Goals

4 Steps To Accomplishing Long-Term Goals

February 14, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Long-term goals seem far away. It’s easy to think that if we don’t do anything today, it’s fine because we still have so much time.

That couldn’t be any further from the truth. This thinking is why most people don’t accomplish their long-term goals.

If you want to accomplish your long-term goals, you need to take daily action towards those goals. Each day, you need to be closer to the destination than you were the day before.

However, some people don’t know how to create that sense or urgency or what they should do in the first place. To accomplish your long-term goals, follow these steps.

#1: Identify Actions That Get You Closer

There’s a difference between taking action and taking purposeful action. Action just fills up your time. It can be productive or unproductive but you have no idea. With this type of action, you’re putting in a lot of random effort and hoping you get lucky.

Purposeful action is completely different. With purposeful action, you determine the winning actions before getting out of the gate. You look at your long-term goals and determine what actions get you there faster.

To determine your purposeful actions, you’ll need to conduct research and think. Conducting research will give you a variety of options while thinking will allow you to determine which options are the best ones for you.

When I say think, I’m referring to complete solitude for 10-15 minutes where you map out your ideas on several pieces of paper. Then you’ll have a better understanding of your purposeful actions.

Determining purposeful action doesn’t always require research. For instance, I want four speaking gigs in 2018. My goal is to submit at least 15 pitches per month because you only get the gig by making the pitch.

#2: Set Nearby Milestones

If you set a long-term goal, especially an annual goal, it can seem distant. You apply little effort because you have several months to play with. Then, days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months.

The distant long-term goal is suddenly approaching, and you’re a long way from the finish line.

To break the cycle of this common storyline, you need to set nearby milestones. Just like most people, I set New Year’s resolutions. However, I don’t stop there. I crafted my Q1 goals based on my annual goals.

After I crafted those Q1 goals, I then crafted my January goals. You need to break your long-term goals into shorter intervals on the way to achievement. You can even break it down further into weekly goals to create more urgency.

In addition to the added urgency, the closer deadlines will also give you more clarity. What actions do you need to perform today and this week to get closer to your goal?

#3: Get Help

Getting help has multiple meanings. The most cost effective way for people to get any help is to ask their successful family or friends for advice. If you don’t have good mentors within your family and friends, you can start contacting more successful people and asking for their advice.

Many of those people will respond because successful people love sharing their secrets. Any newfound secret to success doesn’t remain a secret for long because successful people love telling others about them.

As a bonus, I recommend that you, regardless of your niche, start your own podcast. You’ll connect with so many awesome people and get to pick their brains. I could literally write an entire book about how the Breakthrough Success Podcast has changed my life.

Get mentors in your life. Even if you have to pay for a coach (strongly recommended by me and many Breakthrough Success guests), you need someone who has achieved the success you’re looking for to guide you.

In addition to finding a coach or mentor, you also need to delegate your tasks to trustworthy employees.

Remember how I told you how you can discover the purposeful actions that will lead to achievement?

The other actions still get in the way. Scheduling emails, writing social media posts, creating pictures, and editing content are some of the actions that may get in the way of your purposeful actions.

Any action that gets in the way of your purposeful actions needs to get delegated. You will make significantly more money by focusing on a few purposeful actions than by doing many actions that keep you busy but don’t move the right needle forward.

If you pursue too many actions in a given day, you risk moving the wrong needles forward while thinking you’re moving the right needle forward. Every successful entrepreneur has a team behind him/her, and even if you start with a part-time freelancer who you give less than $100/mo, it’s a start.

#4: Keep Yourself Accountable

You can have an outside group of people keep you accountable. This is one of many cases where having a coach is very useful.

However, you also need to keep yourself accountable. Every day, you need to set goals and make it your duty to accomplish those goals.

The easiest way to keep yourself accountable is to give yourself as many reasons as possible for taking action.

The more reasons, and the more potent those reasons, the better. Some people use supporting their family as a reason for taking action. The more you care about all of the reasons behind your actions, the more accountable you’ll keep yourself.

In Conclusion

It’s possible for anyone to accomplish their long-term goals. However, you can only accomplish these grand goals if you plan them out and take purposeful action.

