Success

How To Do What You Say You’ll Do

February 11, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Clear On What You Want To Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do I want this to lead me?

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

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

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

Write It Down

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

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

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

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

Schedule Time To Get It Done

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delegate Most Of The Tasks In Your Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep Yourself Accountable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

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

How To Play More Offense For Your Business

August 8, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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.

5 Tactics That Almost Guarantee Success

January 7, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Guaranteed success is a strong prediction; every time people come across the words “guarantee” and “success” together, there’s bound to be some skepticism.

But these five tactics are powerful. The super secret kind of powerful, and I’m about to expose them all. While you may have already heard of some of these tactics, others will be new.

But none of them matter if you don’t take action.

You’d think that something like taking action would be the first tactic. However, we are constantly taking action. Every day, we take a massive amount of action, but our results don’t always match up with our efforts.

Here’s how to make your actions translate into results:

#1: Get Into A Routine

A routine is something you follow without fail every single day (or at least on specific days of the week). Following a routine, or having no routine at all, can singlehandedly make the difference between success and failure.

I recently read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, and one of his stories about routine really struck home. Here’s how it went:

Golfer Jack Nicklaus was known for his famous pre-shot routine. During an important Majors tournament, Nicklaus was at the top of his game. A psychologist timed the golfer from the moment he pulled the club out of the bag until the moment he hit the ball.

For each shot from start to finish, the timing of his routine never varied by more than one second.

That same psychologist measured Greg Norman during his collapse in the 1996 Masters. As the game progressed, his pre-shot routine became faster and faster.

If you don’t know what you are doing when you wake up, and right before you go to bed, you’re in trouble. Establishing a routine during the bookends of your day will get you into a rhythm of success. What are you doing each morning and evening? And in what order?

I always read for an hour before I go to bed. Lately, I’ve been responding to emails for 15 minutes before I begin reading. I continue to build backwards to get more activities wrapped into my routine.

People don’t mess up because they give themselves many goals. They mess up because they give themselves many goals without designating which portions of the day they’ll start working on each individual goal.

Without a routine in place, you risk missing out on your biggest goals.

#2: Think About What You Can Do

I am having a great time in college. I’m making new friends, running, and doing new things. I recently started to play pool and found myself playing for several hours on any given day.

While doing homework and showing up to a practice aren’t a problem, I was losing significant time for my business.

One day, I had had enough. I decided that I wouldn’t play any pool for one day. With this mindset, I did get more done (but I still ended up playing some pool).

I was so focused on not playing pool that I didn’t think about what else I could do. So instead of thinking, “I can’t play pool,” I began to think, “I can go to the library for an hour each day.” Then I started going to the library and getting more of my work done.

The moment I shifted from “I can’t do X” to “I can do Y,” making the transition became easier. I still play pool at college, but now I spend at least an hour each day on campus working on my business.

It’s easier to fight off a bad habit if you focus on what you can do instead, rather than simply cutting off the bad habit.

Furthermore, if you think you can’t do something, you are right. Only devote your time and attention towards the goals that you can do. Every battle begins and ends within the mind.

#3: Increase Your Desire

The desire you have for your work is important. If you desire your work, you’ll have no problem putting in the hours. If you don’t desire your work, you’ll want to get through it as soon as possible.

Desire gets you across the finish line. A lack of desire encourages you to find any reason to stop short.

If you want to increase your desire, the simple act of writing your desire to achieve each goal will increase your likelihood of success. If you want to get 100 subscribers each day, write the following:

“I WILL GET 100 SUBSCRIBERS EACH DAY BY THE END OF X.”

The all caps is very important here. Not only that, but giving yourself a reasonable deadline will make you hone in your efforts to meet the deadline.

If you give yourself an unreasonable deadline, you’ll lose motivation when you don’t accomplish your goal. If you give yourself a reasonable, but more challenging, deadline, you’ll make daily progress until you accomplish your goal.

If you want to get back in touch with your niche, simply write, “I LOVE [NICHE NAME]” and you’ll come to believe it. If you write about your desire long enough, that desire will ignite in a powerful way.

#4: Read A Lot Of Books

Reading has had a big impact on my success. Reading the right books about your niche allows you to acquire new knowledge. Once you apply the right knowledge, you’ll get better results in any area you are pursuing.

