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How To Delegate More Tasks To Freelancers

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One of the secret ingredients to success is to effectively delegate tasks within your brand. The moment you realize you can’t do everything alone (and do something about it) is when you’ll move forward at a faster pace that ever before.

However, delegation isn’t easy. It’s a skill you can master, but hiring people for the sake of hiring people won’t work. You also have to repeatedly revisit your budget, revenue, and expenses because a few bad mistakes can force you to fire really good freelancers.

That’s the last thing you want to do on the delegation journey.

To avoid that pitfall and continue to expand via delegation, utilize these insights.

 

Ask Yourself If These Are The Right Tasks

Identifying tasks you’d like to delegate is the easy part. Write a list of what you have to do but don’t want to do. That’s your list of tasks to delegate.

However, when you’re just starting out, you need to strategically choose what you delegate so you don’t go into debt and find yourself making hard decisions.

When you start out, delegate the tasks that take up the majority of your time. That way, you have more time to think strategically and plan out the direction of your business.

That’s an important point many people overlook.

While you’ll have to be in your business on a certain period of time, you must focus more of your time on your business. That means taking an aerial view and looking at the entire layout of your land (all current and potential endeavors).

You’ll learn a lot about the actions you need to take to move your brand forward. Knowing where to exert your time and then exerting your time in that area will allow you to achieve better results.

Ask Yourself If These Are The Right Freelancers

If you outsource the right task but delegate it to the wrong person, you’ll lose more time than what you would actually gain. Every hire must get micromanaged for the first week to ensure you and your new hire are on the same page, but you’ll never get on the same page as a low value freelancer. You might get on the same page of a different book with lower standards, but you’ll find yourself spending too much time making sure the freelancer is doing the assigned work and constantly correcting mistakes.

You need to make sure you hire the right freelancer or else your delegation efforts will be meaningless.

The more freelancers you hire, the better you’ll get at hiring the right freelancers. However, I’ll provide some pointers beforehand:

  1. Ask each applicant to describe his/her personality. Look for the kind curious learners.

  2. Ask each applicant to explain why they want to work for you. Look for the people who took the 5-10 minutes to do some research and meaningfully explain why your brand’s mission attracts them.

  3. Look at the skill set. Make sure you hire a freelancer with the right skills for the part. This seems simple but it’s also a common mistake people make. Finding freelancers with additional skills based on the other tasks you want to delegate is a plus. If you like that freelancer, you can easily give him/her more money.

4, BONUS: When you hire great people, ask those great people for suggestions when you want to hire more people. Great freelancers tend to know other great freelancers who would be a great fit for your brand.

 

Pay Attention To Your Budget

Paying attention to your budget is big. If you hire many freelancers, your expenses will significantly climb upward. You must now make additional revenue to pay for your growing team.

To avoid problems, you must set limitations based on your current revenue streams and expenses. If you make $5,000/mo, don’t spend $5,000/mo on freelancers. Start closer to $500/mo and set a ceiling towards $3,000/mo.

Of course, everyone’s financial situation is different, but you must set a costs ceiling that expands and shrinks in relation to the changes in your revenue.

Once you set your budget, commit yourself to maintaining that budget. Until you expand your budget by expanding your revenue, you may have to say no to quality freelancers.

Understand this going in and use this fact as motivation to generate more revenue.

 

Time Or Revenue?

When you hire a freelancer, you either do so to save time or generate more revenue than you would have without that freelancer.

I recommend you start by saving more time so you can have more time to think. Having more time to think will speed you on the path to success.

Once you have enough time to think, you’ll better understand how you can hire freelancers that directly result in additional revenue.

 

Utilize Your Extra Time Wisely

This is the most important thing to know when hiring freelancers. Your freelancers are depending on you for their income. That makes firing people so hard (it’s also a good reason to hire the right people to decrease the amount of those decisions you have to make).

If you have no plan to generate additional revenue and then can’t pay your freelancers, you are letting down that freelancer and his/her entire family. Some freelancers need that money to pay for their rent. Others are saving up for expensive college tuition.

