February started out as a slow month for me and almost looked like a lost cause (I know that’s probably not what you were expecting). At one point, I thought, “Oh well. I’ll do better in March.”
Then…EVERYTHING HAPPENED! But why was I feeling so bad?
New Year’s Resolutions Woes
It already occurs to me that I didn’t properly plan all of my New Year’s resolutions. While I can get them accomplished, my time is limited.
I’ve already given up on most of my Udemy related goals. I don’t see myself creating a new course on that platform anytime soon, and I’m doing very little marketing to get 150,000+ students into my courses.
Also, the YouTube streak got snapped. I intended on publishing 1 YouTube video every day for 365 days, but I stopped short at 45 days. Towards the end, I uploaded snippets from my podcast episodes.
While they provided high value, I considered them as a way to technically continue the streak.
Why The Woes?
Committing to those New Year’s resolutions commanded so much of my time that I couldn’t spread my time wide enough to serve my customers. My customers are the most important people within my audience.
While everyone in my audience is important to me, from a business standpoint, you need to provide your customers with more value and time than anyone else in your audience.
Some of my customers rightfully complained and I reallocated my time to address my products. The issues are fixed now, but this served as a big wake-up call for me.
I felt bummed out about giving up on those two New Year’s resolutions. Put that on top of an inbox with over 100 flagged messages that I never seemed to address. Feeling bummed out about goals and having so much important mail is so demoralizing.
Oh, and I haven’t updated my Instagram account in a long time. All of these feelings made me feel like February was a lost cause. Then I hit my breakthrough.
The Game Plan That Saved My Productivity
My game plan story starts at a Super Bowl Party. The Pats seemed out for the count. As a Red Sox fan, I rooted for Brady. My friend told me the Pats weren’t making the comeback.
I believed even when they were losing 28-3. Before anyone comments on that, please note that the Red Sox have pulled off some crazy postseason comebacks including the greatest comeback in baseball history. I stayed optimistic but nervously watched the rest of the game unfold.
Sure enough the Pats win the Super Bowl and the media writes about Brady’s incredible comeback. Stories of Brady’s discipline resurfaced and were expounded.
These stories inspire me to identify what cross training exercises I must do after my runs. Each day of the week has a different set of cross training exercises that I hold myself up to.
After a very successful week of cross training, I decided to incorporate this game plan into my business. Now I know what I must specifically do every day of the week.
It’s the scorecard on steroids because this approach turns every part of the scorecard into a habit. Imagine that even the most challenging tasks become habitual. That’s what the game plan did for me.
Tuesdays are largely for coming up with new ideas. Wednesdays are for videos and podcast interviews. On Sundays, I schedule the bulk of my content and assess my progress for the week.
And thanks to my man Anthony Iannarino, I take my inbox to ZERO on Monday. Remember all of those flagged emails I mentioned? I responded to all 100+ of those emails in one day. It is so relieving to see a mere five flagged emails (I don’t un-flag all messages I reply to) than 100+ flagged emails.
I Cleaned My Desk
The desk I work on is clean. The desk I never talk about is the one in my room. To get an idea of what that desk looked like, just think of yourself with 10 folders all filled with papers. You drop all of the folders and the papers spread across your desk. You do nothing about them and put your notebooks on top of your desk as if the scattered papers aren’t there.
Your drawers are filled with the most random things possible.
I cleaned that desk up and now I have an easier time sleeping. My easier sleep can also be due to me getting to bed earlier. Now I aspire to get 7 and a half hours OR 9 hours of sleep every night.
I specifically choose between those two quantities because of the way our sleep cycle works.
Summit Preparation Is Now Beginning
Content Marketing Success Summit will be epic. That I promise you. Am I prepared for it right now? Not quite. I just started preparing for it a week ago. I contacted some of my content marketing buddies to see if they were available to speak at the virtual summit and help promote it.
I want at least 50 speakers for this summit. So far I have six. I need to get the other 44+ speakers in two months so I have enough time to interview everyone. Plus, I’ve got to do everything I mentioned in this post on preparing for a virtual summit.
I know I’ll crush it, but I also know that the journey won’t be easy. I’m ready to put in the work, and I intentionally mention CMSS whenever I can to strengthen my commitment and accountability towards making the virtual summit a smashing success.
TSMD Updates
I added several videos to the TSMD dashboard which explore how to master specific social networks. I am in the process of making videos that go deep into the anatomy of making money on social media.
If you would like to see these updates and get plenty of other videos, you can join TSMD as part of a 30-day $1 trial. The price point after that is $47/mo.
More Podcast Episodes
I am very happy with the direction of my podcast. One of my goals for February was to publish two episodes in one particular week of the month. The idea behind this was to get comfortable with the more demanding publishing schedule.
For every week in February, I’ve been publishing 2 podcast episodes every week. I don’t feel like it’s an over demanding task to publish 2 podcast episodes every week. I want to expand as much as possible with my podcast and interview more people.
Facebook Experimentation
In one of the books I read, I came across a “new” way of using Facebook to promote my blog posts. Creating a Facebook ad for a blog post or boosting a Facebook post of one of your blog posts allows your blog to get seen by more people.
This runs contrary to my long held view that Facebook ads should only get used for landing page conversions. While this isn’t something I can say I’ve actively tested, it’s something that I will test in the near future.
