NOTE: This performance report came out later than usual. My website actually acted weird on me and shut down for a few days. I couldn’t access my dashboard and my audience couldn’t access my content…a lose-lose situation that has now been fixed.
I didn’t get as much done in August due to my two week vacation, but I still got stuff done. We’ll dive straight into one of the differentiators between me and other people in my niche.
Planning For School
I am entering my sophomore year of college and running, so I’ve been working out for several hours each day to become a better athlete. August 30th is my first day of school which means I lose a lot of time I’d normally spend on my business. I also have an expanding workout schedule by choice which means less time for the business.
The strange irony is that when I feel like I’m losing more time to address the business, I end up getting more done.
With that said, if I don’t plan for school, athletics, and business, those pillars will fall. On some days, I’ll home early. On other days, I’ll get home after 6 pm.
There’s more free time for college students than high school students, but abusing this free time is the recipe for disaster.
Here’s how I’m planning for school (a.k.a. making sure the business still gets plenty of attention and thrives in the process)
1. A temporary break from virtual summits. I love organizing virtual summits, but they are a lot of work. I have no problem with interviewing people, but I have to create training videos for 3-5 training courses within a few weeks, make sure all of the funnels work, and respond to a ton of people.
2. Daily podcast episodes. With that said, I still love interviewing people and providing my audience with those interviews. My solution for my temporary summit hiatus after the upcoming Productivity Virtual Summit is to publish one new interview on my Breakthrough Success Podcast every day. I will conduct several interviews on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I can do other things for the rest of the week.
3. More outsourcing. Every time I have outsourced any part of my brand, my business has grown. Outsourcing allows me to regain countless hours in my day. I will go more into detail about my outsourcing plans towards the end of the Performance Report.
My Progress With The Monthly Calendar
I’ve been writing more blog posts ever since I instituted the monthly calendar. Not all of the blog posts are published yet, and I attribute that to going on my two week vacation. As it will be a very long time before my next two week vacation, I’m not making any excuses.
Vacation
It has been a very long time since my last vacation. Physically, I go on vacation 2-3 times per year and all in the summer.
But I went on vacation for the first time in several years…
I did virtually ZERO work. The most I did was respond to emails at the end of the day or when other family members did their work. I want more vacations to be like that last one where I’m not doing any work. It was an amazing recharge and I came back more productive than ever.
The work I do to outsource more of my tasks will make that dream become a more frequent reality.
Productivity Virtual Summit—Finishing Touches
This summit is the 2nd one I’m organizing (50+ speakers) and I plan on taking a short break from summits. With school and athletics taking on a bigger portion of my life, I don’t want to go head first into another virtual summit.
I was able to organize the Productivity Virtual Summit right after wrapping up CMSS because of the summer schedule. If I were to organize a summit after PVS, it would have taken place during my finals, or the bulk of the preparation would have occurred during my final exams.
I’m almost ready to reveal the site, and if you’re subscribed to my email list, you’ll get that info before everyone else.
I’m Turning Breakthrough Success Into A Daily Podcast
I love interviewing people, and since I have no immediate plans on organizing a third virtual summit, I need a new excuse to interview the top experts on the planet.
Enter the beefed up Breakthrough Success Podcast!
At some point between the end of the Productivity Virtual Summit and the end of the year, the transition from weekly to daily podcast will be complete.
I already have almost a dozen extra interviews scheduled for the Breakthrough Success Podcast. Marathons such as interviewing 33 people in two weeks for CMSS will get applied to the podcast for a while.
I intend on having far more episodes than I need so I have the ability to host another virtual summit in the near future if I see something that can work.
Affiliate Marketing
I am in love with affiliate marketing. The opportunity for me to impact people with other people’s training while generating some revenue is amazing. For instance, I’m promoting Matt McWilliams’ No Product No Problem course which teaches people how to become successful affiliate marketers.
Matt has been teaching me this stuff for years, and I am so happy to be promoting his training to my audience.
I also have plans on sharing some training from Jeff Walker (THE founding father of online product launches) and Michael Hyatt (a master in productivity) just before I start promoting my Productivity Virtual Summit.