What were your thoughts on this process for accomplishing long-term goals? Do you have any suggestions? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Do What You Say You’ll Do

February 11, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

We all give ourselves goals. While some people give themselves more ambitious goals than others, we declare what we’ll accomplish.

Stating what you’ll do and actually doing it are two different things.

Experience has taught us the truth behind that statement. Sometimes we don’t do what we’ll say. At other times, we watch other people not do as they say.

Repeatedly falling short of your goals is one of the biggest bumps you can hit along the journey. Some people feel stuck after trying again and again only to see no results.

However, there are some people who do as they say they’ll do. They’re the ones accomplishing all of their top goals. They’re the role models we look up to when our journeys get difficult.

While these people are our role models, the intent of having a role model is to someday reach their status, surpass them, or get significantly close to doing so. To do that, we need to do more of what we say we’ll do.

We need to accomplish more of the goals we give ourselves. Here’s the framework you can use to make that happen.

Get Clear On What You Want To Do

The first step towards achievement is getting clear on what you want to do. While this seems straightforward, it’s actually more complex. You need to look deeper behind each of the goals you give yourself.

In some cases, there is a goal behind the goal. A social media marketer may want to double his/her Twitter audience this year because that goal supports the goal of getting 100,000 blog visitors in one month.

An up-and-coming public speaker may decide to organize a meet-up in an attempt to land more public speaking gigs in the future.

We need to differentiate between our goals that are goals themselves and our other goals which move us closer towards our ideal goals.

Think more big picture for this part. By thinking of the big picture, you can expand your possibilities. For you, it may be easy to double your Twitter audience given your audience size. For me, it’s much more difficult. As of writing, doubling my Twitter audience means gaining another 400,000 followers.

That’s a goal that takes multiple years to reach given my current set up. I could tweak my set-up to achieve that goal in a year, but it would be an incredible challenge.

Instead of aiming to double my Twitter audience every year, I now ask 10 people (using permission marketing) to share my content every day.

Based on my ideal goal of getting 100,000 monthly visitors, it makes more sense for me to leverage permission marketing than aim to double my Twitter audience in one year.

One is very difficult while the other is easy. Permission marketing is also very scalable and can result in more long-term traffic than doubling my Twitter audience.

By identifying the ideal goals and the goals that only serve as passageways towards those ideal goals, you can determine your destination but maintain a flexible approach.

The flexible approach is important, but you only achieve that flexible approach by getting clear on what you want. If you need to get clear on what you want, and you don’t know how to categorize your goal, ask yourself this question:

Where do I want this to lead me?

Growing my social media audience is my way of getting more blog traffic.

Getting more blog traffic is my way of growing my email list.

So the ideal goal is to grow my email list. Blog traffic and social media growth are the passageways towards that goal. You can take different passageways. As long as you know where you’re supposed to end up, you have a much better chance of getting there.

Write It Down

I know that may be happening. Your mind is streaming with ideas and goals. You may feel excited now, but you need to give those ideas and goals a place to breathe. Ideas and goals breathe and grow on paper.

Writing your goals has been proven to dramatically increase the likelihood of you accomplishing that goal.

Writing down your declaration every day will train your subconscious to look for and think of new opportunities. This is why people who write their goals soon plan out the action steps. Your subconscious is preparing you behind the scenes to accomplish the goal.

You should write your top goal down every day. The more you write your goal, the more engrained it will become in your subconscious.

Schedule Time To Get It Done

If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. The reason I’ve interviewed hundreds of people is because all of those interviews were in my calendar. If those interviews weren’t scheduled, they wouldn’t have happened.

While it’s easy to understand this concept with interviews and meetings, you can also schedule various tasks throughout your day.

What time will you write your blog post? What time will you do videos? When will you take your breaks?

All of these need to be scheduled in your calendar. Scheduling your goals will put you on the road to goal achievement and eliminate the decision making process.

One of the reasons people fall short of their potential is because they have too many decisions. Do you write the blog post or promote yourself on social media? If you decide to promote yourself on social media, which social network do you use? How do you use that social network? When do you decide to move onto the next task?