Each month, I set a target for myself to read 10 books. That adds up to at least 120 books every year, which is far more than what most people read. I won’t go into detail about reading a lot of books because I discussed that in a previous post.

Regardless of what niche you’re in, reading personal development books will work wonders for you. Personal development books help you become the best you imaginable. Some focus on productivity while others focus on relationships, but they all focus on making you perform effectively and efficiently in anything that you do.

#5: Analyze Successful People

There’s always that one cool kid in school who everyone wants to emulate. Becoming cool meant hanging with that cool kid. In a similar way, to become successful, you have to hang out with people who are already successful.

This version of hanging out consists of you reading their content, watching their interviews, and consuming virtually every piece of content they were involved in.

By doing that, you’ll learn a lot about how these individuals became successful. You’ll learn from their habits and expertise. Remember, you’re only as good as the company you keep. If you want to become successful, start following the example of successful people now.

In Conclusion

It’s just as easy to fall short as it is to become successful. There are many people who work just as hard or harder than the world’s greatest innovators.

The difference between these two groups of people is how they devote their time and what goals they pursue and accomplish.

Success requires patience combined with a strong mindset. Once you have that mixture, and live by the five tactics, you’ve already won the battle. At that point, it’s just a matter of time before you inevitably walk into a goldmine.

Which of these tactics resonated with you the most? Have any tips on becoming successful? Sound off in the comments section below.

23 Lessons I Learned From My Podcast In 2016

December 9, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I have published 21 podcast episodes in which I have interviewed a variety of people. During the entire process (connecting with people, preparation, and the interviews themselves), I learned many new things.

As a part of my end of the year reflection series, I decided to come up with a list of 23 lessons I learned from my podcasting adventure.

I already knew some of these lessons but thought they were important to share. In addition, I needed to remind myself of some of these lessons, especially #17.

#1: Start Before You Are Ready

I had many false starts before I finally launched my podcast. It was two years in the making. What made it happen? I started contacting people about the podcast before I could even think of what I was doing. I then had to think really fast when I got the first yes.

#2: Conduct Your First Interview With A Fellow Podcaster

The first person I interviewed for my podcast was none other than Jeffrey Shaw. Big shout out to you my friend. He gave me some tips after the interview and steered me on the right path.

#3: Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

I contacted some people knowing that they would almost certainly agree to be guests on my podcast. I contacted other people in hopes they would say yes. Some of those people said yes while others said no. I wasn’t afraid to ask people like Seth Godin, Neil Patel, Mike Michalowicz, and many other people.

#4: There Are No Limits.

One of the things I despise the most is when people say they don’t have the right credentials to pursue a goal. If you think of an 18-year-old without a license, do you think about me? I am that 18-year-old, but that hasn’t stopped me from interviewing millionaires, bestselling authors, TEDx speakers, and other successful people. I don’t say this to brag but rather to show you the possibilities.

#5: Be Over Prepared

Each guest is different. Some of them will elaborate with their answers while others will give you quick answers that make you run through all of your questions quickly. If you don’t have enough questions, you’ll have to improvise on the fly. After enough interviews, I decided to come up with at least 20 questions for every guest. I don’t get to all 20 questions, but I do get to the important questions. Everything else is icing on the cake.

#6: Outsource Most Of The Work

I have never edited a single episode and yet they get published as if they were edited. These episodes are edited, but they get edited by one of my freelancers. Without this individual, the podcast would not be possible. I don’t have enough time to devote to editing the audio, so I hired someone else to do it instead.

#7: Go

I continuously hunt for motivational quotes I can share with my audience. I asked Seth for his most inspirational quote and he just said, “Start.” As the conversation unfolded, Seth gave us another motivational quote, “Go.” The simplest approaches are often the most effective. If “Go” doesn’t get you fired up, I don’t know what will.

#8: Everyone Wants Another Breakthrough

I have interviewed several people with six, seven, and even eight figure brands. I have interviewed guests who have achieved everything that many of their listeners want to accomplish. These same guests aspire to hit the next breakthrough. They aren’t settling with where they are now. They continue to push the envelop, and that’s why these guests have achieved great admiration for what they do.