I’ll sprinkle in several blog posts and episodes in between 🙂
I have plans on doing some internal launches soon, but I won’t reveal the details until I have a more clear picture of products and time tables.
Books I Read
Humanize Your Brand by Jessica Ann
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Weekend Millionaire Mindset by Mike Summey and Roger Dawson
Code Of The Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani
Top Of Mind by John Hall
Conversion Code by Chris Smith
Rich20 Something by Daniel DiPiazza
The Magic Of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
Schedule Your Dreams by Liane R. Grant
Daily Inbox Zero by S.J. Scott
7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Work The System by Sam Carpenter
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
Quantum Success by Sandra Anne Taylor
10 Messages Your Angels Want You To Know by Doreen Virtue
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Mind Hacking by John Hargrave
No Limits by John C. Maxwell
Do Less Be More by Susan Pearse
Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Platinum Book Of Cha-Ching by Jeffrey Gitomer
August’s Blog Posts
How To Choose The Best Blog Post Topics
How To Play More Offense For Your Business
6 Indispensable Factors For Attractive And Strong Content Marketing In 2017
7 Jackpot Principles For Improving Your Email Outreach
August’s Podcast Episodes
I did several interviews but didn’t realize I didn’t publish them. I’ll make up for it with the summit, but I plan on outsourcing more steps in turning an interview into an episode so I have less tasks to address.
Review Of August 2017 Goals
#1: Set Up A Strong Set-And-Forget Revenue Stream—While I haven’t launched this system into the public yet (I’m finalizing a few things), I made great progress in this area. I am taking all of the training courses I created while organizing the Content Marketing Success Summit and putting them all into one funnel.
#2: Contact 1,000 Affiliates—I have close to 100 affiliates confirmed for the launch. While I wasn’t able to contact 1,000 affiliates in all, I still believe I did a great in this area…especially since I truly went on vacation and wasn’t just physically at a vacation destination.
#3: Finalize The Street Team For My Upcoming Book—I joined a mastermind that specializes in this area and is filled with people who support upcoming book launches. I consider that a strong start, but I have to actually take action to get people on my launch team.
#4: Finish Writing My Book Draft—When I was writing this Performance Report, I thought, “Well, I didn’t really finish the book draft.” However, there are still six days in August, so I’m visualizing that I did finish writing the book draft over the final days of August. I chose some days to write over 5,000 words and got the job done. Now I can start building up early praise.
#5: Finish The PVS Portal—I finished the CMSS portal a few days before the summit went live. With the exception of a small number of remaining interviews (I’m done by the first week of September), the PVS Portal is finished. Since I don’t have to worry as much about making the portal, I can focus more of my time, attention, and energy on creating the training courses I’ll offer during the summit.
September 2017 Goals
#1: Crush It With PVS—I’ve put three months of preparation into making the virtual summit special. I didn’t need as much time as compared to CMSS due to the summer season and the fact that PVS is my second go. I want to make this summit a legendary experience for all of the attendees similarly to how I did with CMSS.
#2: Build My Book Team—I don’t see this being too hard considering the Facebook Group I’m in. It’s just the process of posting book covers and more info in the group which I’ll do by the first week of September. I need to act quickly with this one.
#3: Land More Podcast Interviews—I’m getting on as many podcasts as possible in preparation for my upcoming book. I will consider hiring someone to help me with this process but will do most of the legwork on my own.
#4: Plan Out Book Promotion In Greater Detail—I need to paint a more complete picture of what the book promotion will look like so I can crush it when it’s time.
#5: Outsource More Parts Of My Business—The more you outsource, the more you realize you need to outsource more tasks. Right now I’m more focused on finding a super VA than hiring several people. Once I have a VA who can perform many tasks for me, I’ll then return to looking for help in specific areas from multiple people. Hiring a VA is currently the biggest step I can take with outsourcing more parts of my business.
In Conclusion
I had a strong summer but this was not my brightest month from a business standpoint. I did get to capitalize on my two week vacation and not think of work. That was a plus.
With that said, I needed a month like this. August got me hungrier for September and I can already tell you I’ve made sweeping changes in my habits to prevent the same mistakes and continue to grow in the process.
What are your thoughts on my performance reports? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.
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