Performance Reports

It feels amazing to be writing this performance report right now. The Content Marketing Success Summit has concluded. I briefly celebrated and then moved on to the next big project. I also have big plans moving forward. Let’s dive right in…

 

I Organized My First Summit

The Content Marketing Success Summit went from June 7th to the 14th. Thousands of people watched the sessions and many people also bought the All-Access Passes. Overall, the summit was very successful. I got to meet new people, interview my role models, and achieve a net profit.

All of the sessions totaled to a little over 35 hours.

This was easily the biggest project I’ve taken on in my journey as an entrepreneur. I only had three video editors so the rest of the work was on me (i.e. web design, emailing, etc.). I am a very different individual since taking on this mammoth project.

My 2nd Summit Is Already In The Works

The Productivity Virtual Summit is the next virtual summit I’ll be hosting (from September 18th to the 25th). I will also line up 50+ speakers for this summit and am contacting hundreds of people before the month ends (please note I started writing this report on June 22nd).

My big promotional goal for the Productivity Virtual Summit is to get 100 affiliates promoting the summit to their audiences. If you want to be an affiliate for my next virtual summit and other cool stuff, contact me marc@marcguberti.com.

TSMD Is Getting Royalty Treatment

Now that I’m done with CMSS and am planning out PVS more effectively, I have more time for the TSMD membership site (that’s a lot of acronyms, so TSMD stands for Total Social Media Domination).

The short-term picture is to add more videos and worksheets. The long-term but not so far from now picture is to conduct free weekly webinars on social media and including the replays in the TSMD portal.

The weekly webinars alone will add a lot of value to TSMD. They’re all coming 🙂

My Last Book As A Teen

One of my biggest dreams since becoming a high school has been to become a New York Times bestselling author before I hit 20. Since I just hosted the Content Marketing Success Summit, I am compiling a book on what I learned and throwing in several insights of my own.

That book will get published in late October or early November. That book will be my bestseller.

But, I’ll need your help. People who help promote the book will get several gifts from me, and I’ll give you guidance on how to effectively promote it. There’s also revenue to be made from any upsells and a 365 day cookie for affiliates (for the Content Marketing Plaza and next year’s CMSS).

If you would like to be on the street team for my upcoming book, please contact me marc@marcguberti.com

 

I’m Buying A LOT Of Books

I recently discovered that some eBay users sell lots of used business books that you can get for ridiculously low prices. For instance, I scored one deal in which I got 20 books for $20.

No underlines in the books and minimal signs of use…which makes me a very happy reader.

I probably bought close to 100 books this month if not a little over. The investment is definitely worth it as I’ve learned so much from these books and am ready to take action. Speaking of investments…

 

How I Spend My Money

I view myself as an expert, but I will only advance to the next stratosphere by sharpening my knowledge. I’ll get there by utilizing my money smartly. So here’s how I spend my money:

#1: Freelancers: I have continued to grow my team gradually, but now I want 10X growth. I want to double my freelancer team by the end of summer. More importantly, I am working on a system that would allow me to hire 50 people each week nonstop and still make a profit (I learned this goal from Chet Holmes in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine). I am also using insights from Mastering The Rockefeller Habits to increase freelancer performance.

#2: Coaching: I need professional coaches to help me in areas that I need help in. While doing my own research has helped me in the past, I want to take massive shortcuts to achieve the same results. The best way I know of to achieve a shortcut is to get advice from coaches and consultants. I get some coaching by hosting summits and my podcast, but I want more focused one-to-one coaching.

#3: Advertisements: I am making a play for more Facebook ad spending. Before I do that, I will create an entirely new autoresponder that has more revenue potential than the autoresponders I currently use.

#4: Stocks & Real Estate: While I want to have an emergency fund, I also want me money to work for me. Investing in stocks and real estate are two ways to get money to work for you. I currently have no experience with real estate (more barriers to entry. For instance, it’s easier to find a $50 stock than it is to find a $50 property), but I have been pursuing the stock market. I focus on the tech sector and am learning more about it. I like picking companies after there is a dip in value because in most cases (for me) the company slowly climbs back up. I won’t write blog posts on this blog about investments because that’s not my niche, but I’ll keep you updated in the performance reports.

 

Extreme Blog Makeover

You might see that the blog looks the same way it did when you previously visited. However, there are some very notable differences.

