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Few musical artists have made more money or had as long a career as Jimmy Buffet. I went “undercover” at Jimmy’s concert this month to uncover his secrets for you.

By 11:00 a.m. the parking lot was slammed. It was impossible to find a parking place … for an 8:00 p.m. show! Don’t worry about me; I was deep undercover, so I was there by 7:00 a.m. with the gas powered blender. To battle the cold weather, we mixed coffee drinks until 10:00 a.m. I brought the cigarette lighter plug-in coffee pot I bought at the truck stop.

O.K., so I was deep undercover. I looked like a crazy Parrot Head, as Jimmy’s fans call themselves. But, it was all for you. Here is what I learned:

One of the most profound choices Jimmy has made in his business is to give his fans exactly what they want. Every album follows the same template: a couple of party songs, a sad story, a ballad and a couple of middle of the road songs. With rare exception, every song tells a story. About the 4th album he discovered the formula, and the template was cast. His concerts for the last 15 years always include eight specific songs, because those are the songs his fans want to hear.

Many artists get bored with what works. Certainly the music critics have blasted Jimmy’s simpleminded style. But that is the entire point-it isn’t simpleminded. It’s a deliberate choice to provide a target market with exactly what that market wants.

About his restaurants, Jimmy has said, “All people want is a good hamburger and a great margarita, and that’s what we give them.” Yes, it would have been a lot more interesting to create a restaurant with fancy dishes and gourmet meals; however, he understands what his market wants, and he provides it.

Jimmy became the leader of his first band because he was the only one responsible enough to have credit. With that credit he could buy the equipment, so that made him the leader. From then on, he understood that business smarts are required to make money at anything, including playing music.

After his records became popular, he noticed other people selling T-shirts with quotes from his songs on them. His copyrighted song lyrics. While he did make efforts to stop them, he figured if others were making and selling shirts, maybe he should create shirts, too. That’s how Jimmy’s current merchandising empire was born.

Now he manufactures, sells and licenses his song lyrics, images and Margaritaville trademarks and sells thousands of products. These include flip flops, frozen shrimp, blenders, glassware, auto accessories, plush toys-you name it. That’s not all. In the last year, he released a studio album, a live concert album and a live concert DVD; opened a resort hotel, had a 40-show concert schedule; and ran his restaurants.

Jimmy has proven there is no end to customers’ willingness to buy, once they have bought into you. How can you leverage your relationship with your customers? Are there additional ways you can recruit others to create products and services for your customers that you can license and make a profit from? Your customers are buying products from someone; it might as well be you.

I asked Parrot Heads at the concert what Jimmy’s life was like. They told me he flies his planes around, lies in a hammock at the beach and parties every night. I asked where his main home is, and I got answers from Fort Myers to Key West to St. Barts.

Jimmy actually lives in Long Island, N.Y. Fact is, Jimmy is busy working. He puts in a ton of hours behind a desk, on the phone with show promoters, working with restaurant managers and selling every manner of product. However, all of these sales depend on him perpetuating the myth that he lives at the beach and sleeps in a hammock.

Of course, Jimmy did live in Key West and had his share of fun. But, while he lived there he supported himself by working as a first mate on a fishing boat. Every day, at the dock at 6:30 a.m. so he could spend his day in the sun cutting bait, baiting hooks for tourists, taking their fish off the hooks and cleaning fish for tips. Then, to build his music career, he sang in local bar until 2:00 a.m., grabbed some sleep and started all over again. His experience was not as romantic as it is publicly portrayed.

The myth is Jimmy enjoys a life of leisure. He does enjoy his life, but it’s because he’s working hard at something he loves. When you are giving people what they want and they praise you for it, it makes work a lot of fun.

Take time to enjoy the fruits of your business, but more importantly, enjoy the work. You have the opportunity to positively impact thousands of people with the information you possess. Thousands of people who will gladly support you in style if you do it right. You have a rare opportunity to escape to the good life of Information marketing.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit quick sustainable wealth at http://www.quicksustainablewealth.com.

