The Foundation Of Your Business: Who Do You Already Know?

Today we are going to be covering your Master Contact Sheet. As you know, I have a system that I use, that is the 4 Hour A Week System and this is what helps people build their business, whether they are using SendOutCards or some other business, and so, let us go ahead and get into the training. I found that I make things as simple as possible for myself.

Step 1:

So the very first step is to download every single electronic device with the SOC app, so whether it is your phone, your desktop, your laptop, or your tablet, make sure every single one of those electronic devices has an icon that you press or click that opens your SendOutCards account. 

It is very important that you have this. 

Step 2:

The second thing is you go to your address and you make sure it is correct. So go to your account, click on it, you will get a little sub-menu, click on your account number again, and make sure that return address is exactly where it needs to be, okay? Verify your account with your mobile phone number. This will help you be able to use a lot of the digital media that is coming online with SendOutCards and it also allows you to use your phone much more effectively to do  follow-up. 

First go to your account and click on the account icon

Click on your account # on the submenu.

Make sure that the address listed for you is the one you want on your envelopes.

Step 3:

The 4 Hour A Week System is where you start establishing the habits that make you a successful business owner. I do not care what business you are in. These are the four things you need to be doing to be profitable in your business. 

You spend an hour a week prospecting, 

an hour a week doing follow-up, 

an hour a week connecting with people, and 

an hour a week training yourself. 

Those are four hours a week where you are not working in your business as a technician, which is like in SendOutCards it is where we are sending cards. If you are not sending cards, you are not in the business of SendOutCards, right? Because sending cards is what we do.

 So these four hours a week, that is how you grow your business. 

This 4 Hour A Week System nurtures and grows your business so that you will have more income because face it, if we are not making a profit we are not in business, and why do we want to make a profit? So we can do more, right? We want to be able to do more. We want to be able to help more people. So most folks that are interested in SendOutCards are not after money for money’s sake, they have goals, they have things they want to do. In order for those to happen, let us help make you profitable. So it is very important that you establish on your calendar those four hours a week. I want you to actually set times where you are going to take the time to start moving the addresses out of whatever electronic system or paper system you have, start setting times where you are moving your addresses into the SendOutCards Relationship Manager. I highly recommend for my people that you take your address, you put it in the SendOutCards Relationship Manager, then send a card to that person. Take your address, send a card to the next person. Take an address, send a card to the next person. Get in the habit of adding addresses and then immediately sending a card to that person.

Step 4:

Step four is basic business building, literally. This is what we are going to use to help you build your business. So do you have access to your contacts? You actually have warm leads and you do not know it. Now, when it comes to SendOutCards, we highly recommend that you do not sell, you show by example, just send cards to people. Okay? And so what I recommend is that you figure out exactly how many people do you have on Facebook? How many people do you know on LinkedIn? And how many people are actually in your phone? I mean how many people you actually have in your phone? So write down the exact number of all those people because this will help you see that you are actually achieving your goal which is getting to know more people to send more cards, okay? 

The more cards you send, then the more people who know that you exist and know what you do with your business, right? So whether you use a digital calendar or whether you use an analog calendar, it is not important to me what your system is, just have one and what you need to do is take the time and I want you to put down exactly when you are going to do this, you need to build your Master Contact List. That needs to happen. Build your master contact list.

Many business owners already have a CSV but they do not have systems in place to incorporate addresses or they are not incorporating the people that they have in their social media network and I just want you to make that a part of your process that you are going to set a time and a date. 

Block out an hour some time that you are going to build your master contact list. Now, what is the CSV? You have heard it by other names. CSV stands for Comma Separated Value, basically, it is a spreadsheet. And so, what you are going to do with your CSV, and I do not care which system you use:

we have Microsoft, Excel, 

we have Google Sheets, 

Apple has their Number System,

 it does not matter which one you use, just pick one. 