Delegation doesn’t mean more time for you to kick back. On the contrary, delegation means you must kick things up a few gears because you’ve got people depending on your for their livelihoods and goals.

If you won’t put in the work to generate more revenue, don’t bother hiring freelancers. That’s sabotage.

 

In Conclusion

Delegating tasks to trustworthy freelancers will allow your rapidly expand your business.

However, you can positively impact the lives of your freelancers by giving them work and the financial security they need to feel happier.

You’ll also positively impact the lives of your audience as you can create a more legendary experience through your content.

What are your thoughts on delegating your tasks? Have any tips for hiring the right freelancers and expanding your brand? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Tasks Every Blogger Should Be Outsourcing

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I have a team of freelancers who make my brand’s expansion possible. Some of their work directly aligns with expansions while others remove tasks from my shoulders. During that extra time outsourcing gives me, I get to expand my brand.

As my virtual summit came closer, I thought hard about what I currently outsource and what I need to outsource. I knew the virtual summit would open up more revenue, so I wanted to discover how I would utilize that revenue.

Outsourcing is a necessity for every business person. You can’t succeed without a team. I know you might hear the story of the rare lone wolf, but that same lone wolf would perform so much more efficiently and effectively with a team.

With that said, these are the five tasks that every blogger should be outsourcing:

#1: Social Media Management (√) 

This was THE first task I outsourced. I outsourced my Pinterest growth to a freelancer who grew my Pinterest account from 22,000 followers to 42,000 followers. I outsource my Twitter growth to this day.

If you continue to grow and maintain all of your social networks, you’ll have virtually no time to tackle the other business necessities. Big projects like hosting a virtual summit are out of the question.

If I didn’t outsource this one task, I wouldn’t have had enough time to interview the 50+ CMSS speakers.

 

#2: Email Responses (X)

Out of all of the tasks I want to outsource, email responses are the #1 task that I want to outsource. I routinely responded to 20-30 emails every day, and that number is only growing. If I am stuck in my inbox, I’m not creating new content, reading a book, or working on my next product.

Although I don’t do it with malice, I haven’t responded to many emails for several weeks due to the extra inbox traffic.

The inbox is important, but at the same time, it’s a trap.

When I contacted speakers for my virtual summit, many of them directed me to their virtual assistants. For one of the speakers, the VA and I sent each other over a dozen emails. That was over a dozen emails that this speaker didn’t have to read and respond to.

Now think of that on a large scale. I know some people don’t like the idea of having a gatekeeper of your own because gatekeepers seem annoying from the other end…especially in the beginning stages of building a brand.

However, hiring a VA to handle your emails gives you more time to do the things that people know you for.

For anyone wondering, Yaro Starak opened my eyes to this great concept with his blog post detailing how he hasn’t handled his inbox in 12 years (!)

#3: Polishing The Content (√)

Whether you write blog posts, create videos, or publish podcast episodes, you need to polish up that content. Right now, I have one content editor, one podcast editor, and two video editors.

They polish up my content so it comes out superb. At the same time, I don’t have the time to polish all of the content that I create.

For instance, every CMSS session was anywhere from 30-60 minutes long. With 50+ speakers, that adds up to a total of 25-50 hours of content.

If I had to edit all of those videos to get rid of clicks and other background noise, I would have been a goner (or only had 10 speakers for that virtual summit).

I had two video editors working on that virtual summit, and they’ll be back for future summits as well.

But polishing your content isn’t just an issue of time, but for some people, also an issue of frustration. While some people enjoy editing their blog posts, videos, and podcast episodes, I absolutely dread the process. I even dread scheduling my content. That’s how bad I am with the things that happen outside of content creation.

Instead of coping with this issue, I have outsourced it. In my ideal life, I enjoy every second of every day, and even if I’m only not enjoying one minute (the time it takes to schedule a piece of content), I’m not living my ideal life.

Outsourcing this task simply gives me more time to write the content without feeling that “Ugh” feeling of having to proofread and edit it all.

#4: Outreach (X)

For my first virtual summit, I manually did research and contacted hundreds of potential speakers. While I learned a lot about the process, it took up a large amount of my time.