#1: I released my blog’s publishing schedule past 2017. You’ll see what content I intend to publish, and when. Plus, I opened up several spaces where you can tell me what content ideas you want to see. You can check out the publishing schedule here.

#2: I also decided to create a page on my blog that details what I’m doing right now. I believe it’s an interesting addition to the blog.

You can expect more changes like this in the future to create a more legendary experience.

 

Books I Read

This month’s portion of “Books I Read” is slightly different. Asterisks indicate I re-read underlined text instead of reading the book for the first time. As I didn’t keep track of these books as I read them, they are misrepresented. I read 10-12 books and have included the ones I remembered.

How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Born To Blog by Mark Schaefer and Stanford Smith

Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins

Published. by Chandler Bolt—this book inspired me to give my NYT bestseller dream a final go

Unsubscribe by Jocelyn K. Glei

59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman

How To Get Everything Out Of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo

Contagious by Jonah Berger

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes and Michael Gerber

Wealth Can’t Wait by David Osborn and Paul Morris

You Can Work Your Own Miracles by Napoleon Hill

The Joy Of Selling by Steve Chandler

Essentialism by Greg McKeown—this book was, no exaggeration, a wake up call for me. It teaches how to properly work so you don’t get overwhelmed and still get massive results.

How To Become A Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox

Simple Spells For Success by Barrie Dolnick

Mastering The Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish—I am using this book’s insights for managing my freelancers. It’s a great book for scaling up your business.

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard—this book instantly became one of my favorites

The Quick Guide To Effective Speaking by Dale Carnegie—this is a phenomenal book for any public speakers. I picked up many great tactics from this book.

Zero To One by Peter Thiel

Unshakeable by Tony Robbins

Set For Life by Scott Trench

Introducing Psychology Of Success: A Practical Guide by Alison and David Price

Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Living Forward by Daniel Harkavy and Michael Hyatt

The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles

Win by Frank I. Luntz

Relentless by Tim S. Grover and Shari Wenk *

Authority Content by David Jenyns *

Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson *

Content Machine by Dan Norris *

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy *

 

June’s Blog Posts

6 Instagram Hacks To Grow Business In A Month

How To Stop Your Landing Page From Leaking Conversions

5 Easy Hacks That Will Double Your Sales

 

June’s Podcast Episodes (E is the new format instead of Episode)

Episode 41: How To Generate Revenue On Shopify With Dan Rusu

Episode 42: Dominating The Affiliate Marketing Landscape With Matt McWilliams

E43: Achieving Entrepreneurial Personal Development With Ivy LaClair and Blake Brandes

E44: How To Prevent Procrastination From Ruining Your Life With Timothy Pychyl

 

Review Of June 2017 Goals

#1: Make CMSS A Smashing Success—It was a legendary experience, so I say it was a smashing success.

#2: Get 50+ Speakers For PVS—I’m still working on accomplishing this goal by the end of June.

#3: Schedule Content Past August—I really need to get content scheduled over a long period of time. I have the content creation calendar but just need to produce the content.

#4: Complete All Training Course Videos—Mission accomplished. Part of the mission getting accomplished is due to the fact I learned I can drip out the videos. That way, I can offer a legendary training course and work on it as students enroll and watch what I’ve already shared.

#5: Add 20+ Videos To TSMD—This is something I’m still working on for June. Webinars will be huge for TSMD in the near future.

 

July 2017 Goals

#1: Have 10 Streams Of Income: These are the streams of income I am pursuing: Training courses*, TSMD*, Coaching*, Books, Virtual summits*, Affiliate marketing* (course promotions and recurring revenue), consultations, Optimize Press templates (based off what I’ve already made), Udemy, and SkillShare. The true goal is establishing a workflow that makes it possible for me to perform all of these tasks. I have put asterisks on what I anticipate will be my top sources of income. Basically, I want to have more revenue that I can pour into my business and into other investments.

#2: Hire 3 New Freelancers: Before I do that, I need to generate enough revenue to pay for the freelancers. I also need to create training videos that detail their tasks.

#3: Stop Over-Monitoring “Useless” Info: I started investing in stocks this month. Maybe this is because I’m a beginner, but I have been checking the stats of my picks every 15-30 minutes. I will address this issue in July. Here are some ideas: Check stocks at a designated time each day, make it easier to check all stocks at the same time, block my browser from Google (my preferred method of tracking stocks, but then I have limited options on the internet), and block the internet when I’m not using it.

