Using Lift

Ellen de Lange-Ros - Using Lift

I just want to say, it’s not being a developer, I’m an advanced user, and I would like to tell you something about my experience with the lift app. Who am I, my name is Ellen de Lang-Ros, I help small entrepreneurs building their business. I love earning great money, making great money is better words, because earning is about working hard and doing difficult things. What I like is doing soft instead of working hard, so working soft is about bringing your talent into the world, helping other people with it and having a lot of fun.

So I working soft, I like online marketing. I’ve written two books about it in Dutch in the business of working soft. In doing my work and my private life I am really inspired by the lift and I want to tell you something about this.

For me, Quantified Itself is not about the big data. It’s more about improving your life and having fun experimenting, trying what’s working. So I’m trying a lot of things like wearing all this stuff; this is my third one already. I have broken to Jawbones before. So I’m trying out a lot of things. And I’m not a developer, I’m an enthusiastic user, so I’d like the technology, and I’m always looking how can I use technology to improve my life, or to have fun.

For me, that was a classic challenge like Baron von Munchhausen in the famous book, and he ended up in a river and had the problem how to save himself. He uplifted himself by putting himself on his hair. And for me sometimes improving my life also feels like this, and how can you uplift yourself and for me the lift really helped me.

And I’ve got a great example is for you tonight. The first example is about how I used lift in my business and I and more than €10,000 with it within half a year. The second example is about how I use the lift in my spiritual life, so it’s two very different examples.

Well, as we say today, there is an app for that, for example about uplifting yourself. And for me the lift seemed to work good, and why this app? Well I tried several apps on my smart phone and this one stayed on it for months, so it was kind of a natural selection. With all the apps that I tried, this one helped me a lot.

Why? Because it was available on my smart phone, so not only on my computer, so I had it with me all day and I could use it all day.

On the lift at it was very easy to make a customized dashboard, with just a few habits that I wanted to take into consideration and I wanted to really to improve because when you start to use the lift app you see there are lots and lots of habits you can choose from. But many of these habits are natural for you already, so you don’t have to learn them anymore or you don’t even want to learn them.

So for me the lift really helped me pick out just 5 to 10 habits that I wanted to focus on, and to be honest, 10 is a little bit too much. For me, 5 to 8 habits to work on works the best, and to be honest I also skipped several habits like there is this habit of only checking emails three times a day and I’ve never made this one; it’s too difficult.

The lift app is easy-to-use, simple, customized dashboard, and it’s available on my smart phone. And it helped me to go from an idea to a habit that really got into my life that I really performed on a daily basis. And for this the lift app was also very addictive, especially the previous version; the upgraded the version. And then I noticed some very big differences for me in the addiction of the lift app, because what was an important thing in the previous version is that they had this daily chain, and if you check-in on a habit daily, you just saw that you have got a chain of five days.

So for example, I think it was in January 2012, I started to do some meditation, and then I did it three days after each other, so I had this three-day chain, and a five-day chain, and a seven-day chain, and a ten-day chain. So it’s becoming more and more addictive to not to break the chain, and go for your 11th day, 12th day, 13th day.

Now this happened for me with meditation, and I ended up with a 380 day chain in my meditation by the lift app, and I didn’t want to break this chain. And then one Saturday evening after 380 days, I said, today I will break the chain because I don’t want to be in prison by my chain and break free from my change.

Well, the same thing happened with a business habit and that was the business habit of my daily sales action. Now, as an entrepreneur, many of you may know that building things and making content is great to do. But going out into the world and sell your stuff, that’s not too much fun.

So I tend to ignore this, although I am a marketing coach and I tend to ignore and do my marketing of sales. So I made this daily habit and I had to do one daily sales action. A sales action is very easy; it’s not like sending out a blog post or speaking to a big group. This does not count as a daily sales action. A daily sales action is to reach out to one person like asking Martin if I can help him. Or do him an offer or ask him if I can speak at his event, so that would be a sales action. So reaching out to one concrete person to do an offer or ask for something.

The daily sales action was very simple, just reach out to one person every day. And I started to do this five days, 10 days, 20 days, so there was this addictive chain again. And then there was this very lazy Wednesday afternoon when I was laying on the couch watching TV, and I suddenly remembered I forgot my daily sales action today, but I didn’t want to break the chain.

And the first weeks, when you start with the daily sales action, it’s quite easy because there are many many sales things you should have done before. So you could do them. But this was in the evening when I didn’t know what to do, and there was no obvious sales action. So I had to think about things. So I thought about this customer that I had a great talk with her about a week and a half ago, I did her an offer and she didn’t react. So I said well, obviously she doesn’t want to work with me. I said well, we had a nice talk and I might just send her an email.

So I sent her an email saying we had a nice talk. She didn’t react and well don’t you want to work with me, and is there anything else I can do so it was sent. Then I could go to the lift app pushed done, and I was happy and done.