The goal for future virtual summits is to outsource the outreach…especially the affiliate recruitment.

I didn’t recruit a single affiliate for the Content Marketing Success Summit. All I did was get the speakers. I got lucky because Matt McWilliams promoted my affiliate program to his audience (he’s a JV legend, but with that said, I believe that the harder you work, the luckier you get).

While Matt greatly helped me with the Content Marketing Success Summit, I want my own method for recruiting affiliates. I’m outsourcing someone for that.

#5: Advertising (X)

If you don’t know advertising, you can either learn it or have someone else do it for you. I’m a fan of the latter because advertising platforms constantly change, and you need to choose your priorities carefully.

With that said, you need to be careful with who you hire for your ad spend. If you go down this route, chances are you have hundreds if not thousands of dollars you’re willing to spend. You want the freelancer who will give you $1 targeted conversions, not the one who will give you $10  targeted conversions.

Go with the best freelancer even if that means taking a big hit in your wallet. The best freelancer will virtually pay for himself/herself because of the advertising profits you generate.

Before hiring someone to handle your advertising, make sure your landing page converts well and has an autoresponder that converts very well. All of the $1 targeted conversions in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t get them to buy…in fact, it would do more harm than good because of the ad spend.

In Conclusion

Outsourcing your tasks is critical for your growth as a blogger and entrepreneur. Make a commitment to outsource these tasks now. Does it cost money? Yes it does. You might be spending thousands of dollars every month to keep your freelancer army going.

But what you spend in money you make up with time. Money is a renewable resource. Want more of it? Just work smarter, apply more effort, and do a product launch. Want more time? Tough luck.

What are your thoughts on this list? Do you know of any other tasks we should be outsourcing? Sound off in the comments section below.

Case Study: How To Read 30 Books In 30 Days

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readAfter my first year of college, I decided to do something different over the summer—read a lot of books.

I used a portion of my Monthly Performance Reports to put my reading lists on full display. While I normally read 5-10 books in a given month, the summer days allowed that reading list to morph into 30 books every month.

I didn’t take time off from my business during this time. In fact, I dramatically increased the amount of books I read while preparing to lead a Content Marketing Success Summit, one of the biggest projects of my life up to that point.

In this blog post, I’ll share my story so you can reap the benefits of reading 30 books every month without feeling overwhelmed by work, your personal life, or anything else.

#1: Have The Books On Hand

Before I began my 30-book per month reading journey, I knew I needed to have all of the books readily accessible. So, to put it bluntly, I went on a bargain buying spree.

I knew that by the time I finished reading any given book it would be filled with notes and underlines, so I didn’t mind buying used books (as long as they didn’t have any underlining or highlighting included).

My adventure began on eBay where some people are desperate to part ways with their books. Because the bulk lots included anywhere from 10-20 books per order, I bought books at a rate from $1 to $4 per book depending on who was selling them.

And all of these books were LEGIT, not aged books that are no longer relevant. In fact, I published several books before social media taught me the marketing tactics that work today (often overlooked in the new age of digital marketing).

If you prefer to read books on a device, you’re all set. You can buy all of your books in a few clicks. I prefer reading paperback editions, which is why I decided to purchase books in bulk on eBay.

Buy in bulk

The only problem with book lots is that you don’t get to choose the books on offer; I have multiple copies of the same books because they were a part of a bulk order.

But eventually I learned about Thrift Books, which help you avoid that problem as well as enjoy a wider range of choices and ridiculous bargains.

You may think it’s not worth going through the trouble to find book bargains, but if you want to read 30 books per month, that’s 360 books every year.

In a worst case scenario, saving an average of $10 per book (very possible with book lots and Thrift Books) results in a savings of $3,600 every year!

Don’t Read Word-For-Word

Once you have assembled all of your books, it’s time to read them. But don’t read them in the traditional word-for-word style. Sure, you’ll absorb all of the material if you do, but it will take a longer period of time before you move onto the next book.

When I read books, I skim through them for the most pertinent information. If there’s a section that explains how to create a Twitter account, for example, I skip it because I already have a Twitter account. There’s no need to waste time reading things that you already know.

