafting, rock climbing, we built a gazebo in the back yard. And I gave my assistant all my technology. And it was interesting.
I felt vulnerable actually without it. it was interesting just to see my personal reaction to trusting someone else to all my technology. In the end I allowed myself just a quick ten-minute session each day on my incoming email just because I felt like it was all good but in the end I was really thankful for just turning that over because I need that break. I think all publicists do. Just to be able to unplug.
Karen Leland: And that's what I was saying earlier about the work life balance is really an important thing and by the way one of the reasons that I started that group, the Life Blend Group on LinkedIn, is because I mean it's like somebody said to me the other day, "How are you doing?"
And I said, "Well, it's really interesting. In this economy I feel like I'm working twice as hard and making half the money." And most people I know that's what they're telling me. They're telling me they're working really, really hard and they're earning a living but it's hard.
It's hard for a lot of people right now and even though a lot of people on the call I'm sure are very lucky and are doing well and I think I'm doing really well, but I'm just amazed at how much more work it takes to get things done in this economy and this environment. And it's so easy to just get sucked into that you've gotta be like a workaholic and just work.
I was actually on a very big like a summit seminar teleclass the other day with all these, you know, experts on social media. And the first guy who was an expert got on and he started saying, "If you don't work harder, longer, and more intensely than the other guy you're not gonna win." And his whole speech was about how hard you have to work and how you have to beat everybody else out.
And I remember thinking, "Well, I don't agree with that," but I think cooperation is a much better model. I think but, too, if that's what I have to do to win I'm not interested. I'd rather
Michelle Tennant: Exactly. __________ right?
Karen Leland: Absolutely not. That is not the life I'm planning to have for myself. Because that is really
Michelle Tennant: I think that people, you know, the best lesson there from what I hear is that you get to create your life. When you're in a competitive mentality and mindset where it's a dog-eat-dog world, that's what you're creating. Okay. Great. I that's what you're creating then your life looks like that. That's not what I'm recreating.
Karen Leland: No. That's not what I'm creating. And you know what's interesting? I have found that in the last, and I'm sure a lot of people on the call can relate to this. I have found that in the last for example I would say nine months I've done more reaching out to other PR professionals, you know, like yourself Michelle and other PR professionals, and people that people might look and say are "competitors." I don't see them that way but people might look and say that's
Michelle Tennant: I agree with you.
Karen Leland: And I have to tell you that's done more for my business than anything I've almost ever done, including because like I said I write for Psychology Today and Huffington Post and other blogs, I interview a lot of those people on those blogs and I let them be the star.
And you know what? I am perfectly happy to do it. That has been so powerful for me and I think one of the big mindset changes that has happened that helps us manage our time better is to recognize that our competitors really aren't people that we have to hide stuff from any more. We really can reach out to our competitors and we can all really help each other.
And I have just found that in this new world we live in, the 2.0 world, that's a huge, huge timesaver and a huge advantage because then you're all levering on each other's expertise, knowledge, networks and as far as I can tell so far, knock on wood, there seems to be enough to go around for everybody given their different take on the topic.
Michelle Tennant: I mean no doubt and we hear it all the time. Thank God 95 percent of the people that we're dealing with I guess is who we attract to us but if you look at it on the surface they might be competitors but the truth of it is that they're actually referring business to us and other people would say oh, you know, there's a few people in the PR realm though that we hear once in a blue moon, "We can't talk to you. You're the competition." I'm like really? Really. You don't think that we do things differently enough that we can't be partners on this or complement each other on this?
And usually those people who have the open mindset for that, we end up making a lot of money together. And those that are actually open to seeing how can we partner together versus how can we actually compete with each other. There really is so much business to go around and the way that I do PR may not be the way that you do PR and we can of course complement each other.
And that's with our, my technology comes ____ the PitchRate.com which, you know, the idea of connecting journalists with media experts, that's not new. But what is new is the way that we apply it and the way that we actually provide services to that. And so it's really interesting to see the PR community and the various reactions to a service that may not be new but we've got a unique take on it.
And that brings me to my last question for you, Karen, which is how has the PR mindset changed over the years? And how does that impact how we're actually making time from working? I mean I remember when I started PR we were still using a Brother typewriter and I'll be 40 next year so that's 20 years ago we were still using fax and phone calls and mail to get the PR message out there.
Today it's a completely different environment. What do you see from your seat as to how it's changed over the years?
Karen Leland: Well, I mean I think there's been some profound shifts and I think one shift, and it is that PR's gone from about getting hits with the important few to the unimportant many. You know? So to speak. But not unimportant but to the many. I think it's gone from the few to the many.