#9: Don’t Give Up If The Launch Is A Bust

While I got hundreds of listeners for my podcast, it did not end up in the iTunes New & Noteworthy section. At this point, some people give up because their intention is to get into that New & Noteworthy section. But to be a successful podcaster, blogger, YouTuber, or anything else of that nature, you must continue producing content, video, or audio for many years to come. Keep those launch ambitions alive, but remember there’s far more to a podcast than those first weeks after the launch.

#10: Have A Structure

All of my podcast episodes follow a structure. The intro, interview, and outro reside within the structure of each episode. I also have an email rubric that I use to contact potential guests. The more structure you have in your life, the more efficient and effective you will become.

I learned the first 10 lessons by pushing through and launching the podcast. The rest of the lessons mentioned here come directly from prior episodes.

#11: Have a team around you that shares the same vision.

#12: Set bigger goals to get bigger results.

#13: The habits you develop will make or break you.

#14: It’s possible to chase your startup dream without quitting your job. To do that, you’ll have to be a 10% Entrepreneur.

#15: Outlining your goal enables you to take action at a quicker rate.

#16: Writing a book increases your authority within that subject.

#17: Perseverance is vital regardless of what ambition you pursue.

#18: Speaking to a targeted audience may mean reinventing your methods of delivery. If you are a KeyNote presenter, you’ll have to go without the slides if you wish to speak at a TEDx.

#19: The email list is the most important platform you have for your business. If you don’t have an email list, create one now.

#20: Fear can be a motivator that results in you accomplishing your goals. From personal experience, fear of the deadline works very well.

#21: Don’t say yes to any client who comes your way. Only say yes to the clients you want to work with.

#22: Several guests on the show grow their businesses exponentially with the help of referrals. For some, it meant raffling free prizes to people who got you more email addresses. For others, it meant cross promotion.

#23: Recruiting affiliates for your products will allow your products to spread farther than you could have spread them on your own.

Which lesson was your favorite? Who would you like for me to interview? Have any lessons for us as we head towards 2017? Sound off in the comments section below.

The Two Hidden Barriers To A Full-Time Income

October 16, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

We all want to become successful. And most of us define success as making a full-time income. We don’t celebrate the income itself, but instead we celebrate the possibilities created by that income.

People get inspired to become successful and make a full-time income by thinking about the possibilities and reading the case studies. I’ll never forget when I first read Jeremy Schoemaker’s case study of going from broke to making eight figures with his blog. That case study lit the fire and made me realize it was possible for me as well.

In my journey, I encountered several obstacles. The largest obstacle I encountered in the beginning was my age. It’s easy to write off a 13-year-old who recently became an entrepreneur. It’s harder to write me off now. People won’t believe you in the beginning, so you have to rise above that.

The big barriers I am talking about don’t focus on the motivational side of success. You need to be motivated to become successful, but these two barriers can even hold back the most motivated people who strive to become successful.

These two barriers held me back until a few months ago. The interesting thing about these barriers was that I didn’t know they were barriers until I made it on the other side. Yes, the grass is actually greener on the side I’m on. These are the two invisible barriers:

#1: Time

In my opinion, I believe people know a lack of time is a barrier, but few people don’t understand the full scope of that. Just because you are productive for eight hours per day and never avoid burnout doesn’t mean you will be successful.

I normally compare busy work to productive work and say that busy work is just a waste of time. But nay, I’ve realized that being productive isn’t enough either.

That’s because we define our productivity. For me, following hundreds of people every day to grow my Twitter audience was me being productive. I gained anywhere from 300-500 followers per day, but by calling it productive, I couldn’t have been fooling myself more than I had.

Then I became a CEO. The simple version: I started hiring people.

Never again will you find me manually following hundreds of people in a given day. I have outsourced all of that work to a trustworthy employee. Never again will I create a picture for one of my blog posts. I hired someone who creates pictures that are better than my pictures.

I thought I was productive by following all of those people and creating pictures. I only saw how wrong I was when I jumped over to the other side. After jumping to the other side, I immediately questioned my productivity as a whole.

Was it productive for me to schedule tweets every day? Was it productive for me to edit all of those videos? Was it productive for me to schedule my blog posts? Was it productive to send pins and grow my Pinterest audience?