#4: Conduct All 50+ Summit Interviews: By interviewing all of the PVS speakers in July, I have an entire month for contacting affiliates, web design, and other behind-the-scenes action from the summit. Plus, that puts much less stress on me as compared to finishing the final CMSS interviews with just a week to spare.

#5: Host Weekly Webinars: I’ll probably do a light sell at the end of each webinar but only allow TSMD members to access the replays. I don’t want to initiate too hard of a sell in these webinars because the focus is on providing value to TSMD members. I will experiment with using Facebook ads to promote the webinars.

#6: Recruit 100+ Affiliates: I will use Google to find most of my affiliates for the Productivity Virtual Summit. I want to make the Productivity Virtual Summit a massive success, and that means recruiting more affiliates.

In Conclusion

June was a very exciting month with my first virtual summit in the books. The second virtual summit will be much easier due to my experience.

I am excited about investing my money and building wealth.

May represents a month of clarity in which I learned how to effectively allocate my time to achieve the results I desire the most. To achieve those results, I’m going through drastic changes in my professional and personal life. This performance report will break down those changes and some of the big projects I am working on.

 

5 am or 6 am…

From this point forward, I will either wake up at 5 am or 6 am. Here’s the reasoning:

Now that summer has started, I like to read for an hour upon waking up.

I also need to run in the morning because, since it’s summertime, it gets HOT really fast. I prefer running early in the morning.

I listened to The Miracle Morning audiobook.

To compensate for waking up earlier, I’m sleeping earlier and incorporating an afternoon nap…because I’m less productive during that time anyway. Then I wake up with renewed willpower.

 

My New Stance On Blogging

I’ve seen an interesting trend in the blogging world. As bloggers get more established, more guest contributors write the content and the blog owner doesn’t write content as often. I see some blogs getting updated with new content every day even though the blog owner has written less than three blog posts the entire year (we’re in May).

I understand the logic behind this decision. Out of all forms of content, it takes more time to produce a blog post than any other form of content.

As a productivity hungry individual, I see this phenomena and know I need to change my ways to save more time. At the same time, you’ve all been very supportive of my journey, and the blog allowed me to create a big impact in so many people’s lives.

Here’s my new publishing schedule:

• Weekly podcast episodes
• Weekly YouTube videos
• Monthly performance report
• Monthly blog post
• Guest contributors provide at least two blog posts each month

I’m still providing an intense amount of free value, but I am doing it in a different way for the sake of saving time.

This additional time will go towards organizing more virtual summits, creating more training courses, and (finally) finishing another book.

 

Content Marketing Success Summit—A Few Weeks Out

It’s amazing how time caught up with my biggest project of the year. A little bit of me thought that somehow June 7th would never happen and we’d be in the world of June 6.1s and June 6.2s.

As some of you may know, I successfully got over 50 speakers for CMSS (first virtual summit for me). It’s possible that by the time it’s all said and done, I could have 60 speakers, but I am not applying additional effort to get the 60th speaker.

My focus on the summit are now…

• Communicating with speakers and affiliates
• Finishing training course videos
• Doing a few technology checks
• Setting it up to be a legendary experience for attendees

 

PVS Is Next

Uh, oh. Another acronym. What can this one possible stand for?

Productivity Virtual Summit (September 18th—25th)

I have already contacted and landed speakers for this summit. I am really early in the process because CMSS is still my main focus (I have registered a domain name though).

The goal for PVS is the same. Get over 50 highly sought productivity experts to share their insights to attendees.

The biggest difference I can see with the Productivity Virtual Summit and the Content Marketing Success Summit is that I’ll have a much larger affiliate army.

Here’s the thing with affiliates…I barely know how to find and recruit them. I also feel like I don’t have enough time (I know. Lame) and haven’t recruited a single affiliate on my own (unless you count speakers).

So how did I get dozens of affiliates for CMSS (not including speakers)?

My friend Matt McWilliams wrote a blog post, sent an email to his list, and tweeted a few times about my affiliate opportunity. You can see the post here.

This meant so much to me because Matt has connected me with countless individuals and opened the door to new opportunities that I couldn’t have achieved without knowing him. His efforts to get more affiliates for my virtual summit was a very humbling experience.

And I can’t possibly continue without thanking Tom Morkes for recruiting affiliates (in this case, speakers). He didn’t write a blog post, but he sent dozens of emails to people who he thought would be interested in speaking at CMSS.

