January 2017 was a serious month for me. I felt excited with the beginning of the New Year and my birthday on the 3rd. I’ve got one final year as a teen. I’m making this one count.
I think you’ll be fascinated by this performance report. I got many of my goals accomplished and look forward to sharing those insights. But first, I have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!
Content Marketing Success Summit (CMSS)
I didn’t get invited to speak at the Content Marketing Success Summit. I created it.
For the first time ever, I’m hosting a virtual summit, and it’s all happening in June. I currently have none of the speakers lined up, but I have many ideas.
I already registered the site that I’ll use for the summit. I am super excited about this project and will update you all each month regarding my progress. I didn’t state this goal in my resolutions video, but I’m happy that I decided to go all-in. It’s on like Donkey Kong!
The Beginning Of Unlock Your Potential
I’m going to test a backward approach to UYP. Since I have a variety of low priced products, I will start with creating the high-end course. I will use the book I wrote and other ideas I learn to guide me along the process.
I have my entire value ladder planned out for that training course. I’ll eventually incorporate the book into that value ladder once I get it published. In case you don’t know what a value ladder is, I recommend picking up Russel Brunson’s book DotCom Secrets.
Temporary Pauses
I have temporarily paused my Udemy course creation and my book writing. With the mix of pursuing several value ladders and an upcoming summit, I can’t find the time to create Udemy courses and write books.
Therefore, I’ll change my goal from having a total of 50 Udemy courses by the end of the year to having 50 courses by the end of the year. It’s a subtle difference, but in the end, I’m still creating enough courses to surpass 50 total courses.
I plan on catching up with Udemy and book creation in the summer when I regain several hours each day from the long break.
More Podcast Episodes On The Rise
I currently have enough guests scheduled and enough episodes done to last me through March. While I love this buffer, I don’t want too much of a cushion with podcast episodes.
With the current set up of 1 interview every week, I limit myself to 52 interviews every year. Through these interviews, my listeners and I learn new things. I want to continue learning new things about my niche, and 52 interviews every year isn’t enough for me anymore.
I want to conduct 100+ interviews every year (not including CMSS) which is why I’ll be publishing episodes on Mondays and Wednesdays by the end of February. So if you’ve enjoyed my Breakthrough Success Podcast so far, you’ll get double the action towards the end of February.
If you haven’t heard much about my podcast but want to learn more, you can head over to iTunes and subscribe for updates on new episodes.
Books I Read
I have been waiting all month to write this portion of my performance report. Here’s the entire list:
Decide by Jim Palmer
The 10% Entrepreneur by Patrick McGinnis
From Average To Rainmaker by Dennis M. Postema
Magnetic Sponsoring by Mike Dillard
Authority Content by David Jenyns
Profit Hacking by Steven Daar
How To Prospect, Sell, and Build Your Network Marketing Business With Stories by Tom “Big Al” Schreiter
The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson
Hustle by Neil Patel, Patrick Vlaskovits, and Jonas Koffler
The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey
Master Content Marketing by Pamela Wilson
Oh, and that doesn’t include me being in the middle of the #AskGaryVee book audio and reading the first 51 pages of Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? I also listened to several podcast episodes.
So, this was a VERY good month of learning new things. I’ve decided to dedicate one day of the week exclusively to reading. During one of those days, I got through three books.
I retain the information from this books by identifying how I will take action. The more books you read, the more repetitive the information becomes. Some of the insights from one book are often in the other book with slightly different names and explanations.
I underline the important stuff and occasionally go back to the underlined text. That’s how I retain what I read.
Blog Posts I Published:
5 Pitfalls To Avoid When Accepting Guest Posts
5 Tactics That Almost Guarantee Success
11 Cool Content Marketing Tactics That Will Push Your Blog Traffic To The Next Level
How A Structured Schedule Will Make You 10X More Productive
How To Expand Your Freelancer Army
6 Tactics To Avoid Inbox Fatigue and Write Better Emails
How To Create New Habits In Your Life
Podcast Episodes I Published:
Episode 19: How To Make Six Figures On Udemy With Joe Parys
Episode 20: How To Write For Any Publication With Aaron Orendorff
Episode 21: How To Sell Over 2,00,000 eBooks With Adam Houge
Episode 22: Building A Successful Mastermind Group With Ellory Wells
January 2017 Goals:
Surpass 1,000 Blog Visitors In 1 Day—the blog is really starting to pick up some stream. I exceeded 700 visitors in one day. If I don’t do it this month, I’ll definitely do it in February.