I’m really good at paperwork, I’ve always been really efficient at getting it done. I’m a CPA, I do all the continuing education to maintain my license even though I haven’t practiced public accounting since 1994.

For years I found myself getting paperwork done at my office. After all, it was a lot easier for me to get it done myself than to have someone else do it. Besides, it’d take almost as long for me to explain what needed to be done when I could just get it done myself.

It took me a long time to realize that this was a trap I’d set for myself that was keeping me from achieving my ultimate goals, becoming the owner of an extremely profitable business.

But, how could it be a trap, I had a great skill. I could see what needed to get done, complete it and move on faster than anyone else I knew. In fact, it was something of a “gift.”

But, that “gift” that was allowing me to get paperwork done was preventing me from learning a new skill, business planning and delegating properly.

I spoke with a home remodeler a couple of days ago. He told me he’s stuck working towards putting enough money into the checking account by Friday to cover his bills for that week. He told me he’s busy from 5:00 am until 7:00 pm running to job and seeing clients. Then, he has another two hours of paperwork to do every evening. But, because he’s so busy he doesn’t have time generate new business.

He has a great skill, his is running projects. When he was an employee he was the best project supervisor of the company. He could visualize how the project was coming together and get projects done on budget, faster than anyone else. He decided to go into business for himself and the first couple of years he saw his income increase.

However, when ever he gets into trouble he relies on his best skill, his gift, and that’s project management to get him out of it. The moment worry or fear creeps into his mind his first reaction is to manage projects better.

The skill that had become his greatest strength has become the thing that’s holding him back from growing his business.

Same with my skill with paperwork. Every time I get a little panic or fear I find myself digging through paperwork, “gotta make sure those tax forms are in good shape.” My greatest skill actually prevents me from doing the things that would really grow my business.

Did you know that there is a more efficient keyboard layout than the standard “QWERTY” layout on your current keyboard? Yes, it’s called the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard. With it you can type twice as fast. Imagine, getting everything done in half the time. Best news of all, it’s programmed right into your computer right now, you only have to go to your keyboard options, select it and you are ready to learn a completely new keyboard layout that’ll double your speed. What? You don’t want to? Believe me, I feel the same resistance. My skill with the current keyboard layout prevents me from wanting to learn the new layout. I’ll have to learn an entirely new skill, it’ll be a struggle and I can’t be sure how long it’ll take for me to catch on. Those feelings you and I have about our current keyboards are the same feelings that hold us back from acquiring the new skills we need to achieve real success.

Many times we instinctively cling to skills that have gotten us through in the past, but are not serving our future. For me, when I made the decision to give up the administrative details of my businesses it was like saying “good bye” to an old friend. I actually mourned a little. But, it was so I could meet new friends, business planning and delegation.

I made the decision that rather than be the best person at business administration I was going to become the best delegator. And, it was hard. At first I blamed the vendors and employees for not ‘getting it.’ But, I learned it was me that didn’t get it, delegating is a skill that has to be learned. And, just like riding a bicycle there will be some scraped knees and elbows along the way. It wasn’t fun and I’m skill learning how to improve.

I found relying on my greatest strengths actually prevented me from moving forward in my business. Instead, I had to dedicate myself to acquiring new strengths and new skills to accomplish the goals I wanted to achieve.

What goals do you want to achieve? Do you need new skills to achieve them? You can leave your comments here Your Strengths Can Be Holding You Back.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit quick sustainable wealth at http://www.quicksustainablewealth.com.

The constant struggle to produce marketing campaigns and run your business makes it difficult to get everything done. But planning is the only true shortcut to running a business that will generate millions of dollars for you.

Once you have completed your planning, you’ll be better able to stay on task, monitor your results, and implement new ideas that may come up during the year. Without a planning calendar, it’s easy to get distracted by a great new idea and forget about the ideas you had already planned to implement.

Planning doesn’t have to be a long, ugly process. Instead, here is a four-hour planning success template. Use a wall calendar, so it’s easy to see the entire year at a glance. In one afternoon, you can create your operations plan for a year. Set aside just four hours to work through this easy, step-by-step process, and you’ll have the shortcut to success.