It hurt my mind just to write those questions, but questions like these wildly dash through our minds every day. Scheduling specific actions for specific times and dates eliminates this problem. Get your life on a schedule, and then you’ll end up doing more of what you say you’ll do.

To crave your need for spontaneity, you can give yourself some breaks in the day when you can do anything you please.

Delegate Most Of The Tasks In Your Life

I’ve been mentioning this more and more throughout my content. If you are not delegating, you will eventually stop moving forward. All of the most successful CEOs on the planet have hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of employees working for their businesses.

Not all of the tasks in your life are created equal. Coaching your clients is more important than responding to non-client emails, but responding to these emails is still necessary. New emails create a sense of urgency which is often mixed up with importance.

How do you handle urgent emails and pursue important tasks such as coaching your clients? You delegate more tasks. You can delegate the responses for some of those emails. You can hire someone to grow your social media audience.

The more you delegate, the more of your time will open up. You can use this extra time to accomplish bigger goals that lead to a bigger profit. Not only will you do what you say you’ll do, but you can also set higher standards for yourself.

Instead of aiming for $5K/mo, you can go for $10K/mo.

With delegation, there are no limits to how much of your time you can get back. Just make surer the actions you take with your newfound time can easily pay off your employees’ salaries.

Keep Yourself Accountable

You can set up your process so that only you know about your goals. The issue with this route is that you can lie to yourself, even if you have good intentions.

Let’s say you got 1,000 blog visitors last month. If your goal was to get 7,000 blog visitors this month, and you end up getting 6,000 blog visitors, it’s tempting to call that a success and ignore the fact that you set a bigger goal.

Don’t get me wrong. A sixfold increase in monthly traffic is amazing. However, we can’t shrink the target if we’re worried about our abilities. The target you set at the start of the month should stay the same from Day 1 to the final day.

Stay true to the goals that you set. If you don’t, then it will be more difficult to do as you say you’ll do.

Instead of using private accountability to accomplish your goals, you need to leverage public accountability. Tell your quality friends and peers (the ones who will help and encourage you. Do not tell people who will tear you down) about your big goals.

You can also partner up with an accountability partner so you can keep each other on track. I’ve seen accountability partnerships where the person who achieves less of his/her ideal goals gives $50 to the person who achieved more of his/her ideal goals.

You can also join a Facebook Group where you post about your goals every day or week depending on the group. You can even publicly post your goals on social media and your blog.

It’s always better to let a small group of people know about your goals than no one at all.

In Conclusion

We all seek to become better at what we care about. We’ll set big goals and make mighty claims. Some of these people don’t accomplish their goals. Others hit their targets and push them further away to ignite more growth.

Your level of success depends on you identifying the right goals to focus on and then getting them done. Remember, if you’re going to give yourself a big goal, take massive action so you can see your goals become part of your reality.

What were your thoughts on these tactics? Do you have any advice for us? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

My System For Accomplishing Goals

January 17, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Everyone wants to know the best system for accomplishing goals. I’ve experimented with many existing systems to create a system that works for me. This system focuses on leveraging every minute and laser focusing on a few goals instead of many. In this blog post, I’ll go deep into my current system for accomplishing goals.

Identify 3-4 Goals For Each Month

I give myself a one month deadline to get my important goals accomplished. I also set quarterly goals and few annual goals, but I focus on monthly goals.

Giving myself less time for goal achievement forces me to take more action and get out of my comfort zone. If I think I can accomplish a goal in four weeks, I’ll give myself three weeks to accomplish the same goal. I’m always pushing the envelop.

Track These Goals

While I write my daily goals on sticky notes, I actively track my monthly goals on a Numbers file. Although this Numbers file doesn’t contain many of my goals (I started in November 2017), this file will increase in size and fill up with more goals.

At the end of each month, I write down how I performed. While it’s easy for me to remember how I performed in the moment, it will be more difficult to remember five months from now.

Journaling my performance and keeping all of the goals in one file allows me to analyze past months to see my strengths and weaknesses. I may have more difficulty accomplishing my goals under a certain context. I may have an easier time accomplishing quantitative goals as opposed to qualitative goals.