NO! None of those activities were productive. I understand if those four things don’t happen, critical parts of my business become obsolete. If no more blog posts get scheduled on this blog, then it’s only a matter of time before search engines stop ranking this blog high. If my videos don’t get edited, I can’t create Udemy courses.

I decided to change my definition of productivity. Productivity isn’t putting a lot of work on your shoulders–even if all of that work is vital for the growth and survival of your business. Productivity is identifying what you (and only you) can do and then outsourcing everything else to other people.

Here is the current list of things that only I can do for my business:

Write blog posts (no ghost writers or contributions. I’ve written all of these blog posts since Day #1)
Create videos (I can sort of outsource that when I create courses with other people. I’ll talk more about that later)
Create slides for my presentations (I should know and create my entire battle plan for every video I do)
Engage with my social media audience (that’s too important for me to outsource)
Look at results (I only do this once a day just so I see what is working and what isn’t working)

The list looks like a decently sized list, but think about all of the things that did not make the list. This gives me more time to explore new opportunities and leverage what works for me. Once I created this list, I set my boundaries.

Any work I do for my business that does not make this list is unproductive. With this new definition, scheduling tweets is unproductive. So is scheduling blog posts. I don’t remember the last time I edited one of my videos. Someone else does that for me.

#2: Not Being In An Inner Circle

This invisible barrier is a barrier few people recognize. Part of that is because of the way we define an inner circle. To be clear, role models aren’t good enough. Role models create inspiration, but an inner circle is more valuable than that.

An inner circle that helps you thrive fits the following parameters:

The people within the inner circle are doing what you want to do.
They are more successful than you and/or possess expertise that you don’t have.
You actively engage with these people and they actively engage with you back. You both get to know each other on a more personal level.
You are giving back and providing value too. Let these people know what works for you and work together on some of the projects.

For some of you, school may have been a long time ago. Think about creating a diorama. The most successful diorama is usually created by the group with the most skilled students working together to achieve the same goal. They both bring different skills and work to the table, but both of them put in a lot of effort.

Then when they get the A, those students become best friends afterwards. They go on to create numerous dioramas throughout the year that make the teacher marvel.

That’s how the inner circle works in a nutshell.

Creating courses on Udemy taught me the power of the inner circle. I’ll never forget when my friend Jerry Banfield sent an email encouraging other instructors to make a course with him. At the time, I didn’t know him well on a personal level. I knew he was crushing it on Udemy (he makes over $1,000 a day from it), so I decided to create a course with him and see what I could learn.

We each approached the course with different skills. It was a course about how we write thousands of words every day. I personally prefer to type away, so I created videos that focus on the typing aspect. Jerry prefers using a dictation tool that lets him speak/write over 10,000 words in an hour.

Working together allowed us to create a valuable course that targeted multiple writing styles. Jerry provided insights that I wouldn’t have included and vice-versa.

I learned his approach to creating successful Udemy courses and saw how he promoted my course in an email blast. I got to see some of the methods that worked for him and how it impacted our course sales in the long-term.

After co-creating a course with Jerry, I decided to turn course co-creation into an integral part of my business. I saw that Jerry partnered up with other instructors. I decided to contact some of these instructors asking them if they wanted to create courses with me.

Joe Parys, another highly successful Udemy instructor, got back to me. I got to learn from him as we created a course on social media time management. We brought different expertise to the table which resulted in a better course.

The important thing to note is that creating the courses with Jerry and Joe wasn’t the end. We continue talking with each other to this day and thinking of different courses we can create together. Jerry and Joe gave my Udemy strategy a new level of accountability.

You need to have a group of people who raise you to the next level and have the proper expertise to do it. That’s what an inner circle is all about.

In Conclusion

We see the visible barriers to success. We see that motivation is essential and that taking action is just as vital. However, we make barriers like these seem so big that we let the invisible (but often larger) barriers go unattended.

What are your thoughts on these invisible barriers? Do you think there are other barriers that we don’t give much attention to? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Social Media Tips For Success

October 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

There are billions of people using social media to interact with their friends, grow a big audience, see what celebrities are up to, make connections, or for various other reasons. If you are one of the people who wants to grow a big social media audience and make connections, here are five tips that will help you out with that.

