Tips and Tricks

One of the best ways to give yourself an edge is to self-educate yourself. That’s how you make your fortune.

Self-educating yourself for at least two hours each day will allow you to become the leader of your niche within five years.

But we’re about massive results, so instead of two hours each day, we should aim for four hours.

Double the amount of hours and you’ll double your results. That’s the law of proportions. While four hours each day to self-education seems like a big challenge, it’s very possible. This blog post will show you how.

 

Establish An Educational Wake Up Ritual

Upon waking up, I read the same eight books every day. It used to be five, but since I had no problem going through five, I upped my total to eight.

I’ll read a small portion of each book. As I read books focused on self development and success, I feed my mind right to start the day. This wake up ritual takes about 30 minutes.

Three and a half hours to go.

 

Listen To Audiobooks During All Commutes

I commute back and forth from school for 40 minutes each day. Instead of listening to music during this time, I’ll listen to an audiobook.

We have many opportunities like the daily commute that can be used productively. We can listen to audiobooks during this time or even dictate new content.

Listening to audiobooks is as easy as joining Audible and downloading two free audiobooks every month for a monthly fee. Audiobooks are also significantly discounted for members.

 

Learn During Content Creation

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I don’t worry about hitting four hours of self-education each day. On those days, it’s guaranteed. I can interview as many as five people on each of those days depending on how many people book interviews on those days.

With interviews averaging 45 minutes lately, that’s a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes of interviews. During this time, I get to ask my questions and get answers. I’m the client and my guest is the consultant.

I’ve got questions I would ask that I know my audience would also want to ask if they had the chance.

If you don’t have a podcast, starting one should be your #1 priority. You get to create new content for your audience and learn from experts at the same time.

I’ve interviewed as many as 21 people in one week (I was also hosting a summit during this stretch). All of that time is content creation and self-education wrapped into one.

Making Breakthrough Success a weekday podcast instead of a weekly podcast has made a big difference for my knowledge. I may make it a daily podcast if I still see a drop in downloads over the weekends (I only made it a weekday podcast because I assumed people would use the weekends to catch up what they missed).

If you don’t have a podcast, you can still learn as you create content. The simple act of creating content forces you to dig deep into your brain and recall things you already knew. This creates muscle memory.

For some of your pieces of content, you may also need to conduct research. This research will force you to consume more content in your niche. As you consume more content, your knowledge will expand.

 

Get An Accountability Partner

You’ll almost always do better on an exam if you have a study partner. Even if you got paired up with a study partner who didn’t know much, you would teach that person, and that act would sharpen your knowledge.

In a similar way, you need an accountability partner to expand your knowledge. You can listen to audiobooks with your friends. If that doesn’t work, you can have a weekly meeting with a friend where you discuss the book that both of you were supposed to read.

I advise having 1-3 solid accountability partners to expand your knowledge. That way, you can give them your attention. If you have 10 accountability partners, then it’s harder to keep track and acknowledge all of them.

 

Hire A Coach

If you’re not good at something you want to master, you have two choices. You can either toil away and become a master after many years…OR you could hire a coach who can speed you along the journey.

The only coaches worth hiring are the ones who are at the level of success you aspire to achieve. Then you can listen to their advice and know that it will help you get to where you want to be.

You can also consider your coach as an accountability partner. The difference is that a coach gives you knowledge instead of discussing a book the two of you were supposed to read.

If you have the financial means to do so, then there’s no reason to stop at one coach. You can hire multiple coaches who will help you get better at multiple skills that you need to master.

Hire the right coach, and your calls with that coach will give you more knowledge than anything else discussed in this blog post. While content can boost your knowledge, it isn’t specifically geared towards you.

Coaches can specifically gear their advice towards you. They know who you are, what worked, what hasn’t worked, and that helps them give you better advice.

“I see on your website that you can be using this plugin to double your conversion rates. You should also include a pop-up that matches your site’s blue background.”

You can’t get that direct level of advice from a piece of content. Only a coach can do that.

 

In Conclusion

If you want to become more successful, spend more time self-educating yourself. If you can level yourself up from 0 minutes to 30 minutes every day, that’s a big stride.

Work your way to an hour a day and keep going on your way to four hours per day. You can self-educate yourself during commutes and similar settings where you can’t take actions to grow your brand anyway.