Similarly, when I buy a productivity book I skip through familiar tips like setting deadlines, 3-Year Plans, and how to set SMART goals. Unless the author shares these common tactics with a very different flavor, I skip to the next part of the book.

Skip Entire Chapters

Not only should you skip over things you already know, you should also get into the habit of skipping portions, or even chapters, of books containing information you don’t want to learn. For instance, I don’t want to learn much about Vine because Vine is a dead social network.

And yet, many of these books have entire chapters dedicated to Vine. Some books are dedicated entirely to the social network. Just remember that information that was once relevant may be outdated today.

You can also skip chapters outlining tasks you don’t want to perform. For instance, I’ll skip a chapter in a podcasting book about editing episodes because I already have a trustworthy freelancer who edits my podcast episodes.

Skipping that chapter allows me to move to the next chapter sooner and, ultimately, to a new book.

Write In Your Book

For a long time I resisted writing in my books, especially signed copies. While I rarely write in books, I often underline with a pencil.

Underlining important points in each of your books makes the re-reading process easier. After all, you have a plan to re-read the best books, right?

At the beginning of each month, I go through my favorite books from the previous month. I skim through what I underlined, and brainstorm ideas. I commit a few hours of one day to this task.

Underlining important text makes this process much faster as I can literally skip hundreds of pages of content. I only focus on what I’d underlined previously because my past self regarded only those points as important.

A Technicality On Book Length

One thing to remember when reading 30 books in 30 days is that book length matters. It’s much easier to read 30 books that average 200 pages than to read 30 books that average 600 pages.

When dozens of books are delivered to me in one day, I start by reading the shorter books first. It’s likely a good thing that I read Tools Of Titans before I began taking my reading goal seriously.

I like reading the shorter books first because finishing a shorter book gives me the dopamine rush to start reading (and finishing) another book.

Get a string of small wins, and it won’t be long before you can read the occasional 400-600 page book with ease.

It It’s Not Scheduled, It Won’t Happen

If you want reading to become a habit, you must schedule it into your day. I schedule at least one hour of reading time every day.

You should also choose one day a week to dedicate entirely to reading books, no professional work. I designate Fridays as my reading days. And even though I spend several hours reading books on Fridays, it doesn’t feel rigorous. Why? Because Fridays feel like a day off from work.

It’s important to find what works for you, but don’t forget that if it’s not scheduled, it won’t happen.

Turn Your TV And Surfing Time Into Reading Time

Professional work can take up hours of your day, but so can TV and internet surfing. You need to eliminate digital surfing from your life because you’re simply watching life happen instead of making life happen. Spectators watch, superstars perform.

The average American watches 32 hours of television every week. If we all switched from digital surfing to reading self-development books, the world would truly be a better place.

The next time you want to watch a marathon, the last episode of a series, or reruns, crack open a book instead. Repeat the process with other bad habits, and with greater intensity, and you’ll have no problem reading 30 books in 30 days.

In Conclusion

Reading 30 books every 30 days will dramatically expand your knowledge and open the door to a variety of possibilities. Reading all of these books requires a mindset shift and the elimination of bad habits. And, of course, the 30+ books you’ll need on hand before you get started.

What are your thoughts on reading 30 books every day? Have any good book recommendations for us? Please share how you plan to implement this habit into your own life. Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Stay Organized On Your Computer

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Computers have transformed the way we work and have allowed us to reach new levels of productivity.

However, extreme usage (and in some cases reliance) on computers can actually HURT our productivity.

In fact, we cause most of the technical headaches. Saving numerous documents and photos eventually slows down a computer, a problem that can only be solved with a massive clean up or a new computer.

Another problem is the actual creation of documents, making it a struggle to find information in a timely manner.

Part of the reason we buy a computer in the first place is to create documents and save photos. So if we try to care for our computers by not creating documents or saving pictures, its primary purpose is essentially lost.

But we must also consider the ways in which many of us organize our work and documents — all stuffed into one folder.  When, if fact, organization has been proven to boost productivity.

