Christo: Welcome back! We‘re excited to have you back here at Basic Bananas HQ. We‘ve got another awesome episode. Some of the things that we‘re gonna be going through are a tip, oh well, multiple tips, actually, on time management which is crucial. Obviously, the more that we can get done, the more productive we are, the more we tend to grow in business and be successful. We‘ve got a question from one of you awesome audience participants or members which is, the question basically said, “my online ads aren‘t converting. Do online ads work anymore?” So we‘re gonna pull that one apart and definitely give some really valuable answers on that one. If you have any extra questions, please feel free to send them through at any point in time. We always look after and respond to every message you send to us.

Tip from our intern. So intern insights. We‘re going to visit Jenny, which is really cool and she shares her experience as being an intern at Basic Bananas.

There‘s a recommendation from you on a book.

Franziska: You have to watch it to see what it is. It‘s great.

Christo: Radical book recommendation. Then there‘s a word of wisdom to wrap up to inspire you to go and change the world, basically. So let‘s rip into today‘s episode.

Franziska: So today‘s tip is about time management. The reason why is because we did a survey recently with our database and we asked what are some of your biggest challenges so that we can help more in that area. Two challenges came out at the top. One was time management and the second one was cash flow.

So today we‘re going to look at 5 tips that we use here at Basic Bananas to help with time management and then in the future show, we will look at cash flow too, and we have also 5 tips, actually, to help with cash flow.

So the first one is to do sprints. What you do is you set your phone whenever you can on let‘s say a 25-minute timer and you shut out all distractions. I put my phone on airplane mode and for 25 minutes, I just focus on exactly what I need to do, whether that is a proposal, or writing something, or thinking, or strategy. So whenever you can fit in a sprint, fit in a sprint. You will get a lot more done if you have no distractions.

Number two is you use some sort of a task management app. Here at Basic Bananas, we love using Trello. I love using Trello. It‘s a free software you can use. I use it for all my tasks or I believe you use, Wunderlist.

Christo: Yeah, Wunderlist. I like using Wunderlist or just trying to schedule things rather than have lists that are too long. So just whack things in the calendar, like set a time for them so making it out of the list and then using Wunderlist is a nice one.

Franziska: Yeah, exactly.

Christo: It gives you a ding when you take something off. It‘s very fulfilling.

Franziska: Yeah, it‘s annoying.

Then number three is setting priorities. My practice is the night before, I usually look at my weekly projects and what I need to do this week and then I set my priorities for the next day. So when I wake up, I already know. Okay, so this is what I‘m doing today. My mind can already process maybe a little bit in sleep, who knows.

Number 4 is batching your tasks. So if you know that you have to make 10 phone calls, can you just do them all, not at the same time, but can you just say, “hey, between 2 and three, I‘m gonna do all the phone calls rather than doing sporadically throughout the day. Maybe also your emails. Maybe you batch when you respond. You might have 3 times a day where you check your emails and you just bang it all out. So batching your tasks is I think super useful.

The last one, number five is really understanding and working with your body clock because we actually all have a way of how our bodies work. Whether that is you are super energetic in the morning or you are super energetic in the night. It‘s actually a nice thing. We did a test, remember, where it showed you.

Christo: We did send saliva off.

Franziska: It showed you what your DNA is or who your etcetera, but it also showed you if you‘re more of a morning or an evening person. So if you know that you are more functional in the morning, then use those morning hours to do your most productive, important work. If you know that you are more of an evening person, maybe do the most productive stuff in the night. So just work with your natural body. what‘s the word? No, there‘s a word. It‘s a little fancy word.

Christo: I think it‘s Arcadian rhythm or something like that.

Franziska: That! Yes.

Christo: But it‘s understanding, too. If you miss the time when you have energy in a day, miss out on doing high-priority tasks, then you run out of energy, you get to try to do these high-priority things and suddenly you don‘t have energy and you‘re doomed.

Franziska: Exactly.

Christo: So knowing when to hit those challenging tasks when you are powered up the most.

Franziska: Now, next we‘re going to look at a question that we got sent from one of our viewers. You wanna look at the question?

Christo: Let‘s do it. So the question we have here which was sent through is, “my online ads aren‘t converting. Do online ads work anymore?”

Good question! So alone, online ads don‘t work. You‘ve got to have a really good offer that you‘re sending people to. So, first of all, online ads definitely work. They‘re still there. There‘s just more and more competition. However, most people rush to do things like online ads. Everybody thinks the answer to their business problem, getting more customers is AdWords, Facebook ads or Instagram ads or SEO services to drive more people to their website, for example. However, if people land on your website and your offer is terrible, they‘re not gonna convert to sales. It doesn‘t matter how much traffic you send. Also, if you‘re just expecting people to land on your site and purchase the first second they see you, you‘re in for a pretty quick lesson.