I can’t thank those two and everyone involved in CMSS enough! I spent so much time putting the summit together, but I know that I don’t have a summit without the speakers saying yes and doing everything they can to spread the word.

So with that said, the Content Marketing Success Summit is going to be epic. My goal is to make the Productivity Virtual Summit epic-er.

 

Books I Read

Out of everything I did this month, I am by far the most proud of what I accomplished here. Reading the books I read significantly changed my mindset, and I feel a stronger bias towards action than ever before.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink

Tools Of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson

The Power To Get Things Done by Chris Cooper and Steve Levinson

Success Through A Positive Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone

Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

Stand Out by Dorie Clark

How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon

Marketing by Brian Tracy

Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard

Millionaire Success Habits by Dean Graziosi

The Way You Do Anything Is The Way You Do Everything by Suzanne Evans

Twitter Power by Joel Comm

The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success by Deepak Chopra

The Charge by Brendon Burchard

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

The Amazing Results Of Positive Thinking by Normal Vincent Peale

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

Sales Management by Brian Tracy

Become A Better You by Joel Osteen

Success Is A Choice by Rick Pitino

Do Cool Sh*t by Miki Agrawal

The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy

Reaching Your Potential by Normal Vincent Peale

Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina

80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall and Richard Koch

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi

Affiliate Program Management by Evgenii Prussakov

 

May’s Blog Posts

3 Strategies To Get Out Of Your Inbox Faster

7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners

 

May’s Podcast Episodes

Episode 38: How To Grow A 7-Figure Podcast With John Lee Dumas

Episode 39: Using Webinars To Generate A Massive Profit With Jon Schumacher

Episode 40: Igniting Your Motivation and Productivity With Trevor Oldham

 

Review Of May 2017 Goals

#1: Contact 50 potential sponsors—this did not happen. If I pursue sponsorships for my Productivity Virtual Summit, I will outsource the outreach to a trusted freelancer.

#2: Contact 50 potential affiliates—Matt McWilliams to the rescue (other than his help, I probably contacted three affiliates max)!

#3: Completely plan out the summit marketing—Done!

#4: Have blog posts and podcast episodes complete past June—Batching will get me there soon. I went all-in with the virtual summit and final exams competed with my time, attention, and energy as well.

#5: Confirm 10 speakers for my next summit—I’m making progress in this area already which is a big milestone.

#6: Read 15 books—I can now do that in a week.

#7: Identify a good coach—I have a coach in mind. I just have to decide how much I want to pay him. I will wait until CMSS concludes to see how my revenue looks after what is so far my biggest project of the year.

#8: Plan out a second podcast—I need to get thousands of daily downloads for Breakthrough Success before I start a second podcast. I don’t want to split my promotion time between two podcasts because I know that’s not a sustainable strategy. This is different from organizing two summits at the same time since the heavy weights from CMSS were taken care of by the time I started promoting PVS.

 

June 2017 Goals

#1: Make CMSS A Smashing Success—This is my most important goal for June. It will arguably be my most important goal of the year. This summit has the power to redefine my path and give me access to more opportunities than I can think of.

#2: Get 50+ Speakers For PVS—I want to conduct all of the PVS interviews in July, so while working on Content Marketing Success Summit related tasks, I will be gathering PVS speakers in the background.

#3: Schedule Content Past August—I will choose one day in the month to complete all videos and blog posts that would carry me past August. I would also have to reach out to potential podcast guests and contributors.

#4: Complete All Training Course Videos—Right now, that is a total of 77 videos, but I am sure that number will surpass 100 as I want to create superior training courses. Chances are I’ll batch them together for one day of the week and incorporate content dripping to give myself some extra time.

#5: Add 20+ Videos To TSMD—With all of the summit preparations, I have not given TSMD the attention that it deserves. My goal is to add over 20 videos to the portal because my members deserve them. My goal to make TSMD a superior social media membership site is still strong.

In Conclusion

All of my work for the past 4-5 months has led to my upcoming performance report. In that performance report, I will finally break down the Content Marketing Success Summit and the impact it has on my brand.

I also hope to talk about something other than virtual summits for the bulk of my performance report, but with PVS coming up next, there are no promises.

What are your thoughts on this performance report? Have any questions? Sound off in the comments section below.