Explosive Twitter Growth
I recently learned that as a verified user, I can follow more than 1,000 people per day. This is great news for me because following people is my primary way to connect with people on Twitter.
I decided to test out this new superpower and follow 5,000 people in one day. The result was over 1,000 new Twitter followers in under 24 hours.
[TWITTERCOUNTER PIC]
While this followers to following ratio isn’t the prettiest one out there, I connected with more people. The amount of lives I touch is more valuable to me than any ratio ever will. But for the sake of discussion, I have a significant buffer with my overall ratio that allows me to follow so many people each day without losing my 1:1 ratio.
As I looked through my stats, I also noticed a significant increase in my daily subscribers. Before I applied this new strategy, I averaged 16.68 daily subscribers. I gained [number] subscribers on the day I got over 1,000 new Twitter followers.
And that makes sense.
On my Twitter profile, my pinned tweet leads people to my landing page. Since I got more followers, more people saw the pinned tweet, clicked the link, and took action.
With this new opportunity for massive growth, it is possible for me to surpass 500K followers by the end of 2017 and surpass 1,000,000 followers before my college graduation. Wow is all I can say.
Books I Read
I am in the middle of reading several books, so I prefer not to list those until I complete them. I did get a chance to read Connect by Josh Turner which was packed with value.
I wish I read more books, but when I finish all of the books I’ve half-read, I’ll have a bigger book list in March. I’ve changed my workout schedule so I don’t have as much time on the bike.
That means I need to find a new way to listen to audiobooks. I am considering listening to audiobooks during all of my commutes.
February’s Blog Posts
How To Host A Successful Virtual Summit
The 10 Best Email Marketing Services For Small Businesses
5 Benefits To Accepting Guest Posts
How You Can Start Working Smarter
February’s Podcast Episodes
Episode 23: How To Create Authority Content With David Jenyns
Episode 24: Embracing The Audiobook Revolution With Richard Rieman
Episode 25: Publishing Your First Bestselling Book With Chandler Bolt
Episode 26: How To Sell On Instagram And Build Your Audience With Jasmine Star
Episode 27: How To Build Your Ideal Life With Jim Palmer
Episode 28: Generating A Passive Income From Your Podcast With Mark Podolsky
Episode 29: Creating & Implementing A Robust Content Marketing Strategy With Mary Fernandez
Review Of February 2017 Goals
#1: Surpass 2,000 Blog Visitors In 1 Day—My traffic is on the verge of looking like a hockey stick…but I didn’t surpass 2,000 blog visitors in 1 day.
#2: Surpass 100 New Subscribers In 1 Day—While I did this on Udemy, I didn’t surpass 100 daily subscribers on ConvertKit. However, the Twitter hack I mentioned earlier is helping me get a consistent 40 daily subscribers. I’m inching towards the goal.
#3: Have Videos Scheduled Past April—I stopped early as this limited my ability to create high value products. I’ve also got the Content Marketing Success Summit competing for my time, attention, and energy.
#4: Schedule 2 Podcast Episodes For 1 Week—Or how about 1 month 🙂
#5: Add 30 videos to TSMD—I made big updates to TSMD. Expect bigger updates to quickly follow.
#6: Finish The UYP Training Course Videos—I barely started this course. I want to complete the summit first before thinking about creating another course.
#7: Surpass 50,000 Udemy students—I’ve refocused my attention elsewhere, but I did get up to 43,000 students.
#8: Create 2 Udemy Courses—I’ve refocused my attention.
#9: Write Blog Posts Past April—This did not happen.
#10: Read 15 Books—I started off slow but got to read several books by the end of the month. I’ll read more books in March since midterms are over.
March 2017 Goals
Now I’m looking forward to March 2017. February was slow but a strong sprint to the finish line made February surprisingly productive for me.
For March, I will maintain that strong sprint and explore some awesome but connected opportunities.
#1: Host #CMSChat
I have surpassed 300,000 Twitter followers. My account is now verified. But I’m still hungry for a bigger Twitter challenge. I will host the #CMSChat (Content Marketing Success Chat) on Wednesdays from 7 pm eastern to 8 pm eastern.
The goal is to build enough engagement for this hashtag that it becomes a trending topic. I am using this hashtag to build some Twitter buzz for Content Marketing Success Summit.
The only reason I’m not calling it #CMSSChat is because I can continue using the other hashtag even after the conclusion of the summit.
#2: Interview 20+ People For CMSS
I haven’t interviewed a soul for CMSS. To get 50+ speakers for my first virtual summit, the interviews start now. I already have a few people on board and just have to schedule times and dates for the interviews to take place.
This is all while getting podcast interviews in as well.
#3: Contact 100+ Potential Speakers
I will contact more people than I intend on having as speakers at CMSS. Some people have already said no. To get the right number of speakers, I must reach out to many people.
In Conclusion
As you can see, all of my goals for March are focused on Content Marketing Success Summit. While I’ll do other things such as add more videos to TSMD and conduct podcast interviews, CMSS is the focus.
At this point, I choose to delegate most of my time to CMSS.
A cool goal I thought of in the middle of February was to go through all of my podcast episodes. Not only would I learn a lot (as the host, it’s more difficult to retain information as you think of the next question and how to introduce it), but it’s also a fun walk down memory lane.
What are your thoughts on this performance report? Want to help me get #CMSChat to trend on Twitter? Which of my goals did you enjoy? What are you going after in March 2017? Sound off in the comments section below.
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