Self-educating will also give you the knowledge to grow your brand faster with a smaller time investment. Time is the only thing we can’t get back.

What were your thoughts on these self-education tactics? Do you have any tactics you want to share? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

The amount of time and effort you put towards revenue generating activities determines how much revenue you make.

It’s common knowledge now that not all tasks are created equal. Some lead to a small payoff if any at all while others result in a big ROI.

For instance, mastering Facebook ads is a better use of your time than scheduling social media posts. Both may be necessary for your success, but one has a significantly higher payoff than the other.

So how do we focus on revenue generating activities? That’s what we’ll cover in this post.

 

Identify Revenue Generating Activities

The first step to focusing on revenue generating activities is to clearly identify them. I know this sounds obvious, but it can get complicated.

Some will argue that all of their actions are revenue generating since they help you in some way whether it be direct or indirect. You can argue that when you schedule your social media posts, you’re scheduling posts that lead people to your landing page.

Traffic to the landing page means more money, right?

That’s a big yes if your landing page is optimized and you bring people into a sequence that promotes a product. But you can make much more money in the long-term by mastering Facebook ads.

Now the question is if you sacrifice scheduling social media posts to pursue the FB ads. The answer to that is no, but before I explain…

I know you may not face the choice between scheduling social media posts or mastering FB ads. However, you may face a similar situation with different choices. Do you continue to create content or market what you have? Do you write the book or promote your training course? Do you spend less time interacting with your social media audience or less time getting interviewed on other podcasts?

That brings me to my next point.

 

Automate, Delegate, Or Eliminate

All of these activities I mentioned help to move the needle forward. You can’t make money with a content brand unless you create content. However, if you keep creating but never take the time to market, your content brand won’t get any visibility.

Some tasks move the the needle further than others in a shorter period of time. These are the tasks you need to focus on.

Going back to FB ads VS social media post scheduling, FB ads is the clear winner. What happens to scheduling social media posts then? The answer is that you automate, delegate or eliminate that task.

I wouldn’t recommend eliminating vital tasks like scheduling your social media posts. However, you can very easily automate this process.

I use a service called ViralTag to create an evergreen posting schedule for all of my tweets. I send over 100 tweets every day that are in a continuous cycle with hundreds of other tweets. If I had to manually schedule all of those tweets, it would take me several hours every day.

Since I have automated my tweets, it doesn’t take a single second. All of the tweets go out automatically, and I add more tweets to the cycle every quarter.

If you can set it and forget it while achieving desirable results, do it.

With that said, you can’t automate everything. You can’t automate the creation of Instagram pictures. That’s why one person on my team is responsible for creating pictures based on the inspirational quotes I provide him with. This same person is also responsible for growing my Instagram and Twitter audiences.

I give that level of trust to people who have earned it. Other people on my team are responsible for keeping the Breakthrough Success Podcast going whether that be by editing episodes or writing show notes. Everyone on my team tackles important areas that my brand needs to survive.

With these tasks not taking up space on my to-do list, I can pursue bigger projects that generate more income.

 

Generate More Revenue Than You Spend Automating & Delegating

Automating and delegating are not free. You either have to pay a monthly fee to use a tool or a salary to add a new person to your team. If you spend more than you make, you’ll find yourself spiral towards debt and eventually deep into it.

That’s not where you or anyone wants to go. To avoid that fate, you need to stay on top of your finances and see how everything is paying off.

Since I’ve monetized Twitter and know that social network very well, I know that my team member’s actions generate more revenue for my business. This is based on the big blog traffic boost and landing page sign-ups which lead to product sales.

My podcast is different, and I didn’t know this until recently. I have two incredible people on my team who make Breakthrough Success possible. I decided to not use sponsored ads in my episodes so I could provide a better experience for my listeners.

That means my podcast isn’t monetized. While I have had no problem paying off my expenses with affiliate commissions, I realized how big my expenses have gotten. I spend over $1,000/mo maintaining Breakthrough Success.

If I end my show, I save all of that money which I can put into other parts of my business. However, I’m not doing that. I’ve connected with so many awesome people because of my podcast, and it’s a big passion of mine.

But I still need to recoup the $1,000/mo.