1:00 – 1:30 p.m. A Candid Review of the Year One of the most important parts of planning for the future is to reflect on the year that has just passed. Open your calendar and review your activities for the year.

Take a look at each month for two minutes or so. Write down a couple of successful activities from each month that you want to repeat in the next 12 months. Also, consider the activities that generated disappointing results and write those down, so you can remember to avoid them. It’s also good to make a note of the seminars and events that were productive for you, so you can attend them again.

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. Create Your Business Targets Before you can plot out your year, you have to give careful consideration to where you want to be when the year ends. Determine your revenue and customer acquisition goals for the year.

Do you have a customer list that you communicate with on a regular basis? How many names do you want on that list one year from now to allow you to accomplish your goals? From that number, subtract your current customers less expected drop-outs, and that will tell you how many names you will need to add during the year to meet your goals.

How many customers do you need to have to accomplish your profit goals? If you have more than one product, list them out and write down your goal numbers. Now, deduct the number of existing customers you already have less your expected attrition. This will give you the number of new customers you need to generate during the year to meet your goals.

If you are worried that all of these numbers are inaccurate guesses, that’s O.K. You can add a task for the coming year to create a better business statistic tracking system. These are all difficult questions to answer; just do the best you can and feel free to revise the numbers as you go.

You’ve worked for an hour, and your calendar is still blank. Twenty-five percent of your time is up, and you have “nothing” to show for your effort. While it may look like you haven’t accomplished anything, setting your goals now will make the next 12 months a lot more successful. Although you haven’t yet planned a single event or activity, you’ll be better for the time you have spent reviewing the past year and creating your business targets.

2:00 – 2:30 p.m. Customer Acquisition When you get embroiled in running your business on a daily basis, it’s easy to become focused on the operational deadlines. Handling customer paperwork, monthly reports, employee meetings, and vendor telephone calls can dominate your time. It’s much easier to have success and to generate profits by selling products to your existing customers, and a lot of business owners focus the majority of their marketing efforts there because they enjoy those activities. However, customer acquisition is critical to the long-term success of your business.

No matter how loyal your customers are today, eventually they won’t be your customers. It is critical to add new customers every month, so you can increase your business and also maintain it.

In the last planning step, you listed your customer acquisition goals for each of your programs. Now, you need to outline the marketing work for the year to generate those customers. For each month, map out customer acquisition offers, events, and marketing campaigns.

Consider if there are new marketing lists you can use for direct mail campaigns, joint venture partners, or new offers to try. The key is to make sure you continue your customer acquisition efforts throughout the entire year.

2:30 – 3:00 p.m. Sales to Existing Customers As your business grows, you’ll discover customer acquisition increases in cost. Perhaps this year, if you spent $3,800.00 on a marketing campaign, you could get 42 new customers. In the coming year, you may discover that same $3,800.00 delivers only 33 new customers. These increasing costs require you to focus a lot of attention on selling additional products and services to your existing members.

Plan activities that will generate additional revenue from your existing customers in two ways: 1) maximize the average amount your customers purchase; and 2) increase the frequency with which your customers purchase from you.

How can you increase the amount customers spend with you during each transaction? Are there little items you can add to give customers small options? What “premium” versions of your product and services can you create for those customers that want more expensive options?

What promotions, new product launches, and communications will you do each month to encourage your current customers to purchase more frequently? Is it smart for you to implement a points program that rewards your best customers and encourages all of your customers to buy from you more often?

3:00 – 3:20 p.m. Fulfillment/Customer Relationships Once you acquire a customer, the most important thing you can do is to keep your promises. If your marketing told the customer you would deliver a product that would solve a particular problem, you better deliver that product. Providing high-quality products helps you retain customers longer, makes them want to buy more, and encourages them to upgrade to higher level coaching programs.

Map out the activities you need to do to prepare your customer fulfillment. What are you going to do to make sure customers receive what they purchase? Also include time for product enhancements. What are you going to do to increase the value of your products to your customers?