It’s easy to think that organization is limited to your desk space and the room you work in. But it goes much further than that, beginning with your computer.

Here’s how you keep all of your emails and other important stuff organized on your computer.

#1: Reduce Clutter

The more cluttered your computer, the more difficult it is to find the document you are looking for, which shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.

Our attention spans resemble that of a goldfish, and when the internet (and Facebook) is just a click away, a day meant for work can quickly turn into meaningless hours of surfing the web.

I use the size of the icons on my computer’s dashboard to determine if I have too much clutter. If I must squint or move closer to see what certain documents are, I have too much clutter.

If my desktop is filled with too many pictures, documents, etc., I have too much clutter. Reducing the clutter reduces distractions.

A picture is worth 1,000 words, and a thousand more distractions.

#2: Use Folders To Group Documents

This is probably the best tip. I can’t emphasize this one enough.

When you save things to your desktop, you will see them each time you log onto your computer. This is when it’s easy to get distracted by screenshots and similar items saved to your desktop.

To avoid this, I group all of my screenshots into folders.

If I didn’t use these folders, my entire desktop screen would be filled with screenshots galore.

This isn’t just a way to keep your desktop clean, you can also group together important documents according to theme, client, work type, etc., to stay organized.

One of my folders, for example, is titled “Podcast.” Within that folder are the seven documents I use to keep my podcast organized.

Instead of keeping all of them on my dock (and having super tiny app sizes), I put them all in one folder on my desktop.

That not only saves me space, it also makes it easier to find all of the other documents I need.

And when I need those podcast documents, they are all in one place and super easy to find.

#3: Flag Important Emails

When you get emails that you can’t respond to immediately, or need to refer to again later, flag them. That way, you can find them more easily later on.

The only problem with flagging emails is that if it becomes too much of a habit, you’ll have an inbox overload. Try to relegate them to emails you need to respond to, and be sure you do it within a reasonable amount of time.

I recommend spending 30-60 minutes in your inbox at the time of day when you usually feel least productive.

For example, I never go through my inbox in the morning because that’s when I am at my peak level of productivity. When I do happen to see an important email in the morning, I flag it.

I always make a point of checking my email in the afternoon, just before I take a break. I respond to all of the flagged messages before checking my inbox for new messages.

#4: Make Each Flag Mean Something

When I decided to start a podcast, I needed guests.

Barely knowing what I was doing, I sent a bunch of emails to people who would be a great fit for my podcast. Naturally as more people agreed to participate, I became more excited about podcasting.

But I quickly lost control of my inbox.

Which guests were awaiting confirmation of time and dates? Which guests needed the initial questionnaire? Who did I need to follow-up with?

My mind was dreaming of the possibilities but running in circles trying to keep everything organized. Then I figured out what to do:

I started assigning a meaning to each flag.

  • When I receive a guest confirmation, I assign that email an orange flag.
  • Once time and date are determined, I change the flag to blue.
  • After the questions are submitted, I make the flag purple.

Once the podcast episode ends, I remove the flag and add the guest’s email address to a custom spreadsheet.

I also share a link to the episode with the guest and make a mental note to stay in touch (the relationship doesn’t end when the episode is over or even weeks after it’s published. It never ends).

#5: Put Everything Else In A Miscellaneous Document

You may have noticed the Misc folder on my desktop screenshot.

If there’s a screenshot, document or download that doesn’t belong anywhere else, that’s the folder it goes into.

That folder has hundreds of screenshots and pictures that would otherwise take up my computer’s entire dashboard, leaving it an unorganized mess!

In Conclusion

The traditional definition of getting organized involves having a neat workspace and working in a clean room.

But if your computer is unorganized, you might as well be working in a room filled with clutter with piles of paperwork covering your entire desk.

The worst part about an unorganized computer is that it’s extremely easy to get distracted – our computers provide us with virtually infinite options.

Any website is a click away. Pictures on our dashboards can distract us at a moment’s notice. And important emails can easily get lost in the shuffle.

But all of that is more likely to happen if your computer remains unorganized.