This system for accomplishing goals also allows me to acknowledge what I have accomplished. This is something few people give themselves the privilege of doing. We live in a go, go, go atmosphere that prevents us from realizing we’ve accomplished a lot already.

Realizing what you have accomplished will make it easier for you to accomplish the new goals you give yourself.

Set Weekly Milestones For These Goals

New Year’s resolutions don’t work because people think they have so much time to get their goals accomplished. At the time I write this blog post, it was the beginning of December, and I hustled big-time during that month. Not for my New Year’s resolutions, but because the end was near.

If you’re not careful for any deadline you set, you’ll put in no effort until the last week of the month, or worse, the last month of the year. That’s why it is important to set weekly milestones for your goals.

But not only is it important for you to set weekly milestones, but it’s also important for you to set the right milestones.

For December 2017, one of my goals was to land 7 new clients for my coaching services. If everyone else had that goal, here’s how most people would have planned week-by-week.

Week #1: Get 2 clients

Week #2: Get 2 clients

Week #3: Get 2 clients

Week #4: Get 1 clients

2+2+2+1=7, and there are your new clients.

While this looks like it works, it doesn’t. Effective milestones don’t focus on the target. They focus on the actions you take so you can reach that target. Here’s how I approached this goal.

I hypothesized I would get a 50% conversion rate once I got potential clients on the phone. Here’s how the milestones change.

Week #1: Call 4 people

Week #2: Call 4 people

Week #3: Call 4 people

Week #4: Call 2 people

At this point, you’d think we’re done. Just get this many calls per week, and as long as the hypothesis is true, I’ll get 7 clients.

We’re not quite there yet. You still need to get people on the phone. Let’s say that you expect 20% of the people you contact via email to take you up on the call. Here’s what the new structure looks like:

Week #1: Email 20 people about coaching services

Week #2: Email 20 people about coaching services

Week #3: Email 20 people about coaching services

Week #4: Email 10 people about coaching services

Do you see how we went from get 1-2 clients every week to emailing 10-20 people every week. The action oriented goal helps you achieve what you’re after, but if you limit your thinking to just getting 1-2 clients every week, you don’t know what effort you need to apply.

Action with no planning is of little use, and the deeper you look into what kind of effort is necessary for you to accomplish your goal, the more likely you are to accomplish that goal.

My Next Experimentation

After an additional month of monthly goals, I will set bi-weekly goals in a similar fashion. The idea behind bi-weekly goals is to get a month’s worth of goals accomplished in just two weeks. That would result in 24 months’ worth of work getting accomplished in one year.

I’ve already honed in on The 12 Week Year’s approach for goal achievement, but I will experiment with bi-weekly goals. I eventually strive to get more done in two weeks than most people get done in one quarter which is a faster rate than The 12 Week Year. We’ll see if that happens, but my goal is also a fancy title that I’ll solely determine based on how I feel about my effort.

I’ll update everyone after some experimenting. I recommend getting the rest of my system for accomplishing goals first.

In Conclusion

Once you have the system in place, all you need to do is determine when you’ll get the work done. Each person’s schedule is different, so it’s entirely up to you as long as you get into a routine.

When you pick out certain actions from your system and turn them into habits, you’ll know you’ve on the express lane of goal achievement.

What are your thoughts about my system for accomplishing goals? Do you have any tips for accomplishing our goals? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Accomplish Your Top Goals

January 12, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

accomplish top goal

We all set goals for ourselves. The joy of accomplishing our top goals feels amazing. However, we tend to get more frustrated as it takes longer to accomplish these same goals. While some goals are easier to accomplish than others, there is a process for accomplishing your top goals. We’ll discuss that process now.

Make Sacrifices

It’s a little before 6 am my time as I write this blog post. Do I want to go back to bed right now? Definitely. However, I made the commitment to wake up early so I could write this blog post before my part of the world wakes up.

Later in the day, I’ll take a nap so I get my proper hours of sleep in. But right now, I’m making the sacrifice.

If you make sacrifices, you’ll take your goals more seriously.

The sacrifices you’ll have to make will be different depending on you top goals. When I wake up extra early (on some days, I wake up before 5 am), I get more done. It feels amazing going into 6 am knowing that you finished writing your blog post for the day.