Get My 1st TSMD Sale—I made my first sale. So far I’m a little under a 2% conversion rate, but this is based on a small sample size.
Have Videos Scheduled Past March—Not quite, but I made progress with my mega courses. I do have videos done (but not currently scheduled) past February. I’ve been keeping up with daily videos.
Get 20 Guest Posts In The Queue—Lol (it didn’t happen).
Publish At Least 16 Blog Posts—While I didn’t get this goal accomplished, I went from publishing 3 blog posts in all of December to publishing 12 blog posts in January (including this Performance Report and podcast episodes). I consider that a big jump.
Create My 32nd Udemy Course—My goals have shifted. I’m now focused on creating training courses regardless of whether I offer them on Udemy or not.
Surpass 50,000 Udemy Students—I didn’t surpass 50,000 Udemy students, but I did get past 40,000.
Read 10 Books—Piece of cake
Reassess How I Use Twitter—I made my reassessment and I couldn’t be happier. My account is growing back to where it was a few months ago and my blog traffic from Twitter is only going up.
February 2017 Goals:
#1: Surpass 2,000 Blog Visitors In 1 Day
That’s not a typo. I am aiming for 100,000 visitors in March which makes this a critical step. 2,000 daily visitors adds up to 60,000 visitors per month.
I sense Facebook ads combined with a value ladder will play a critical part in this goal. If I make a profit from my Facebook ad, I can endlessly run it while maintaining my profit. This will result in thousands of new visitors who then become subscribers on my email list.
I’m also working to get more traffic from Twitter. At one point, I got 300 daily visitors from Twitter. Then my traffic went down to 100 daily visitors. Now I’m back at the 200 daily visitor range. 300+ is my target.
#2: Surpass 100 New Subscribers In 1 Day
Again, Facebook ads and the value ladder will play a big part here. Lately I’ve been getting 20-30 daily subscribers and this trend shows no signs of stopping. Before this, I considered 10 new subscribers a good day. Now I have my eyes set much higher.
#3: Have Videos Scheduled Past April
I now have a video editor who will also upload the videos to YouTube. This is a significant addition since video editing and uploading the videos to YouTube takes up so much of my time. Part of my agenda for next month is to more strongly integrate my daily videos with the rest of my business.
#4: Schedule 2 Podcast Episodes For 1 Week
Even if I don’t publish 2 podcast episodes in one week of February, I want them scheduled in advance.
#5: Add 30 videos to TSMD
I got my first sale, and to keep my first member (and every future member), I must continue providing more content and a positive experience. Adding 30 videos to TSMD will create a powerful content library within TSMD that all members get access to.
I don’t know how many videos I want to add to TSMD this year. I need more data and research before giving a true number.
#6: Finish The UYP Training Course Videos
This course is a big deal for me. I want the course to generate the revenue and exposure that will be necessary to turn Unlock Your Potential into a bestseller. If I wait a few months before launching the book and focus on the training course and the value ladder for now, I’ll reap the rewards later.
#7: Surpass 50,000 Udemy students
While this was originally my intended goal for January, I’ll assign that goal to myself again for this month. I gained 3,000 students in January so I’ll need to do more hustling to accomplish this goal.
#8: Create 2 Udemy Courses
These courses will be short but jam-packed with value. I don’t want these courses to take too much attention away from all of the courses I’ll have in my value ladder.
#9: Write Blog Posts Past April
I currently have blog posts written beyond February. In March, I plan on publishing 3 blog posts per week. Add in April and that’s a total of 26 blog posts. Finishing some of those blog posts by the end of January is critical.
#10: Read 15 Books
It’s very doable. I now start my day by reading a book instead of waking up from bed and sleeping on the couch for a little longer (I don’t know why I did that). For the most part, I also dedicate one day of the week exclusively to reading books.
The most difficult part of this goal may be keeping my shelves filled with books I haven’t read yet.
In Conclusion
January 2017 was a very strong first month to the new year. The most important way I changed my mindset in January was to focus more on creating a value ladder than simply cranking out videos and courses that don’t connect within a marketing strategy.
I read many books in January and I hope to keep it up in February. Now that I’m back in college, I have to do college related reading assignments, but I aim to stay strong with my own reading.
What were your thoughts on this performance report? Have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below!
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