What you are going to do during your hour of building is download all your contacts from your phone, facebook and linkedin. If you don’t know how to do this, then go to my website and watch my, How Do I….? Videos. [janinebolin.com/howdoi] They will tell you how to download your current customer base, which is your current contact base, which is on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and they will  show you how to download it and put it in this massive spreadsheet. Okay? 

Once you build that spreadsheet, then you can move on to the next step, which is this, go down your spreadsheet and ask every person that you know for their address, and then you add it to the SendOutCard system, and then you send a card. This is the work. This is what you do. This is part of the business of SendOutCards. If you are not sending out cards, you are not effective in your business. This is part of the work for the 4 Hour a Week System we talk about. You need to spend at least an hour a week (maybe more if SOC is the only business  you have) asking people for their addresses!

If you are just getting started, start with the thirty-seven dollars a month system because you get one card free a day and all you have to do is pay for the postage. That is perfect because that gives you an opportunity to kind of get to know the system at thirty-seven dollars a month. For business owners, I highly recommend the unlimited plan, the ninety-seven dollars a month. That is what I am on, and if you send five cards a day five days a week, it has paid for itself. You do not pay postage. You are paying a flat rate of ninety-seven dollars a month and I use that system 6 days a week. I am in the habit now of sending anywhere from ten to fifteen cards a day because I am on the phone with people. As soon as I get off the phone I send a card. I get onto Facebook, I see who has a birthday that day, I send a card. I am constantly sending cards! Once you get into the habit it is kind of addictive because it is a highly creative process and it is fun. It is really, really fun. The feedback is positive feedback. How often do we get that? Right?

To let you know how well this system works, I downloaded my CSV file in March 2020 I had decided I was going to show my team step-by-step of, “ this is how I grow a business.” When COVID hit I decided that it was time to really get into the mailboxes of people because everybody was stuck at home. That was one of the ways I could reach out and send some positivity to people without being annoying. 

I started in March with 285 people in my CSV. What I showed my team was how I built my SendOutCard business by using all the techniques I do for my other businesses. This is just leading by example, right? By now, (December 28, 2020) I now have 554! 

In 9 months, I literally almost tripled my business, These people are no longer what I call cool leads. They were never cold because they did connect with me through social media, but I have moved them into the warm lead category. There are business owners out there in the market place that will pay through the nose for warm leads, okay? I have done that on my own. This means that on average, using my system, I get thirty new addresses a month. That means thirty new potential clients a month. These are people that now know I exist!

Now, there are no sales going on. This is strictly what we call prospecting. This is how you prospect a business. The only way a business grows. Okay? Which means that I am getting roughly one address a day by sending cards, and some people will go, “But sending cards is so expensive,” I said, “Have you ever seen how much it costs you to have somebody else prospect for you? Have you ever seen how much it would cost you to grow your business by any other means? You have not been in business very long if you do not understand that the $97/month unlimited plan is fabulous direct marketing. 

This is marketing in a way that gives you a 96% open rate. 

I have done the math. 

I have nothing in my tools, in my tricks, or techniques that gives me the open rate the SendOutCards does.

So what are some next steps for you? The very first thing is you download the SOC app. Please, second, schedule those 4 critical hours a week so you can start growing your business. Third, assess your current contacts. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, any social media, online there is a million of them out there, go onto YouTube, figure out how you download your contacts into a CSV file, get everybody you know or have connect with into your master contact sheet, just do it. I have had people put up so many barriers, or like, “But what if I have duplications? But what if…? But what if…? But what if…? Just do it, please. Just do it. Stop asking questions, just do it. Once you build this business foundation of a Master Contact Sheet, then you can systematically start asking for addresses, and moving forward with the very nature of building those relationships so you can grow your business, whatever your business happens to be. 

When should you do this? Now!

If you are reading this article, open up your calendar now and create those hour long commitments to building your business. 

Take 2 hours this week and build that Master Contact Sheet!