Then it’s that much easier to accomplish your other top goals. It all starts with making those sacrifices that most people won’t notice. At some point, people will eventually notice your work, and you will have realized at that moment that your sacrifices were worth it.

Commit To Gradual Daily Action

The only reason I went from an inconsistent blogger to publishing one blog post every day is because I write one blog post every day. There’s no other reason to explain it.

When I write each blog post in the morning, I enjoy the work, but each individual blog post doesn’t feel like it’s having a big impact on my brand…especially considering that 10% of the blog posts generate 90% of the traffic.

However, I know that as the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months, I will see the full effects of my actions. Those effects will only grow as the months turn into years, and that’s because of the compound effect.

According to the compound effect, all of our small actions and habits have an exponential impact on the direction of our lives. You won’t notice these changes for a while, but all of a sudden you’ll look at the rear view mirror and see how important today’s decisions were for next quarter’s outcomes.

Develop Winning Habits

habit stacking

We rise or fall based on the habits we create for ourselves. These habits alone determine your ability to accomplish your top goals.

The moment you identify a goal, think about the work you’ll have to do. For my blog posts, I know that when I wake up as early as I do, I won’t be in the mood to think of an idea. I need the idea in front of me ASAP, so instead of thinking of an idea before the sun is up, I write down the idea the night before.

That way, when I wake up, there is no delay. I immediately start writing the blog post when my computer is open. I write all of my blog posts in a document, and that document is the first thing up when I wake up.

Those are two habits that govern my actions. One habit allows me to take immediate action instead of thinking too much. The other habit puts today’s outlined blog post in front of my line of vision (albeit blurry at the start of the day) so I don’t even think about going on the internet when I wake up.

Think about which habits are critical for you to accomplish your top goal, and habits you can adopt to prevent yourself from getting distracted.

Have A Compelling Reason To Take Massive Action

I know that if I don’t wake up early and give in to my bed, I won’t accomplish all of the goals I set for myself. I give myself over a dozen different things to accomplish on some days, and knowing that makes it easier for me to get out of bed.

I don’t like to go through the day knowing that I won’t accomplish all of the goals I gave myself the night before. If I only had to accomplish 5 tasks, I’d stay in bed longer.

With that said, don’t give yourself a bunch of random goals. All of the goals I give myself either have a short-term or long-term impact on my brand’s growth and revenue, and I favor the long-term goals.

Long-term goals tend to provide more growth potential. It’s better to receive 2 marshmallows 15 minutes from now than it is to receive 1 marshmallow immediately.

Seek Out A Mentor

mentorship

With the framework I just provided, you’ll accomplish most of your top goals. However, there will be a few top goals that seem impossible. You see other people accomplishing those goals, but for some reason, you can’t.

In some cases, it’s because of some type of barrier holding you back. In most cases, there’s a knowledge gap. You don’t have the proper knowledge and/or accountability necessary for accomplishing that goal.

When you find yourself in that spot, you need to seek out a mentor. Your mounting frustration towards your inability to accomplish this goal will ooze into your work and all of the other areas of your life.

Each person finds a different mentor. It’s hard to give recommendations since I don’t know which top goals you’re after. You can get some mentors for $100/hr consultations while others come in the form of $497+ per month for 12 months. Don’t view price as a pediment because if the mentor provides you with a significant ROI, then the price of their services doesn’t matter.

Look for mentors with a strong record for impacting their clients. If you read testimonials and want to end up being one of those testimonials, start the relationship and see if that mentor is the right one for you.

In Conclusion

Accomplishing your top goals requires focus, discipline, and building the habits that will lead you to victory. In some cases, your best efforts won’t be enough. In those rare cases, you’ll need a mentor to get you to the other side. All successful business owners have mentors, and all of the top athletes have coaches.

Hiring a mentor can be the difference between small gains and a true breakthrough.

But before you get to that step, everything starts with you. What sacrifices are you willing to make? What daily actions will you commit, and why will you take those daily actions?