This is why people, they might spend budget on online ads for a few months and then they don‘t see a return then they turn them off because they can‘t justify to continue running them. You need to have funnels and things in place and understand that people take different periods of time to make a decision. There‘s this decision-making period where the come from the ad, someone might take 3 weeks, someone might take 6 months before they actually action a purchase. So you‘ve got to have these online funnels, all these pieces of the pie. It‘s like your online ad is like one ingredient to bake a cake but you need 6 ingredients to eventually end up with an actual cake. This is looking at the whole big marketing pitch. And even the messaging and everything has to relay, this is just one itty-bitty piece of it.

People come to us all the time, don‘t they? They‘re like can you help us with my online ad and my social media. We‘re like, yeah we can but we‘re not going to unless we can look at the whole pitch with you because otherwise, we‘re gonna look at one area and then you‘d come back and say, hey it‘s not working. We need to look at the whole strategy. That‘s what we do with Clever Bunch and everything. That‘s why the things are here because there are so many pieces we have to put in place to make it work.

So there you go. Online ads definitely work. Sure an answer. But you need funnels in place

Franziska: Now, next! We‘re going to go behind the scenes here again and we‘re going to visit Jenny and we‘re going to have some intern insights. Jenny is one of our beautiful interns visiting from Norway and she has a few lessons that she‘s going to share with you right now.

Jenny: Hi! I‘m just about to finish my internship at Basic Bananas and the most important part that I‘ve learned from my internship is the importance of gratitude and communication and social gatherings. My tips for business owners that want to get interns is including them in social gatherings so they feel included in the business. Also, make how-to videos so they don‘t have to ask that many questions and can work on their own and also tell them when they‘ve done something good and also when they‘ve done something they can do differently in order to improve in the business.

For future interns, work hard, stay positive and believe in yourself. It would be an amazing experience.

Christo: Thank you, Jenny! That was awesome. Jenny has been amazing, such a valuable member of the team. Thanks for everything you have done as an intern for Basic Bananas.

Now, Franziska, do you have a book recommendation? Something you can recommend besides our own books?

Franziska: Our own books are of course the best ones.

Christo: The next best book.

Franziska: The next best one is Richard Branson‘s latest one which came out I believe last year which is called, “Finding my Virginity.” The first one which was ten years ago written was called “Losing my Virginity.” Now the second one is an autobiography is called Finding my Virginity. I was just recently on Necker island and that‘s where I got given this book. I just consumed it on the plane because it‘s about 40 hours to get back to Sydney from Necker Island. I loved it. You know, as we know what the main lessons and what Branson‘s just really good at when you observe how he runs his businesses is that his strategy is he finds an industry that is underwhelming in terms of customer service. So any industry that is just underwhelming where you go and you‘re like this is a bit average service. He finds that industry, he comes into that industry, he then hires the best people that he knows know the industry inside-out. So he gets the best people and he comes into the industry to disrupt it with the best people and he takes risks all the time. That‘s pretty much how he‘s grown into all these different industries. It‘s not by himself knowing all these industries inside-out, but finding an industry that needs disruption, going in there, finding the best people to run these businesses, taking risks and blowing customers‘ minds with customer service.

I think these are really good valuable lessons for all of us. It‘s how can we continuously do things better. How can we add more value? How can we blow customers minds? And how can you be even a little bit more bright with your decision making?

Franziska: Now to finish up, do you have a word of wisdom?

Christo: Our word of wisdom is focused on growth. We‘re looking at time management and that‘s part of the tip. So the way you use your time and the way we see most people using their time in business, this is just we‘ve worked with thousands of businesses over the years, most people spend time doing reactive stuff like ticking things off the to-do list. They get stuff done but it‘s not proactive that‘s gonna result in growth. So, as you like to focus on growth, if you wanna grow, it‘s basically the word of wisdom, if you look over your to-do list before you do any tasks, then ask yourself, could this result in new customers? Put that in your new to-do list if it answers yes and then do that to-do list that can result in new customers before you go into all these reactive stuff because as long as you‘re generating growth and you‘re making growth happen, implementing new marketing, you make more money, you have options so you can suddenly pay someone else to do all these other low-priority stuff. Focus on growth. When you got money, when you got growth happening, the world is your oyster, as someone clever once said.

Franziska: So thanks again. Go and make the world your oyster. We‘ll see you on the next episode.