April has been an exciting month of knowledge acquisition and summit progress. There are many moving parts with my summit which I’ll discuss in this performance report.

 

50+ Speakers Confirmed For CMSS

Back in February, I set the goal to get 50+ speakers. People I knew suggested I only set the target for 30+ speakers as this is the first summit I am organizing.

I am happy to say that I have 50+ confirmed speakers for CMSS.

With the speakers confirmed (of course, I will not close the doors, but I am not as actively searching), I can now advance to affiliate recruitment and sponsorship proposals.

The goal is to get 50+ affiliates for my summit and many sponsors as well. The best tactic working for me is having speakers and affiliates refer other affiliates for a commission.

 

My Next Summit

I know that CMSS will be a very successful summit. While I am still focusing about 80% of my time towards this summit, I am in the beginning stages of planning out my next summit. I am anticipating a September summit focusing on mindset and productivity hacks.

Just like CMSS, I will get 50+ speakers for this summit. Unlike CMSS, I will have more knowledge, the summer, and the freelancers who help me make CMSS a success to make the prep work easier.

I see myself getting hundreds of thousands of email subscribers by organizing successful virtual summits. Virtual summits are a lot of fun as you get to interact with top influencers, build your audience, and make revenue at the same time.

 

The Unveiling

As CMSS has been the main focus for the past three months, I’m giving it special attention in this month’s performance report. There’s a little more than 30 days before we get started with the sessions, so I thought now would be a good time to drop the curtain.

If you want a head-start to registering for the summit, you can head over to the CMSS site.

It took a while to optimize the landing page, create the sales pages, email sequences, and everything else associated with the summit. I will share a video with all CMSS attendees detailing how I put the entire summit together. I honestly can’t remember most of what I did to reach this point because there’s still so much left, but I’ll recollect everything for that video.

 

Books I Read

 

No Excuses by Brian Tracy

The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley

High Hanging Fruit by Mark Rampolla

Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini

Be Obsessed Or Be Average by Grant Cardone

Habit Stacking (2017 Edition) by Steve Scott

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

 

I Don’t Make Excuses, But…

March and April have been two trying months for me. They’ve been that way for different reasons. I didn’t tell anyone (except family and friends who knew) unless the issue at hand involved a scheduling conflict.

My theory is that I’ll ramble on about the excuse and somehow legitimize my inefficiency. The moment you try to rationalize a lack of work or a poor result through any means, you are setting yourself up for failure. Stop rationalizing why you didn’t act and start acting. I always underplay any painful moments I experience in my life so these events don’t consume my every day thinking.

I will make a rare exception to show you what is possible if you don’t make any excuses.

On April 28th, I was a speaker at the first annual Small Business Symposium held in Connecticut. The attendees loved it and asked me many questions at the end. I co-presented with my brother (he did the first half), and we both enjoyed ourselves. We both presented on SEO and I chose to tackle the blogging side of things.

Here’s the part of the story you don’t know about. The day before, I got very sick and threw up a few times early in the morning. I would get a headache if I stared at my computer screen too long, so I didn’t have the day before to look over my presentation (a crisis for the typical college student. While I am an entrepreneur, I still go to college and am well versed with completing homework the night before). This was the final of a series of illnesses that I had battled for the past two weeks.

Why do I bring up this struggle?

I still crushed my presentation. Up until the presentation, I had virtually no energy (my networking game leading up to the presentation was nonexistent). It didn’t matter how much energy I had for the rest of the event. I knew that I only needed to tap into my remaining energy for the time that I was presenting.

And I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t go slower than usual and ask for sympathy because I threw up on the day before. I didn’t look for shortcuts.

Even if your excuse seems insurmountable, it’s only as insurmountable as you make it. While some would say bravo, I wish I did a little more. I wish that I listened to an audiobook while throwing up. That way I could have attached a sense of productivity to my pain.

That speech went well because I didn’t mentally go easy on myself even though I threw up the day before. When it comes to me serving my audience, a mess up is a mess up, regardless of the context.

 

Review Of April 2017 Goals

#1: Contact 150 Potential Speakers—this was not necessary as I just wanted 50+ speakers. Since I had a good number of speakers going into April, most of my remaining speakers came through referrals.

#2: Contact 50 Potential Summit Sponsors—I didn’t contact a single sponsor.

#3: Master The Intricacies Of CMSS—OH YES, but there’s still more to do.