What were your thoughts on this framework? Do you have any suggestions for accomplishing our top goals? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

The 3 Steps To Goal Achievement

January 4, 2016 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

The Three Steps To Goal Achievement — The first step is to read this blog post 🙂

We all have goals. Not only do we all have goals, but we all want to accomplish them. This is basic information.

And then beyond that, the enigma dwells.

“I have big goals but how do I accomplish them? I never feel like I have enough time!”

Sound familiar? I have heard many excuses and admittedly made excuses myself (I don’t anymore, but I used to). The most common excuse is a lack of time.

A few months ago, I gave myself a goal that seemed like it wouldn’t happen. The goal was to find some time in my busy schedule to play the piano every day and get really good at it.

When I first gave myself this goal, it seemed impossible. I am a high school student, daily runner (unless I am resting), and entrepreneur all wrapped into one.

I would have to open up some time in my schedule to play the piano.

I knew goal achievement from a business perspective, but this was something completely different. I had to take a big leap out of my comfort zone.

This goal found its way into my head last July. I started playing in August. Now I play every day. I was attentive to my journey through the whole process.

How did I accomplish this goal? How could I use this knowledge to make it easier for me to accomplish my other goals?

How could I communicate this with my readers? This blog post is the answer to that final question. It turns out that goal achievement is EASY, but only if you know what you are doing.

Goal achievement can be broken down into three steps.

#1: Identify The Goal

The first way to solve a problem is by identifying that problem in the first place. The first way to accomplish a goal is by identifying that goal in the first place.

Chances are you have already identified a particular goal that you are heading after. One step down. Two to go.

#2: Put In The Work Every Day

In life, this tip alone is the closest thing you will find to the silver bullet. Want to become a successful blogger? Want to become a singer? Want to do something new?

Put in the work every day. You won’t get any closer to a silver bullet.

The more work you put towards something, the more committed you become to that work or idea.

If you put in the work every day, the work eventually becomes a habit. Habits eventually become a part of your life.

Working on my business and playing the piano are two daily habits that I hold dearly. If I don’t do both of them, I roll around in my sleep.

Okay, I don’t know if I roll in my sleep. I don’t have a security camera in my room, and I wouldn’t want to see video of myself sleeping. That would be in between awkward and creepy.

The point is that if I don’t perform BOTH of those tasks, then my day is incomplete. There are few things worse than going to bed at the end of the day knowing that your day is incomplete.

It’s the reason why I sometimes write blog posts past 11 pm. No matter how challenging the workload becomes, I always find the time to do something for my blog every day.

#3: Let Nothing Stand In Your Way

When new goals get added to our lives, we must create the time to make those goals happen. Creating the time for our goals means giving up other things that may be holding us back.

When I decided I wanted to play the piano every day, I knew I had to give something up. If I gave up blogging, I would have had a meltdown. I love writing these blog posts.

I also enjoyed playing video games. But much to everyone’s surprise, it turns out I didn’t enjoy them enough. Video games got the axe and I was able to play the piano every day.

If you are a teenager reading this blog post, then you know how fun video games can be. I played Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart are often as I could.

Suddenly, I would never be playing those two video games (or any others) again. Just like that.

When I first unplugged all of the devices and put them in the basement, there were some moments of fear. However, once the job was done, I knew I made the right decision.

When you make a significant decision to take away something standing in your way (especially something that has stood in your way for a long time), you get more commitment.

I gave up video games. I was not going to let the piano collect any more dust than it already had.

What stands in your way? Maybe you watch too much TV. Maybe you find yourself surfing on YouTube too often.

Something stands in your way. You have to get to the root of it and eliminate it. Once you eliminate something that has been standing in your way, you will gain more commitment towards the goal, but more importantly, towards yourself and everything that you stand for.

In Conclusion

I play the piano every day. The same songs that I thought I could never play are the ones that I can now easily play.

The reason I accomplish goals is because I follow this three step process. In the end, goal achievement is all about putting in the work each day.

Once you willingly put in the work every day, you automatically want to learn more. Nothing I ever do will be forced upon me.

The reason I have fun writing these blog posts, running, and playing the piano is partly because I chose those paths for myself. If you choose your own path, then you are bound to have more fun with it.