How do you organize your computer? Have any tips or stories for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Play More Offense For Your Business

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The more offense you play for your business, the more successful you will become. All of the top entrepreneurs dedicate a portion of their time each day to play offense.

Playing offense does not mean writing the next blog post. It doesn’t mean engaging with your audience, creating videos, or doing anything else associated with being in your business.

Playing more offense involves you taking an aerial view of your entire business and asking yourself important questions. Is this working? What should I be focusing on? What small changes can I make that would yield dramatic results? How do I grow this?

This offense results in more directed action with a clearer path to victory. Instead of constantly creating content and marketing yourself, you now have more specific aims that you believe will create the most impact.

You may feel like you’re already on the right path, but taking 30 minutes to conduct that aerial view every day will open the door to old opportunities and platforms that can still lead to great results.

Write Down Everything That Constitutes Your Business

This is a one-time, time extensive task. You’ll occasionally go through this list as your business continues to grow. However, you need to take this step before you can truly play offense. Here are just some of the parts of my business:

  • Virtual Summits
  • Blog Posts
  • Guest Posts
  • Training Courses
  • Free Videos
  • Books
  • Public Speaking
  • Breakthrough Success Podcast
  • Coaching
  • Redistribution

Sometimes I focus so much of my time, attention, and energy on my virtual summits that I forget about other areas. When I took the aerial view, I rediscovered that I needed to pump out more content for my readers (plus, I LOVE writing content, and realized that I’d separated myself from my biggest passion for too long).

I also rediscovered my podcast outros need major updates. I didn’t see any traction from my previous outros because I mainly promoted my Udemy courses, but now I’m promoting more stuff on my site and a few tools which I use and am an affiliate for.

I also rediscovered that I could get more exposure by writing more guest posts and getting interviewed on more podcasts.

Discovering and doing are two different things, and if your schedule is constantly filled with in-business work, you never find the time to take that aerial view and ask yourself, “What should I really be doing?”

Then you need to rediscover and start implementing instead of letting these important tasks continue to remain unattended.

Writing down all of this information is so important because with tens of thousands of thoughts running through out minds every day, it’s easy to forget.

Start Delegating More Of Your Tasks

Delegating your tasks to others will open up hours of extra time. My freelancers are critical to my success because they subtract various tasks from my day. Over the long-term, I can easily see having a team of hundreds of freelancers, but I’m not there yet.

Some people may be interested in delegation but haven’t started yet. If that’s you, my friend Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation has some great advice for you.

The two main ingredients you need to get started delegating are a log of where you’re spending your time and a well-documented process.

The time log will tell you where the biggest opportunities for outsourcing lie. What’s sucking up the most of your day? Is that something you HAVE to do, or could someone else reasonably handle it with a little training?

Next, you’ll want to have clear process documentation and instructions. This is like your recipe for completing the task, and the more detailed the better. Don’t leave anything to chance here, even though you probably take for granted some of the steps, especially if you’ve been doing the task yourself for any length of time.

How I normally create the process documentation is I take a screen capture video of myself doing the job and talking through the steps. Then I write out the steps in a Google Doc so I can share both a visual and written version with my assistant.

Delegating more of your tasks will also give you more time to play offense. Take some time to think about some of the important parts of your business, how you can take action, and then just do it.

Checking on your freelancers is part of playing offense because you want to make sure they have work, and more importantly, that your freelancers are effectively getting their jobs done. You should have more 10-15 minute meetings fill up your schedule to ensure that you and your freelancers are both on the same page. These meetings do take up some time, but they work like a charm for keeping everyone on track.

In Conclusion

I thought of ways that I could extend this blog post beyond my usual 1,000 word marker, but I decided against it. Playing offense for your business simply comes down to…

  • Taking the aerial view of your brand
  • Discovering/rediscovering what you need to do for the optimal impact
  • Start taking action

I could have said it in several different ways, but that’s the premise to working on offense. Taking action just comes down to putting the tasks on your schedule. If a task isn’t on the schedule, it doesn’t get done. If it’s on the schedule, it has a much higher probability of getting done.