I mean it used to be that and forget about Oprah because that's a whole other ballgame. So taking Oprah out of this mix, it used to be that if you just got your clients on like the Today show and Good Morning America and, you know, CNN, or one other show, and one big radio show, they were thrilled. Right? They were delighted. That used to be kind of the goal.
And I think what's happened today is you can sell as many books and you can get as much publicity and sometimes you can get more if you get on 50 really, really good blogs that are in front of your target audience. Right? And they may be blogs that those people have never heard of but they are 50 blogs that contain your target audience and you can go viral very fast.
So I think it's really shifted from the few to the many. I think that's one thing that's really different.
Michelle Tennant: I mean also the thing that I really see with technology and all the do-it-yourselfers out there is that the power has shifted as well. I actually had a newspaper editor tell me the other day, I was doing some type of keynote for a bunch of publicists and she was in the audience, and she said, you know, she thought out it more and more and it used to be that the power seat was really with the media, the editors and the producers and so forth because they're the ones with the final say on what editorial content goes up.
But she said, "You know, it's interesting in today's PR world the publicist has a really new power seat that's never been available before," because we're actually peddling the content.
Karen Leland: Yep.
Michelle Tennant: And I thought about that and I thought, "Wow. That's true." In my 20 years of doing PR, the power has shifted. I remember being yelled at when I as 20 by USA Today because I mean, my God, I was young and I got a little, I mean I had the main editor at the USA Today and I remember I didn't get my pitch out fast enough and all I remember was the guy was like, "Oh, come on already with your pitch."
[Laughter] It was funny. It's just like one of those memories like, oooh! But today it really isn't about that today. It really is about, you know, the content, the tips that you're providing and the relationships that you're building. It's a little different.
And I love that. That's one of the reasons why I love being a publicist is because I'm able to just really move through all areas of media and I really enjoy that.
Let's step back just a second because one of things that let's just go on and take stock of and also if you are on the call with us and you want to ask a question you're gonna have to get a word in edgewise between Karen and myself so just unmute yourself and say, "I have a question."
We've talked about several things. Let's just review. So the tips are I just want to repeat it back to you because I'm gonna take these on for August, Karen. So capture and take action, time blocking, making the most of a to-do list, breaking up project into mini tasks and then also learning to use your technology effectively.
Karen Leland: Yep.
Michelle Tennant: The other things that you talked about were time crime, using your mental real estate you know my first book was about one and then the other thing that I really liked was really energizing yourself by taking credit for any action that you're doing. And your fab four which is do it now, schedule, delegate it, abandon it. What did I miss? Do I have enough to take action on for August? Or what else should I be doing that I'm doing?
Karen Leland: You are an excellent note taker and listener and you got it.
Michelle Tennant: Okay. Great. Okay. Now everybody that's what the if you're going to be doing this for the next month or so, let us know so that we can report back to Karen Dunlop were doing here. And then the other thing that I wanted to ask you one is talk a little bit about your book series cause one of the things that I didn't say about Karen that's really fascinating is that she has a whole series of books called In An Instant.
So I'm just curious about how that started, Karen, and how You've got something on time management, public speaking, email in an instant, customer service in an instant, and so forth. Talk a little bit about that series.
Karen Leland: Well, you know my first book was about it was Customer Service For Dummies about 12 or 13 years ago and that books still selling. And then a few years ago I wrote a book called, Water Cooler Wisdom How Smart People Prosper In The Face Of Conflict, Pressure And Change which was based on surveys my business partner and I did with about 20,000 people around the globe and we were looking at wanting to do next a series of small books that would kind of be like Dummies meets Reader's Digest.
We wanted to take certain topics that we were experts in and had a passion about but we didn't want them to be these big sort of academic books. We wanted them to be really practical but we wanted them to be based on research. That was the most important thing.
And so we talked to our agent and our agent pitched it to a bunch of publishers and we went to Career Press and Career Press really liked the idea. So what happened was over a year we created this series called the In An Instant series and the first four titles were Time Management In An Instant, Public Speaking In An Instant, Customer Service In An Instant and Email In An Instant.
And they're all 60 ways. Like the time management one is 60 ways to make the most of your day. The public speaking is 60 ways to stand up and be heard. The email is 60 ways to communicate with style and impact, and the customer service is 60 ways to win customers and keep them coming back.
And, you know, they're not self-published. They're published by Career Press. They're available on Amazon and in bookstores. But, you know, what we did was for each of the books we not only took our own 25 years of knowledge of being marketing and management consultants but we did a huge amount of research for each book on what the latest things happening were in that field.