It’s not forced on you. At that point, you develop the natural drive that we all have as you go after your goals.

What are your thoughts about goal achievement? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Do you have any other tips for goal achievement? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Things I Would Do If I Could Start All Over Again

September 21, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Did you ever look at your life and ask what you would have done differently? I find myself in this scenario once every quarter, and usually during an extreme. Business either did really bad or really good right before the change (fortunately, the more recent scenarios were caused by the latter).

So I recently found myself in this scenario yet again. This time, I was in Cape May. The last time I was in Cape May, I decided to take my email list seriously, so I knew I was in for a serious self-reflection.

Looking back, I came across seven things I wish I did for my business when I started. I wrote this blog post so you could see my mistakes. That way, you don’t make the same ones.

#1: Focus On My Email List

I discovered the importance of an email list just a year ago. No matter how much bloggers like myself make up for it, we’ll still refer to under utilizing our email lists as the biggest mistake we ever made.

I am one of the legions of people who says I wish I focused on my email list earlier. An email list provides you with the most powerful way to build a strong relationship with the people in your audience.

#2: Avoiding The Classic Social Media Trap

There is a common social media trap that plagues most users. It’s the reason why most social media marketers don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. Here’s how the trap works with Periscope:

“Periscope is totally dominating the social media space. People are saying great things about it. I better get on board. Even though I don’t have large audiences on my other social networks, I believe Periscope will be different. The other social networks are subpar compared to Periscope. Now I’m putting most of my time into Periscope.”

The quick summary is this: Most people focus on mastering all of the social networks so much that they end up mastering none of the social networks.

It’s similar to saying a product created for everyone is really a product for no one.

Sure enough, I found myself in this classic social media trap. I had a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest account in the works, a Google+ account, a YouTube account, and an account for almost every other social network you could think of.

I even had a MySpace account years after its dominance started to fade.

Then I made a life changing decision (literally) that made me take this whole digital marketing thing seriously.

What if I only took Twitter seriously?

And here I am today. With over 250,000 Twitter followers, it’s fair to say I made the right choice. However, I learned one important lesson about social media success.

If you succeed on one social network, it is so much easier to be successful on the rest of them.

Soon enough, I had a Pinterest account with over 25,000 followers. My YouTube channel has over 2,500 subscribers.

For a long time, Pinterest was my second best social network. That is, until my Facebook Page recently started booming. My Facebook Page’s audience size may soon surpass my Twitter audience size.

I get over 400 Twitter followers every day. On Facebook, I get over 600 likes every day.

What happened? Did I get a shout out from Taylor Swift? Did I finally land that 60 Minutes interview? Did I buy fake likes (if you were thinking that, lie to me if we meet)?

Once I mastered Twitter, it got easier for me to master the other social networks. One of those social networks was Facebook. The way my Facebook Page took off inspired the next thing on the list.

#3: Start Facebook Advertising ASAP

I almost regret not utilizing Facebook advertising as much as not growing my email list. I started using Facebook advertising as my vacation came to a close (I promise I was almost never on my computer during the vacation).

I started off at $3 per day. I set up an ad to get likes for my Facebook Page. With a little under 400 likes, my Facebook Page needed the social proof before I started paying for promoted posts.

It turns out I was a natural pro with Facebook advertising (with the help of several training courses, a few books, and hundreds of blog posts). Okay, fine. I did extensive research before I launched my first Facebook ad. I targeted countries that allowed me to get likes for the least amount of money. My friend Jerry Banfield compiled a lengthy list of ideal countries for low CPL (cost per like).

After seeing over 100 likes come in and more than $1 left to spend, I knew I needed to put in more money. In less than a day, I went from paying $3 per day to $7 per day.

At the end of my first day, I got over 415 likes for my page. At least, that’s what the report said. When I looked at the total number of likes for my Facebook Page, the numbers told a different story.

I actually gained over 500 likes that day. On the next day, I gained over 600 likes for just $7 (based on insights data instead of the advertising report. Insights data in my experience is more reliable). That comes down to a minuscule 1.2 cents per like.