#1: Be on multiple social networks.

The more social networks you have, the more places people can find you. Out of all of the social networks, Twitter brings in the most traffic, but Pinterest also brings in numerous visitors on a daily basis. Some people have interviewed me because they found me on Pinterest.

When you are utilizing numerous social networks, it is also important to focus most of your time on one of those social networks. If you master one social network, you will be able to grow a large audience on that social network. After you master one social network, you should then aspire to master another social network that you are using.

The great thing about taking this approach is that each time you master a social network and know how to grow a big audience on them, it gets easier to repeat the process on the other social networks. Some of the knowledge needed to get 100,000 Facebook likes is identical to the knowledge needed to get 100,000 Pinterest followers.

Being on multiple social networks gives you an advantage, but it is important to focus most of your time on one social network: your most successful one.

#2: Post more often throughout the day

One of the things that so many people forget about is that there are different time zones for different places in the world. That means some people will be awake at different times than you. Here is a typical scenario of why this knowledge is important.

Let’s say you live in Florida, and it’s five o’clock in the morning. You may be wondering who could possibly be looking at your social media posts at that time. Here are the people who could be looking at your social media posts:

People in the United Kingdom. At the same time it is 5 am in Florida, it is 9 am in the United Kingdom.
People in Germany. At the same time it is 5 am in Florida, it is 10:05 am in Germany.
People in Japan. At the same time it is 5 am in Florida, it is 6 pm in Japan.

I can go on, but this is enough information for me to make my point. Posting more content throughout the day will give more people a chance to see your content regardless of their timezone. When you put your content in front of a large amount of people, your content can spread farther.

#3: Post specific content

One of the most important things to do on social media is to post specific content. Posting specific content will make it easier for people to know what you specialize in. If you talk about a plethora of unrelated topics, your audience will be confused. Your message and what you talk about needs to be as clear as possible to your audience.

I am known for posting content related to digital marketing, productivity, and motivation. All three of these topics are connected because you need motivation to be productive, and you need to be productive in order to be a good digital marketer. Then, you need to know about digital marketing so you can optimize your presence on the web.

Many people who want to learn more about digital marketing also want to learn about productivity, motivation, or both. That way, the content you post on your social networks is the same content that your audience is looking for. If you send out some social media posts about baseball, other social media posts about fashion, and a few other social media posts about food, you are going to confuse your followers. Posting specific content eliminates this problem and allows people to know what niche you are in.

#4: Include pictures in your posts

Some social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest require a picture in every post. There are other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook that do not require pictures. The only problem is that because it’s not a requirement, many people miss out on adding pictures to their social media posts.

Posts with pictures get more engagement than posts without pictures. The most retweeted tweet of all-time has a picture, and that’s not a coincidence. If you look at the tweets I send out without pictures compared to the tweets with pictures, you will see an incredible difference. Some of my pictures with tweets have been retweeted over 100 times. Most of my tweets without pictures get 1-5 retweets (I only get this many retweets per tweet because of my tweeting frequency. It all adds up though). Pictures have the power to boost the engagement for any post on any social network.

#5: Be consistent

You need to post at a consistent and frequent basis. Posting less times than expected will result in fewer people seeing your content and following you. In addition, when you are implementing your social media strategy, you need to implement it consistently.

There are many people who learn about a new social media strategy that works wonders for other people, give that strategy a try, and then never go back to that strategy again. The reason is that the people who became successful by implementing a certain strategy became successful by implementing that strategy over a long period of time.

Let’s say your goal is to get 10,000 Twitter followers, and you encounter a strategy that results in 100 Twitter followers every day. You can implement it in one day and get another 100 Twitter followers, but you need to implement the same strategy for 99 more days in order to get 10,000 Twitter followers. If you implement the strategy on one day and then forget about it for the rest of the week, the strategy will not have a big impact on your presence.

In Conclusion

Social media success is something that takes time, but it is not nearly as hard as many experts say. It is possible for anyone to be successful on any social network, and these five tips will be very helpful in your quest to dominate social media.

Which tip was your favorite? Do you have a 6th tip for social media success? Please share your thoughts and advice below.