Then the next day she replied to me and said well, yes, we had a nice talk and I don’t want to work with you. But this one thing you told me about publishing your own book, I’m really interested in that. Like the two books that I showed you, I did them myself publishing and I learned a lot about publishing books and promoting your business by publishing your book. She said I’m very interested in this can you learn this to me and I would like to work a whole day with you and learn me how to publish my book. I said, wee’ that’s a great idea. I would like to do that.

So I met here and worked with her for one day and I said well, I intend to speak a lot of how I publish my book and everybody wants to seem to know this, so why not make an online product of this.

So after sending her an email I got a reply and said, well let’s make an online product of this book publishing things for entrepreneurs, and how to promote your business by publishing a book.

So within one and a half weeks I thought about the online product and I made the sales page and launched it in my newsletter. Within two days about 30 people had bought the product and I thought now I have to make it. So I started to develop it and within five or six weeks the whole product was developed. So within a few weeks, by sending one email I launch my product, online product book success, which gave me more than 30 new customers within two weeks. And the online product still keeps selling because it’s online and on the shelf and everybody can use it.

The fun part is that although I am a business coach, a lot of people now ask me at speaking events about my book publishing. I’m invited by a lot of other business coaches on their event to talk about my book publishing story. And the best part of it is that some of the customers who bought this product have published their own books. Like these folks that are published books from customers from the book success book, that started by sending out an email, because of my lift addiction.

So you see this small start was a very small thing of a sales action that I really hated to do, and on this lazy Wednesday evening sending out one email, and getting a great reply. Thinking about the product, launching a product, helping more than 30 customers, and now being invited in events, and getting my customers helping to get their book published.

So for me this is a great effect of just using this simple lift app. And to be honest I think this would not have been there if I would have not used the lift app with the daily sales action.

Then there is this other habit in my daily life. I started to do meditation and who of you has ever been doing a meditation? Well I started experimenting with it doing some meditation, forgetting about it, and then trying again.

And then in January 2012 I really started to do daily meditation, every day, but not so long. A minimum of 10 minutes was required otherwise I wasn’t allowed to push the lift app. So for me doing it for 10 minutes, then it’s fine and it’s a daily practice.

Then I started to notice that my life really changed by these daily meditations. I’ve become a lot more focused, relaxed and less angry. More happy and more relaxed with my kids and there was many many small things.

Because of these meditations, even some bizarre effects. For example, I learned to focus on my body, to feel my body and I learned to focus on pain. When there was some pain in my body. I learnt that I could focus on the pain, and then I somehow could release the pain.

So for example I often do aikido, and one evening I had a really bad fall on my shoulder. I went on with my training and after two hours of training. I dress myself and drove home in my car and I felt that I was really injured.

Healing from an injury takes me a lot of time, so I felt that this would take me 4 to 6, or maybe 8 weeks to recover from the shoulder.

The next morning I was sitting on a train going to a Ted-Ex Amsterdam, and I was doing this meditation going to the pain and relaxing. And the whole day I felt this pain in my shoulder, but it felt like a really strange happy pain, and the next day the pain was gone. And I could do my aikido lessons the day after and it was a real miracle for me. I’ve never experienced something like that before, very strange.

But it also helped me to explore my mental life and spiritual things, and much more getting into a mindset. And for me this daily meditation practice help me a lot to develop as a person.

What is also great is that meditation and the world of the apps they meet each other. There are some very great meditation apps. So if you are not into meditation yet but you want to experiment with it, I would recommend for example Hat Space and you can get the free app and then you can do take 10. It says a ten-day programme, so you do 10 minutes meditation for 10 days. And if you get addicted you have to go to the website, by the program for a month or year and you can continue with take 15; it’s 15 days 15 minutes. Take 20, 20 minutes, 20 days. And there are many other programs and the whole Hat Space program is 360 days. Every day, another small meditation with themes which are building up, and it’s making it very simple and really for busy Western people.

But there are a lot of great Eastern philosophical things integrated in Hat Space.

And another great meditation app, you could try is Omvana from Mindvalley, and Mindvalley is really great on marketing. They are doing great stuff in publishing spiritual things. The app is free and there are many small meditations that you can try on the app, and there are also lectures for example about abundance.

And if you have never done meditation before I would really recommend that you try one of these apps. Give it a try and take 10 for 10 days and maybe also hooked like me.

There are some small lessons, and for me it’s about dharma , which is about making the world a better place by developing your own talents, and finding the things that you are special in and helping others with it and making great money with it. And you can do this in your business.

You don’t have to go to Tibet to do meditations on a hill, you can just do it in Amsterdam, in your apartment, and for the rest of the day go to work, and develop your talent and make the world a better place.

The big question for you, for example, is will you uplift your life? I think that’s what Quantified Self is all about.

My lesson is that you don’t need to be a developer and you don’t need new gadgets. What you do need is to focus on the essence and find the tool that supports you and building great habits.

For me, this was the lift app, but there are many other great apps, have a look and it is about finding your own essence and find the tool that supports you to build the habits that are important for you. And success is not about new gadgets; it’s about the tools that are in your hands already. Use them well to build a better self and a better world.