So like in the time management book for example, we talk about a lot of studies and a lot of research that's gone on in the last two to three years about interruptions, about managing multitasking, about procrastination. So they're just very, very practical books that look at issues like all the typical things that you would think of like how you
Even in the time management book is how you stay sane getting back from vacation. I mean it's very practical stuff. How you manage your outgoing calls, how you delegate to people, how you overcome procrastination.
But they're very practical and they're very research based.
Michelle Tennant: I love that and I really and you've always been a journalist or an author? I mean the thing that other people might be interested in because there's gonna be a lot of writers and if you're in PR you're probably a good writer. How do you actually when you approach a book like that, do you then do your mini tasks on that? Do you give yourself three months, a month?
I was curious about somebody a few weeks ago on another teleseminar who said that you could write a book in a weekend. What is your advice to people when they're writing to really approach because marketing is by and large communication and the messages that we send out in this world.
Karen Leland: Right.
Michelle Tennant: So how do you manage that well with time?
Karen Leland: Well, that's a good question. Like, for example, every time I write a book because I have nothing against self-publishing. I think it's fabulous and I may even do it on my next book but just the way things have worked out I've had publishers all my career.
And so I always end up writing first a book proposal and I also coach other people and work with other people in writing book proposals. And what happens is that I always have people, and I do this for myself, break down the book proposal into elements because a book proposal is such a huge animal that if you try to take it on all at once you will overwhelm yourself.
So I break it down and I say, "Okay, first part is the overview." And I write the overview page. And the second part's the About and I write that. And so you basically take all the different sections and I stick with writing it the same way.
So when I write for a magazine, if I'm writing a 1,500 word or 2,000 word story for a woman's magazine, I can't even think about the whole story after I do my research and I have all the information. I have to just start with one part.
And so I'll usually take the part that's the most compelling. Like I'll think, "Wow. That interview with that person was really interesting." And so I'll just go back to that interview and I'll just work on one paragraph. I'll work on 150-word paragraphs out of a 1,500 word article and I'll just work on that and crafting that. And then when that's done I'll look and I'll say, "Okay, well what would be the next sort of logical part to do?"
Cause if you try to take it on all at once or in too big a chunk most people just can't do it. Their brains just can't handle it. And I think with writing a lot of what stops people is they're thinking about the whole thing rather than just taking a piece of it. And it doesn't matter if the piece is the beginning, the end, the middle, an interview. Just start somewhere.
Michelle Tennant: I love that. I just love that. Well, it's just really been a pleasure, Karen, speaking to you this past hour and tell people how they can actually reach you.
Karen Leland: Well, if people would like to reach me on Twitter they can just go to Twitter and look up Karen Leland and they will find me. That is what my handle is on Twitter is Karen Leland. People can also go to www.SterlingMarketingGroup.com if they'd like to look up the services that I offer.
And I will say I mostly work with authors, entrepreneurs and small businesses. So we work with very small clients and we do a lot of blog tours, blog blasts, radio. We do much smaller scale PR projects. We don't do necessarily we're not like a big PR firm obviously.
And they can reach me through that. They can also reach me by going to the Huffington Post blog if they'd like to see the blog. Which is I'll send out that email but if you just go to Huffington Post and you search "Karen Leland" as a blogger you will find me there.
And my new blog, if anyone is interested, my new blog. God, it's been taking me forever because I keep changing my mind about what I want it to look like but that's a whole other story. My new blog which is actually gonna be up very soon is going to be let me just tell you because we don't even have the we just got the URL. It's LifeBlendBlog.com. So LifeBlendBlog.com will be up in about a week and a half to two weeks and if people are following me on Twitter they will get that message as well so that's how people can find me.
Michelle Tennant: Perfect. Well, I really appreciate everything that you've given to me and everybody stay tuned on my blog, StoryTellerToTheMedia.com, over the next month. I'm gonna be letting you know how incorporating Karen's tips into my first month as a 40-year-old is going and then I'll definitely put a link to how to organize your email from the Huffington Post piece that she's done.
And if you'd like to email me, the best way to email me is Michelle two ls" in Michelle@PublicityRestuls.com. And of course my full information page is at my blog, StoryTellerToTheMedia.com which has like I don't know, 30 or something other links. All my social networking and all that kind of stuff so if you want to find me on all the social networking sites, go there as well.
Thanks for joining us. And again, Karen, thank you and have a great day and I'll be in touch very soon.
Karen Leland: Thanks, Michelle. Great to talk to you and great to be on the call. Bye, bye.
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