That’s why I started my own Patreon Page to help cover expenses. For as little as $1/mo, you can help keep Breakthrough Success going. If you are interested, you can become a patron here.

I’m building the Patreon Page to over $1,000/mo so the Patreon Page pays off the podcasting expenses. Someday, I see the page exceeding $1,000/mo in which I’ll get to do more exciting things with the show in the future.

I only noticed this problem when I looked deep into my finances. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all of my income and expenses. I have no intentions to stop my podcast or cut down on production. However, I couldn’t let this situation be completely ignored.

And the end result was Patreon.

If you aren’t at least breaking even by automating or delegating, you need to figure out why. Then, either eliminate that task to save money or make a greater effort to break even and eventually make a profit.

 

In Conclusion

What you focus on expands. By focusing on revenue generating activities, you’ll put yourself in a position to accumulate more revenue that you can invest back into your business.

Continue to automate, delegate, or eliminate everything in your business that prevents you from moving the needle as far and quickly as possible.

Don’t forget to remember why you want to generate revenue. Maybe you want to achieve financial freedom, support your family, or surprise someone with a special gift.

Keeping your why in mind will drive you as you pursue the activities that generate the most revenue.

How do you make the time for revenue generating activities? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

If most people are up a little after 5 am, you wonder why they went to bed so late. The moon is out and it still takes several hours for the sun to rise.

A little more than a month ago, I decided to embrace this concept and see what would happen. Would I crash later in the day? Would I get anything accomplished or just struggle to come up with ideas? Would I boost my productivity?

I now know the answers to all of those questions. I recommend everyone give this a try at least once to see how it affects them, but I’ll share what I learned.

Long Bookend

When I’m with my family and friends, I want to be as attentive to them as possible. However, I also have to get a massive amount of work done each day. If I feel like the day is too easy, I’ll add more work to it to make it more difficult.

Yes, I do take some days off each month, but when I’m working, I’m laser focused.

The best time to work is during the bookends of the day. That means before everyone’s awake or after everyone else has called it a day. Some people can stay productive during both bookends in the same day. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work.

Instead of being productive during both bookends, I add a lot of time to the initial bookend so I can get to bed early.

I had no problem with making the shift because I was getting up at 5:30 am beforehand. However, I didn’t do any work during this time. I ate food and got ready for a run.

For some people, it’s a bigger shift than others, but you can wake up 15-30 minutes earlier each day to ease into it.

No Weight

After my first year of college, I noticed two things:

1. More time than high school
2. After getting home, I didn’t feel like doing much work. The later it got, the more I wanted to kick back and relax.

#1 doesn’t matter for this example but #2 is important. No matter how much you love your work, there are some days when you just feel fried. For me, that was happening too often since I had just finished my last classes of the day.

At that point, my willpower is lower and it’s a greater fight to keep working. I initially got around this issue by scheduling all of my podcast interviews at this time. I scheduled interviews for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have the most free time on those days and didn’t see myself doing as much work when I got home.

When you tell someone you’ll meet with them at a specific time, you’re accountable. It forces me to interview guests for the show and do what I love. After the interviews, I would just kick back and relax.

That doesn’t happen anymore. When I wrap up my interviews, there are only two possible destinations:

• The kitchen—before 7 pm
• My bed—7 pm or later

If I eat anything, I’ll read for an hour so I have time to digest and stay away from the blue light of my devices. I set my alarm on my iPhone several hours in advance.

Now here’s the important thing to get from all of that. I’m no longer fighting to be productive. After interviews and classes, I’m not fighting to get that extra minute. That’s when my day is over. Instead of kicking back and relaxing, I’m snoozing until 5 am or earlier. Someday I want to wake up at 2 am and see how that works.

When I wake up as early as I do, there’s no fight to be productive. I’m just productive. The day hasn’t started yet. My willpower is refreshed and ready to roll.

My productivity craters in the evening, so I skip the evening and go right to the very early morning. Cock-a-doodle-doo.

I Don’t Need To Strengthen My Willpower

I’m not here to boast that my willpower is perfect. During my first year of college, I had to summon up quite the willpower to get my work done after a string of classes.

I think too many people are fixated on strengthening their willpower. They want to fight for that extra minute even though their body tells them, “Go to bed.”