#4: Have blog content scheduled past May—I barely have content scheduled in May right now. I am going to post 1-2 blog posts per week because I need the time for the summit and promotion.

#5: Make CMSS easier—it’s easier, but there’s still much to be done.

 

May 2017 Goals

#1: Contact 50 potential sponsors—the initial revenue from sponsors will help me pay for expenses which will get significantly higher as the summit comes close (June 7th is the start date). You can contact me marc@marcguberti.com if you are interested in being a sponsor for CMSS.

#2: Contact 50 potential affiliates—the more affiliates I have behind my summit, the more reach my summit will achieve. My speakers and affiliates have done a great job at referring other affiliates, and I am in the midst of directly contacting successful affiliates. I currently look at affiliate competitions and my current audience (people like you) to recruit affiliates for my summit.

#3: Completely plan out the summit marketing—I am so excited about so many things about the summit. The way I market this summit will be one of my favorite parts. I have some colossal marketing strategies for my summit that I haven’t seen ANY summit owner do (and I had to do a lot of research on summits to learn how to run a summit). My only hint is that it doesn’t start on June 7th. The best way to figure out my colossal marketing strategy is to join my summit and see how I market it.

#4: Have blog posts and podcast episodes complete past June—With the new publishing schedule of 1 new blog post and 1 new podcast episode per week, this goal is very possible. I’ll take a page from John Lee Dumas’ frame of thought and do all of the blog post related videos in one day and send them to Rev. I still need to figure out when I’ll do podcast interviews without conflicting with CMSS interviews.

#5: Confirm 10 speakers for my next summit—This would be a true cherry on top. The next summit will likely focus on productivity and goal achievement. Interviews will be closer to the 30 minute side as this makes it possible for me to interview more people quicker (while getting some great insights). I need to get these interviews done over the summer because I currently don’t know my college schedule for the fall semester. If I go this route, I’d do it VERY slowly and gradually so I don’t forget important elements for CMSS.

#6: Read 15 books—I am more likely to realize this goal in June since school and CMSS interviews will conclude in May. However, I’ll have significantly more time to read books after the first week of May. I have already bought five books on eBay (Amazon doesn’t take PayPal which is my preferred method) in preparation for reading 15 books this month.

#7: Identify a good coach—In No Excuses, Brian Tracy talked about the importance of spending a percentage of your earnings on expanding your education. I am anticipating a significant increase in revenue from my summit, and with that, I will have to spend more of it to expand my education. I will hire a coach to keep me accountable in a specific area and help me grow faster. The area I focus on is to be determined. Depending on how well my summit performs, I may hire two coaches.

#8: Plan out a second podcast—The Breakthrough Success Podcast is here to stay, but it’s getting a new friend. I am following an approach of a weekly interview on my current podcast combined with a new podcast filled with daily soundbites where I share some of my insights. I have no set release date.

 

In Conclusion

The trend for several performance reports remains potent in this one: the summit has taken up a priority of my time. Now I finally get to see the reward from my hard work (yay!)

My first summit will give me the firepower I need to propel my brand even further. I can pay for the top coaches and expand my business even more. For a long time, I thought I could do everything myself. I am increasingly learning that this is not the case.

It’s why I hire people to edit my videos, find great pictures for my content, manage my social media accounts, and more. I will be hiring more people very soon, but I am at the stage where I need to hire coaches to help me grow beyond what I can do alone.

What are your thoughts on this performance report? Have any questions? What are you working on? Sound off in the comments section below.

I don’t know why, but for my latest performance reports, the start of the month seems slow and then I speed up at the end of the month. This performance report was no exception.

I believe it’s because the approaching deadline for my next performance report makes me put in more work. That way, my performance report looks much better when I finally write it. It’s like how a lot of people begin pursuing their New Year’s resolutions in November.

Anyway, here’s my performance report:

 

CMSS

My Content Marketing Success Summit is my primary project from now until the All-Access Pass cart closes. Organizing a summit is a lot of work, and my feelings about the summit change day by day. I’ll go from, “I love this summit,” to “This summit is unbearable!”

If I didn’t set a deadline and a target, I probably wouldn’t be doing the summit. But I set those two things so the fun continues.

The goal is to get over 50 speakers for the summit. Right now I have a little over 20 committed speakers and a little over 10 potential speakers who are interested. I’ve interviewed seven of those speakers already which means I’ve got at least 43 interviews to go.