3:20 – 3:40 p.m. Administrative Improvements Take a few minutes to note any administrative improvements you want to make during the year. It’s easy to leave administrative priorities off of planning calendars and then take care of them as they become important to you. However, planning for them makes it easier to execute your marketing because your momentum isn’t getting interrupted by emergencies that could have been avoided.

Do you need to add people to your team? Are your employment policies up-to-date? Do you need to create some educational materials for your team, so they have a better understanding of your goals and activities to help them do their jobs? Do you have scripts to handle in-bound customer calls? Are there problem vendors that need to be replaced? Do you need to set up an investment program to maximize cash you receive from your business?

These activities need to be planned out for the year to make sure you allocate time to complete them. There is no sense worrying about them or feeling guilty because you don’t get them all done. Plan some time each month during the year to get a few of these items completed. By the end of the year, you’ll be a lot better off than if you had tried to fit them in as you went along.

3:40 – 4:00 p.m. Add Date Commitments In the first step, you noted some conferences and programs you would like to attend in the next year. Go ahead and make a note of any of those dates that are available.

Note any dates for mastermind groups or coaching programs you participate in. Look for conferences within your niche that you should attend. Plus, this is a good time to note events you’ve wanted to attend, but haven’t found time for in the past.

4:00 – 4:30 p.m. Big Picture Planning Take a quick look at that list of successes and disappointments you created in the first phase of your planning. Are there any successes that need to be included in your calendar for next year? Are there any disappointments from last year repeated on your calendar that need to be removed?

Also, look at the work distribution. Did you load up too much work in any given month? Are travel commitments reasonable to maintain your workload? Are there ways to redistribute activities to make projects easier?

Look at the year. Are there ways to move activities around for efficiencies and to make sure you don’t create impossible deadlines for yourself?

4:30 – 5:00 p.m. Update Your Personal Calendar Open your personal calendar and put all of the dates and work you mapped out on the wall into your personal calendar. If you are running your business in addition to a job or another business you operate, plan around the work you have to do for that company.

But go through and set aside appointments with yourself to make sure you have the appropriate time to execute your business needs. Save some time for other activities that may pop up as you go along. Something always comes up unexpectedly, so give yourself several hours of flexibility per week at this stage of your planning.

Shortcut to Success While it’s good to have your planning calendar up where you can see it, you may not want it on your wall all year long. If not, set aside an hour or two each month to pull out your calendar and see if you are on track with the shortcut you laid out at the beginning of the year.

If you discover you are behind on a couple of activities, it’s a lot easier to get caught up if only a month or two have gone by. If you remember four months later that you were supposed to do something to generate an activity or revenue, chances are you’ve lost that opportunity for the year.

Use this planning time as a year-round tool for success.

Tools of Success Before you begin your planning process, collect these tools that will help you map out your activities for the year:

■Jumbo yearly wall calendar (erasable) Essential to the project, one of the 2′x3′ dry erase posters made by the At-A-Glance company will work. It allows you to see the year as a whole and how the weeks/months flow together.

■Dry erase markers When you buy your calendar, make sure you ask for dry erase markers. If you buy one of the eight-color packages, you can code each color for a different business function. You are free to come up with a color coding system that meets your needs; here is one option: Black – Business deadlines, tax filings, administrative requirements of running your business Red – New customer acquisition activities Blue – Increasing your customer value (average purchase size/purchase frequency) Green – Customer fulfillment and relationship activities Yellow – Seminars/meetings/coaching programs you are attending Orange – Personal activities/holidays/birthdays Brown – Administrative improvements in your business that you should schedule in advance Purple – Events you are producing

■Post-it notes These are nice to have in case you want to write a little more than you can with the dry erase markers. Also, it’s easier to move a comment to a new date if you change your mind. The small 2″ square ones in multiple colors are best. However, don’t try to use these small notes instead of writing directly on the calendar. The notes tend to fall off after a couple of hours, and you’ll find some of them on the floor the next day.

■Round stickers One-inch round color coding stickers are good for noting recurring deadlines, such as writing your newsletter. Just write a quick note on the sticker and put it on the correct date.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit wealth.