I may look like someone with a lot of willpower because of all of the work I produce. The love for my work is there, but I don’t rely on my willpower to get me through the day.

Willpower is inconsistent and based on uncontrollable events. If you get a bad break in the middle of the day, you may let that bad break ruin the rest of your day. Anyone can have a strong willpower when everything goes their way.

It’s more difficult to maintain the willpower when bad things happen.

While all of this is true, it leads to the incorrect conclusion that we need to strengthen our willpowers to boost our productivity. The conclusion is understanding the ebbs and flows of willpower.

When you wake up, your willpower is at its peak. Nothing crazy has happened yet, and you may feel great as you think about what you’ll be doing. If I’m working and everyone else is asleep, I can’t hear about anything bad happening, and nothing bad will happen to me.

Anytime I’m writing a blog post at 5:15 am, my bliss is at its peak. I expand that peak by waking up earlier. I know there is a chance of something going wrong and sinking my willpower by the end of the day.

I hope for the best, but the worst can happen. I’d rather try to recover and then go to sleep than try to recover, fight for some extra minutes (or hours), and then go to sleep.

In Conclusion

Every day, I’m up well before the sun shines. I’m pursuing the work I love at the start of the day. This sets a positive tone for the rest of the day where I can actively pursue my work.

As the day gets later and my willpower is waning, I don’t need to worry as much as I did before. That just means I can sleep earlier and then wake up earlier.

I’m continuing to refine my process, but I’ll be waking up this early for a long time. What are your thoughts on waking up super early in the day? Do you have any tactics for getting into a deeper sleep or waking up at this time of day? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

 

No matter how effective your work ethic is, there’s always room to build upon what you already have. I recently realized this in my life when I made a decision to wake up at 4 am every day.

Waking up this early gives me more uninterrupted time in my day to do my work. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t take me long to fall asleep. Right after I’m done interviewing people on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I call it a day.

Normally, I get more sleep and still feel tired at this stage. While I love the interviews, I don’t feel like doing much after a string of them. I’ve conducted interviews for over three hours in one sitting before.

Even after a long day of school, I can fall asleep and wake up earlier. It’s better for me to wake up earlier and super productive than for me to slog my way through the end of the day trying to get work done.

Plus, it feels great going to school knowing that I’ve done so much already. This blog post isn’t about waking up at 4 am. Everyone has different schedules. Regardless of our schedules, we can rise and grind more than we currently are. This blog post will help you strengthen your work ethic.

 

Apply More Pressure To Yourself

Getting up at 4 am is easier than it sounds. If you get to bed past 10 am, then yes, it’s going to be very difficult to get out of bed at 4 am. However, I’m usually out a little after 8 pm. I don’t stay up as late compared to most people, but I’m up and grinding well before any roster in my timezone wakes up.

Just sleep a few hours earlier and you can wake up a few hours earlier. So, waking up at 4 am isn’t me applying pressure to myself.

Applying pressure to yourself is giving yourself closer deadlines and intentionally reducing your resources to see what you can do with what you have.

For a long time (time is relative, even for a 20 year old), I heard the advice of pay yourself and invest, and I did neither of those things. Then I started to take that advice seriously. At one month, I set the goal of taking 20% out of my business and put it towards my savings or investments.

Since I get big goals for my savings and investing, that 20% mushroomed closer to 80%. As an investor, you need to invest early to reap the long-term gains, so to hit my goal for the month, I knew I needed to invest early. That explains the bigger increase than I anticipated going into the month.

I could still pay my team, but now things were closer. I didn’t have a month’s worth of payments readily available in my PayPal account for my team. I could have technically moved money over from savings and been fine, but I made it a point to not do that.

And that’s how I found myself facing pressure.

I knew that my current methods weren’t working as effectively as they could. I got more creative and pursued amazing opportunities I would have never thought of if I was still comfortable.

If I didn’t pay myself first in a much bigger way than anticipated, I wouldn’t have had this additional but very strong reason to make more money.

The more reasons you give yourself to accomplish a goal, the more likely you are to accomplish that goal. And this was a big reason. Sometimes you don’t need many reasons. You just need a few that fire you up big time.