At that rate, I just have to spend $1,200 on Facebook advertising to get my first 100,000 likes (real people interested in my niche). Now, I am aiming to get over 100,000 likes by the end of 2015.

More importantly, I am aiming to have over 1 million social media followers before I get my high school diploma. That would be awesome.

#4: Write Fewer Blog Posts Each Week

At my peak, I wrote 21 blog posts every week. I wrote two blog posts for this blog every day and wrote one blog post per day for my Yugioh Philosophy Blog (now inactive). Naivety at its finest.

While writing 21 blog posts in a given week normally gives you the hard-worker badge, it is an overrated badge. I’d rather put in half of the work and get twice the results.

Now, I only write three blog posts per week. Although they got much longer than my past blog posts, the decision gives me extra time. Instead of thinking about 21 blog post ideas (and then outlining and writing them) every week, I only have to think of three.

Writing blog posts allows you to build up your blog. However, if you only spend time building your blog, people won’t come. You have to get out there by writing guest posts, getting on interviews, and growing your social media audience. Writing blog posts is just one small slice of the pie.

#5: Create Training Courses Right From The Start

If I focused on creating training courses and growing my email list in the beginning, I would have made a bigger profit sooner. That’s not what happened, so alas, no crying over spilt milk. I just hope that you don’t make the same mistake.

#6: Build Relationships With The Right People

Have you noticed most successful people have a network of other highly successful people? Two main reasons why that’s the case:

You act like the people you constantly surround yourself with. Choose your friends carefully.
Joint ventures. You both help each other become more successful.

When you build relationships with people in your niche, the relationship gives you both access to a new audience. If you and another expert agree to go on a joint venture, then your products and services would get put in front of each other’s audiences. This is how highly successful influencers are able to become more influential and successful.

#7: Give Up Video Games Much Earlier

For the title, the only reason I didn’t choose to say “never play” video games is because I don’t know what impact they had in my life. Maybe I wouldn’t be an entrepreneur. I’m not saying video games made me an entrepreneur, but maybe they steered me in a different direction.

Somehow, I remembered that when I was six years old, I was great at the piano. I took multiple lessons per week. At that time I could play some songs on the piano without looking at the keys. These songs weren’t like Beethoven’s masterpieces, but they were much more than Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Then I gave it all away for video games. The piano sat in the basement accumulating dust. Writing those two sentences makes me feel a fountain of regret. Luckily, I recently gave up video games forever and decided to revive the piano. Talk about a reawakening.

I get that some of my readers never played video games because video games weren’t in their generation. The way to interpret me giving up video games is to think of giving up a bad habit or addiction.

When video games started taking over, most of my elementary school schedule looked like this:

Go to school
Do as much of my homework in class as possible (under my desk, without the teacher knowing. It was either sneaky or brave. Your call).
Getting home
Rushing any remaining homework (15 minutes of time spent on remaining homework, tops)
Play video games until I was told to stop

While I managed to ace my classes, I’m not proud of the schedule above. Better to figure out now than 10 years later.

So for a time, video games for me could have been classified as an addiction. Now I’m done with them.

If you want to get rid of a bad addiction, here’s how I did it:

I went on vacation without bringing any video games with me. For two weeks, I couldn’t play video games whether I wanted to or not. There were many exciting things to do during vacation, so I didn’t mind.
I went home and unplugged everything. I didn’t bother playing video games for “one final time” because I knew it wouldn’t be one final time.
I listened to the right music while I unplugged everything. When trying to break a bad habit or addiction, few songs are better than Bad Blood. I am in a complicated fandom where I like both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but Bad Blood proved to be very helpful for eliminating video games from my life.

Giving up video games opened the door to more time that I now use to read books and play the piano. In just two weeks, I made a dramatic change in my life.

In Conclusion

We can’t cry over spilt milk. However, it’s a shame when the milk is constantly spilt, and nothing is done about it. When I reflect upon all that I have done, I look at my achievements and the spilt milk.

Addressing our mistakes when we catch ourselves decreases our chances of making the same mistakes again. Once we catch ourselves, we know what to be on the lookout for.

What are your thoughts about what I wish I knew? Did any stand out for you? What are some things you wish you knew earlier in life? Sound off in the comments section below.