To get some inspiration and learn at the same time, I watched the video of a conversation between Chandler Bolt and Navid Moazzez.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcAPNmLE9Vw

They talked about Chandler’s summit which got him an extra 30,000 subscribers and over $300,000 in revenue. When I set a target for the number of speakers, I intended on surpassing the number of speakers Chandler had for his summit (it was either 47 or 48).

Here are some important things I got from the video. If you want to organize your own summit, these points are important for you:

Chandler carved out two weeks of his calendar to interview almost every speaker

He only had about two months of preparation

As you get more speakers on your summit, you can use those speakers’ credibility to land more speakers

The hardest part is setting up the autoresponder, getting the landing page to convert well, and basically everything that you have to do about two weeks before the summit

Summits are so much work, but they are so worth it when you’re finished and get to look at the results.

 

Nashville

My mom got a speaking engagement at Tennessee and my brother and I got to go with her. We arrived at Tennessee early enough to do some sightseeing. We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and other fun places.

This trip was great for me because it allowed me to connect with music in a new way. If you saw my YouTube video on my New Year’s resolutions, you’ll know that music was an important one for me. I’ve played the piano almost every day since getting home from Nashville. I might start playing the guitar soon.

And for anyone wondering, my mom CRUSHED her speaking engagement. It was fun to watch.

 

ECA360

My mom got another speaking engagement at ECA360, an event for fitness and health lovers. She helped my brother get a speaking engagement at the event as well. He talked about mastering social media and Facebook advertising for fitness and health businesses (by the way, he’ll also be speaking at CMSS).

She would have gotten me a speaking engagement, but my athletic schedule is the dominant schedule (I have no complaints about that. I enjoy running and being with my teammates). It turns out I got some free time, but I learned this too late for the event organizer to squeeze in a session for me.

The result was that my brother would talk for about an hour and 15 minutes and then have me talk about something else for a solid 15 minutes. I am very grateful he gave me that window of opportunity, and I spoke to the best of my ability:

In the end, my brother and I got swarmed by the attendees. It was a very exciting time.

 

Ray Edwards’ Affiliate Competition

Ray is the copywriting grandmaster I told people about for the first three weeks of March. He’s a guy I continue promoting because his information is life-changing (this isn’t leading into a pitch. The March promotion is over).

This was by far my most successful launch, and I surprisingly placed 11th in his affiliate competition. Usually I hover at the backend of the Top 30, so this was a big jump for me. It turns out I just missed an affiliate mastermind (including a free hotel room at a resort) but 1/5th of a sale, but I’m not mad about it.

First, I don’t know when the mastermind will be, and my schedule is tight. If the mastermind got scheduled for October, it would have been difficult for me to go because that’s when championship meets start. At the same time, the Top 10 was such a strong cast (some of them were my role models), that it would have been extremely difficult to say no to the affiliate mastermind. I convinced myself that this is for the best.

But that didn’t stop me from thinking, “How can I get Top 10 for the next competition?”

One of the beauties of life is that we don’t excel when everything goes our way. We dramatically boost our performance when big setbacks arise.

I didn’t think, “This is such an unfair world. I should have gotten in the Top 10!” Competition is competition, and sometimes there are very tough losses. For instance, Michael Phelps won his 7th gold medal by a finger tip (0.01 seconds to be exact). While this further cements Phelps’ legacy as a swimmer, what about that guy who finished in second place (Milorad Cavic for anyone wondering)?

0.01 is much closer than 0.20.

Here’s how I’ll rank better for future affiliate competitions (and get more prizes)…

 

More Summits

My upcoming Content Marketing Success Summit will NOT be the only summit I run in 2017. That I have already decided. What I haven’t decided on is how many summits I’ll run after CMSS. The truth of the matter is that after June, there are only seven months left in 2017.

And with vacations included, I really just have six months left. I will organize 1-2 summits from the end date of CMSS to the end of the year. While I haven’t stuck with all of my New Year’s resolutions, I am adamant about surpassing 100,000 email subscribers by the end of 2017. Hosting multiple summits is currently the best way I know of achieving this milestone.

The larger audience I’ll have as a result of summits will help me in future affiliate competition. I’m not growing an audience to win affiliate competitions, but I won’t deny that a bigger audience will help me in that area.