Have you ever noticed in the superhero movies that towards the end, the hero is faced with a pressing series of reasons for why they need to take action. In every Iron Man movie, Tony is faced with several reasons for taking action:

• The villain wants to kill him
• The villain wants to kill his girlfriend
• The villain wants to destroy or dramatically change all of society
• People are counting on him, and there’s no one else who can get the job done
• Even when Tony has his cast of Avengers, he’s still an essential part, and without him, the Avengers lose (the same can be said about all of them)

Even with Stark Enterprises and all of his business responsibilities looming over him, Stark decides to save the planet a few times. I don’t care what reasons he has for growing Stark Enterprises. When the bad guy raves havoc, there’s no way to beat that list of reasons.

The pressure mounts, the hero takes action, and then we head towards the end of the movie. Then at that point, you have an idea of what will happen (hero wins!) but just want to see how it plays out.

 

Both Bookends Work

The extra early rise I have each day gives me uninterrupted time to grind. Originally, I wanted to entitle this section “Use Both Bookends,” but since I can’t see myself doing that right now, I didn’t use that title.

If working late into the night is your thing, then go for it. One caveat I have for that approach is that your willpower must carry the weight of the rest of the day on its shoulders.

When I wake up at 4 am, my willpower hasn’t carried any weight. It’s in it’s prime. In the past, I did the last night thing. On the day before a vacation, I sometimes work past 2 am because I know I can sleep on the way to the destination.

I’ve been productive during those rare moments, but I prefer my 4 am routine. You may prefer something different, and there’s absolutely no problem with that. Whatever helps you achieve your grind is the approach you use.

Just make sure you establish a routine. I wake up at 4 am, and the first thing I do every day, without fail, is read different parts of the same five books for two minutes each. Those five books give me the right mindset to rise and grind.

The second thing I do every day is make myself some food. Pear and toast are all I need to start working. When the day gets brighter, I’ll go out on one of my runs. While I enjoy beating the sun as an entrepreneur, I prefer running in the morning sunlight.

 

Do More Thinking

We are so busy that we often have little time to think. I’m not talking about the in-the-moment pigeon holed thinking we all experience when we perform a certain task. As I write this blog post, I only think of ways to make it better. I’m not thinking about what I need to do for my business to move it to the next level.

If I do that, you’ll see it in my writing and my content will be subpar.

However, I do carve out 10-15 minutes of each day to do nothing but think. I take a satellite view of everything I’m doing. I examine what’s working and what’s not working. When I pressure myself as mentioned earlier, it forces me to look for new but very specific opportunities.

When I crunched the numbers, I realized that podcasting accounts for most of my expenses. I was surprised when I learned that. However, I believe sponsored ads take away from the listeners’ experience which is why you’ll never hear ads during the show.

So how does my podcast help pay off for the big boost in expenses? The answer is Patreon.

I originally thought I didn’t need it, but seeing that my podcast costs so much money to maintain each month, I created a Patreon Page where anyone can contribute as little as $1 per month to support the Breakthrough Success Podcast.

That’s something you don’t think about doing if you don’t take 10-15 minutes to think of ways you can move your business forward. In my case, it also helps that I keep track of my income and expenses in a Numbers document.

Thinking in this way will help you get more clear on your priorities. If you don’t know your priorities, write a list of your revenue generating activities. Those are your priorities.

When you discover your priorities, you’ll also discover new opportunities similar to how I got started on Patreon in an effort to pay off my podcast expenses without ruining the experience with sponsored ads.

 

In Conclusion

We all need to rise and grind more. Our work ethics are never final products. Lately, I’ve been waking up at 3:50 am so I can finish reading my five books by 4 am. That way, I prep my food slightly earlier and easily start working by 4:30 am.

I know these times sound crazy to many people. I recommend you give it a try to see if it works for you. Sleep earlier, wake up earlier. I’ve also embraced life as a night owl before staying up as late as 2 am to do videos.

Videos are the one thing I normally do that I don’t see myself doing at 4:30 am. However, I can easily see myself doing videos from 11 pm to 2 am. There’s nothing else to do, and later in the day, I’d rather talk and let the words rush out than write and think about each sentence.

What are your thoughts on my approach to rising and grinding? Do you have any additional approaches or strategies for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.