What are your thoughts on playing offense for your business? Do you have any tips for us? Have a question? Sound off in the comments section below.

July 2017 Performance Report

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Dramatic changes happened in this month. I’m jumping straight into the recap in this performance report, and will be brutally honest about my flaws and successes.

The Question That Opened My Eyes

I received this question from one of my Twitter followers: “Would you please share that how did you become such a great influencer?”

I’m happy to share the answer in a future blog post, but the point I’m making here is that reading the question was like getting drenched with a bucket of cold water.

I was so absorbed in future projections that I almost never took the time to appreciate anything I had done in the past.

For instance, I never stopped to think I’m providing my freelancers with a source of income. And some of them depend on that income for their livelihoods. Now I realize that if I slack off, or am slightly off, I’m potentially letting everyone down.

In our pursuit of the future, we often fail to acknowledge the beauty of what we’ve already accomplished. But we can use this acknowledgment to keep us going and motivated to achieve our goals.

Maybe this part of the Performance Report was your version of the eye-opener. Maybe you’ll hear someone say, “How do you do that so well?”

Everyone’s eye-opener will come sooner or later. I hope you’re open to yours now. Take time to appreciate what you’ve done and celebrate the small wins.

Publishing 1 New Piece Of Content Every Day

I love becoming as efficient as possible. I think of ways to write content faster so I can move on to other tasks. While some of these ideas (content batching and writing blog posts on my smartphone) have worked wonderfully, others (writing less content and ineffective communication) have been disastrous.

At one point I was publishing one new blog post every 12 hours. But then I developed a bad habit of publishing one blog post every week (and was emailing my subscribers even less frequently). That changes now!

I got so focused on revenue generation (still important) that I sacrificed content creation, something I hold dearly. Under the new schedule, I’ll publish new blog posts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I want to provide more content because I love it.

I have also updated my Publishing Calendar to reflect these changes. On Wednesdays, I’ll publish an episode from my Breakthrough Success Podcast.

That leaves Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays on the table. I’m still thinking of ideas and might return to publishing YouTube videos. But if you have an idea of what you’d like to see from me on those days, let me know in the comments.

How Am I Making Revenue Then?

I mentioned that I got so focused on revenue generation that I sacrificed content creation. But as I began to expand the time I spent creating content, I faced another problem.

How do I continue making revenue? I can get the traffic, but if I sacrifice revenue, then eventually I can’t financially support my brand. Here are the streams I’m utilizing:

#1: Virtual Summits—I am happy to say that I have landed 50+ speakers for the Productivity Virtual Summit. Tom Ziglar, Grant Cardone, and Dan LeFave are some of the many superstar speakers you’ll learn from. I love virtual summits because I provide top value content, a product, and I get to learn a lot about productivity.

#2: Books—I am in the process of writing a book that details how your content brand can absolutely crush it. I’m publishing it in late October or early November.

#3: Affiliate Marketing—I promote some of the top products and tools and receive a commission for each sale.

#4: Funnels—These funnels will lead people to various training courses, upsells, and downsells.

#5: Coaching—I’ll teach you what you need to know and keep you accountable. Contact me marc@marcguberti.com if you’re interested.

The important thing about these revenue streams is that after the initial work, these are set-and-forget systems that bring in revenue. At this stage, all I have to do is check the stats and tweak things here and there to boost optimization.

I have intentionally chosen to focus on set-and-forget methods of revenue generation (with the exception of coaching) so I have more time to create high value content. And as the content brings in more visitors it will result in more revenue from my set-and-forget systems.

As I make more revenue, I’ll outsource more of the parts that I can’t forget about (i.e. recruiting affiliates).

TSMD Still Needs The Royal Treatment

I did very little for TSMD this month even though I was all-in the previous month.

The reason I haven’t been taking action is solely because I don’t like the prep work for videos. Although I love thinking up ideas and completing the videos, I don’t enjoy doing the lighting, editing, descriptions, and uploading.

Even though I’ve outsourced editing and uploading, it’s still a pain in the neck. My solution is to do more live videos so I can skip many of these cumbersome steps. My brother religiously incorporates videos into his brand, so I’ll pick his brain before proceeding.