 

My LinkedIn Profile Got A Massive Facelift

My LinkedIn profile is probably my one piece of digital property that I forgot about more than anything else. It shocked me when, just last week, I saw that my Yugioh Philosophy Blog was listed as my website. While I did create that blog, I rebranded several years ago.

I went to work updating my profile and had a mentor review it (this individual will also speak at CMSS). Here I was thinking my new LinkedIn profile was a work of art, but my mentor smashed it and let me have it. He wrote a long email discussing what was wrong with my LinkedIn profile while saying some of the things I did right.

I love receiving this type of criticism because it helps me grow. My mentor isn’t one of those guys with a chip on his shoulder. He’s helping me improve my LinkedIn profile. As of this performance report, I haven’t made the updates yet, but I will in the near future.

 

My Blog Got A Facelift Too*

For a few days, my blog became the hub for all of the world’s viagra related needs. Take a look at what I offered on one of my landing pages:

Maybe you didn’t know that the money is in your email list. But hey, now you know viagra prices in Germany. Oh, and more blog subscribers means more viagra so be careful what you wish for 🙂

My site got hacked by people in Italy and Romania. Now they’re fixed so if you want viagra advice, this is no longer the right blog for you 🙂

 

Books I Read

Relentless by Tim Grover

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg

The Power Of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Do You Talk Funny? by David Nihill

Switch by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday

Most people would be happy with six. I’m more focused on the fact I didn’t read four (part of this attitude comes from Relentless).

 

March’s Blog Posts

How To Surge Your Blog Traffic

7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

10 Ways To Get More Video Views

How To Write 10,000 Words In Less Than 12 Hours

 

March’s Podcast Episodes

Episode 31: How To Master The Mindset And Tactics Of All Successful Salespeople With Anthony Iannarino

Episode 32: A Deep Dive Into Copywriting With Ray Edwards

Episode 33: Exploring The Billionaire Mindset With Preston Pysh

Episode 34: Kim Garst Unleashes Mind Boggling Live Video Insights

Episode 35: How To Persevere Against Any Obstacle With Lance Allred

I got to talk with a lot of great people this month. However, I am toning back to 1 episode per week due to my upcoming summit.

 

Review Of March 2017 Goals

#1: Host #CMSChat—this did not happen. I will pursue this in April or May but definitely before the summit starts. However, the odds of me getting this hashtag to trend on Twitter are dramatically shifting in my favor. Just last week, there was a day when only one political topic trended on Twitter…so I’m liking my chances!

#2: Interview 20+ People For CMSS—I interviewed seven people but have over 20 confirmed times and dates. I am happy with my progress in this area, especially when I heard that Chandler interviewed everyone within two weeks.

#3: Contact 100+ Potential Speakers—I originally thought I had easily contacted over 100 speakers, but just for my readers, I decided to take a break from writing and check my inbox. It turns out I only contacted 65 potential speakers for CMSS. The conversion rate (likelihood of a potential speaker committing) is much lower than the conversion rate for a podcast due to the promotional aspect of a summit.

 

April 2017 Goals

#1: Contact 150 Potential Speakers—a bigger goal will result in a greater output. I need to get those final speakers committed by the end of April.

#2: Contact 50 Potential Summit Sponsors—I won’t start contacting sponsors until I feel more confident about getting 50 speakers committed for the summit. The other important thing about confirming the speakers is that I can then start contacting potential affiliates.

#3: Master The Intricacies Of CMSS—This basically means creating an affiliate program, setting up the autoresponder, and perfecting the website

#4: Have blog content scheduled past May—this is possible with my new publishing strategy. I do a video, turn the video into a transcript with Rev, and publish the edited transcript on my blog. I haven’t tried this method for any of my blog posts yet, but I will in the near future. Also, I only plan on publishing 1 blog post per week due to the nature of my larger projects.

#5: Make CMSS easier—The summit takes up a large portion of my time, attention, and energy. While I am confident that this summit will positively change the trajectory of my brand, I wish I had more time to pursue other things. This is why I will look into ways to reduce my workload. Looking for my ways to reduce the CMSS workload while getting great results will make it easier for me to host multiple summits in 2017 and beyond.

 

In Conclusion

Most of my work in March had no immediate impact on my business. The same will be true for April and May. June is where I get to see all of my efforts pay off.

I need a bigger team of freelancers. That I know for sure. It’s time for me to expand.

What are your thoughts on this performance report? Have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

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

How To Invent Your Best Self

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.

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!