The Skinny On Fasting

Brought to from our new favorite guys, The Skit Guys.

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What does spending time with God look like?

As some of you might have caught in my Facebook updates a week or so ago, I got a generous 40th birthday gift from my parents.  My dad spends 2 winter months in Florida every year and he flew me down to spend 5 days with him.  For whatever reason, this was the first time we’ve ever done something like this alone – meaning not with my mom, my wife or kids, or any of my siblings.  Just the two of us.

With a great amount of turmoil going on in my business, it was both the worst and perfect time to step away for 5 days.  Looking back, it was 5 days well spent.

Getting 5 days alone with your dad at age 40 is really a gift.  My dad is still young, in his early 60’s, but nearly lost his life in his 50’s to heart issues.  It was a struggle for many years – in and out of hospitals, lot’s of tweaking of medicines, and advances in medical technology – finally leading back to a new normal lifestyle, one that involves travel, golf, fishing, and playing with grandkids.  God is good.  Of course, with my recent heart scare and realization of my handling of stress, I’ve discovered through my medical tests and appointments that I indeed have the same genetic makeup of my father. Basically we share the same kind of heart. you might see where I am going with this.  I might have to expand on that in another post sometime.

As we spent time eating (I mean, a lot of eating), walking the beach, playing golf, and just sitting down and talking about our lives, it struck me how simple and wonderful that is.  Spending time with your dad – very loose agenda, no scripts, no routines – just time.  As I drifted off to sleep one night, I was thinking about this and I began to recall the thousands of times I have heard my fellow Christian brothers and sisters, and many teachers and leaders say, “I (or YOU) need to spend more time with God” and to no one’s surprise, what they meant was, “I need to find more time to sit down and read the Bible and find out what he wants me to do”.  Perhaps this also means they need time to sit down and pray as well.

For the longest time I’ve believed spending time with God was exactly that.  Reading the Bible and closing with prayer.  Badda bing, badda boom.  Now, on with my day.

As I sit here now, I can attest that a “devotion time” is useful for learning truths, being inspired with new ideas, and being convicted of thoughts, actions, behaviors that might need to be changed.  But how intimate can devotions really be when your whole goal in the process is “to learn what God wants from me?”.

As Christians, we believe that God the Father is alive – he’s real.  Jesus – he’s alive.  The Holy Spirit – he’s inside of us.  So with these 3 living beings desiring to be close to us – How offensive is it to ignore God and only spend time reading about what he did hundreds and thousands of years ago in a book?  How silly would it have been, for me to spend 5 days with my dad who was sitting with me, eating with me, walking with me, and enjoying time with me by sticking my nose in a book about him and trying to learn what he wants from me?  In most societies, this would be considered RUDE and offensive.  It would be especially offensive to do this to your dad, your wife, or your kids.  All my dad wanted to do in those 5 days was to enjoy being with me.  And that’s what we did!  Wouldn’t our heavenly Father really want the same thing?

I’m not saying stop reading the Scriptures, but what I am saying that we need to realize that spending time with Father cannot be accomplished by Bible study.  Yes, we can learn more about him, but when he’s sitting beside you constantly, and is always speaking, by getting your nose out of the book and realizing he’s actually a very nice companion, who loves to sit with you when you work, when you relax, when you are active, when you are walking, when you are eating – you actually start to LIKE God and get to know who he is first hand!  Not what you learned about him in a book, but actually experience a relationship with him and get to know him personally!

I’ve discovered that a Christian lifestyle is not a set of routines – daily devotions, weekly Bible study group, pray before meals, devotions after meals, church twice on Sunday, volunteering at church, doing ministry, etc.  All these are disciplines, but they lack intimacy.  Until we can embrace the concept of spending time with God is literally every second of the day, we’ll never really relax and enjoy the person that he is. After all, the Scriptures are only meant for one thing – to inspire us to discover who the Father, the Son, and his Spirit are.  Don’t miss it like the Pharisees did – all they did was read and obey the Scriptures, but totally missed Jesus right in front of them.

My prayer for you is that you experience this for yourself like I have.  Learn to simply enjoy time with your Father.  Laugh with each other, cry with each other, walk with each other, work with each other, love with each other, and even eat with each other.  It’s not a routine, it’s life.  I hope you learn like I have that God’s goal for me is not to do a bunch of tasks for his kingdom.  That’s meant for slaves or employees.  It’s to have a relationship with each other and as my Father, his desire (like my earthly father) is that I live a life of joy, fulfillment, peace, and love.  He’s there with you every step of the way.

I’d love to hear what you think, please leave your comments here or on our Christian Business Daily Fan Page on Facebook.

Peace.

What System Do You Use To Convert Leads Into Customers?

First off, we have to say, we’ve been blown away at the number of requests to talk with us about your marketing. One of the reasons why there is such a gap between posts is the number of people who’ve taken us up on our offer of a free 30 minute consult.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to business. Today’s post…

No System To Convert Leads Into Customers = No Revenue

This should come as no surprise to you. Having a fool proof system to convert your leads into customers is critical to your long term success.

In talking with business owners for the past couple of weeks, it seems that everyone is seeing a slip in their business. Let’s face it, all of us had it pretty easy in business for some time. Only to see the rug ripped out from under us in the past 18 months.

Most businesses have no simple and fool proof way to follow up with a lead. What they have is a mumble jumble mess of half systems that might work if someone is paying attention.

Let me give you an example.

Recently we had a client in our office that does 7 figures a year in coaching. They sell a very high end coaching program to a very selective niche. What is amazing, is they have no system to follow up with a lead once it’s in the system. The sales have just sort of happened.

Granted they are  bit more sophisticated than most businesses.You have to be in order to get up to 7  figures a year. We made a few suggestions to improve their system.

I’ll share those in just a moment, but first let me tell why this system is built the way it’s built.

In today’s economy, your customers are looking for something very easy for you to create. They want a relationship with a provider they can trust. Which leads me to some very key insights we’ve discovered when it comes to converting more leads into more sales.

1. Don’t sell right off the bat. That’s like asking someone to marry you over the first cup of coffee. Sure it happens, but it happens less than you think.

2. Communicate in a mediums other than email. It is unstable and isn’t always delivered and read by the prospect.  Some of your prospects don’t like reading email and wish you’d do something else…

3. Picking up the phone is a lost art. We have personally and for a number of our clients made huge positive financial impacts by hiring virtual customer service reps to call and follow up with a prospect and see how we may serve them and their needs. (More on this later)

4. Don’t think your prospect is just like you. Too many times we have a customer in our office and they’ll say: “I love email, it’s my favorite way to communicate. I don’t like it when someone calls me.” Yes, that may be true, but for everyone of you, there is someone like me who prefers to get on the phone and get it handled.

When you bypass using the phone, you bypass over 33% of your prospects base prefer way of communication.

The bottom line is this, if you are not happy with the number of conversions of leads to customers, take a look at your systems. Maybe you need to add a phone calling program, monthly newsletter or you’re asking for the sale too soon. Fine tune your systems and you’ll see a dramatic increase in sales.

Okay, next we’ll hit our next topic which is all about your Pay Per Click online campaigns.

Best,

Bob and Matt

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