Books I Read

Extreme Productivity

Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Robert C. Pozen

48 Days by Dan Miller

Born To Win by Zig Ziglar

#AskGaryVee by Gary Vaynerchuk

Double Double by Cameron Herold

15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse

Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

View From The Top by Aaron Walker

You Were Born Rich by Bob Proctor

Win by Frank I. Luntz

Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Live It by Jairek Robbins

Scrum by Jeff Sutherland and JJ Sutherland

7 Strategies For Wealth & Happiness by Jim Rohn

July’s Blog Posts

How To Turn Content Creation Into Content Marketing

4 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Strategy

Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy Using The Buyer’s Journey

How To Freelance Without Losing Control Of Your Blog

5 Hacks For Writing Blog Posts Faster

Decoded: Make Thousands From Your First Virtual Summit

July’s Podcast Episodes

E45: Are You Winning The Brand VS Wild Battle With Jonathan David Lewis

E46: Penniless Immigrant Now Living The American Dream With Nitin Chhoda

E47: Creating A Positive Impact On The World Through Our Businesses With Hamilton Perkins

E48: Open The Door To Happiness And Szen With Gary Szenderski

Review Of July 2017 Goals

#1: Have 10 Streams Of Income: I didn’t want to spread myself too thin, especially with the uptick of content creation. Once I have more set-and-forget streams of income, I’ll work my way towards 10 streams.

#2: Hire 3 New Freelancers: I hired one new freelancer and rehired another freelancer. It could have been better. The next freelancer I hire will most likely be a revenue generating freelancer instead of a time saving freelancer.

#3: Stop Over-Monitoring “Useless” Info: Mission accomplished.

#4: Conduct All 50+ Summit Interviews: I didn’t conduct all 50+ interviews this month, but I interviewed an overwhelming majority of the summit speakers in July.

#5: Host Weekly Webinars: This was a disaster as I didn’t even attempt it. I’ll change things up by hosting one webinar before I commit to hosting several webinars.

#6: Recruit 100+ Affiliates: It was initially difficult to recruit affiliates because I couldn’t find productivity-related products that offer affiliate programs similar to mine.

But I found my niche with JLD’s Freedom and Mastery Journals. Since then, I’ve contacted many affiliates and got several YESes. I plan on sending an email out to my entire list very soon.

August 2017 Goals

#1: Set Up A Strong Set-And-Forget Revenue Stream

The strongest form of a set-and-forget revenue I have is the Content Marketing Success Summit set-up. The only problem is that the summit is now over and it’s harder to promote a past summit.

I will use all of the order bumps and upsells I created for that summit to create the Set-And-Forget revenue stream. I’ll also modify my 27 Ways To Get More Retweets set-up to boost the revenue potential.

#2: Contact 1,000 Potential Affiliates

I want the Productivity Virtual Summit to dwarf my Content Marketing Success Summit. I’m focusing more of my time, attention, and energy on recruiting affiliates.

#3: Finalize The Street Team For My Upcoming Book

Because contacting 1,000 affiliates and finalizing a street team in the same month makes sense 🙂

#4: Finish Writing My Book Draft

I need to finish the book draft so I can start receiving early praise for the book.

#5: Finish The PVS Portal

For CMSS, I interviewed the last speaker four days before the summit was launched. During this time, videos were still getting edited and the portal wasn’t finalized. None of the CMSS order bumps or upsells were ready.

This time, I am finalizing the entire summit so I can focus more of my time on order bumps and upsells. My strategy for virtual summits is to offer as many order bumps and upsells as possible (even if I haven’t created them yet) to force myself to take action. I also have all of the necessary order bumps and upsells for a future funnel.

In Conclusion

I wrote more content in July than I have in any other month in 2017. That made me happy because I enjoy every moment of content creation. You’ll see a lot more blog posts from me in August, and I look forward to increasing that number in September and October as well.

The Productivity Virtual Summit and my upcoming book are the two main projects I’m working on now.

What were your thoughts on this performance reports? Have any tips for us so we can achieve our goals? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.