Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

E100: Podcasting Is The Greatest Opportunity For Growing Your Audience With Dan Franks

by Leave a Comment

Dan Franks is a CPA, entrepreneur, and podcaster. He’s been heavily involved in the podcast space since 2013. He started Podcast Movement, the world’s largest conference for podcasters, organized the first ever podcaster conference at sea, and even co-hosted two podcasts of his own.   Quotes To Remember: “That last push is what made it a success.” “It’s not wrong to let people know what is going on.” “Ending a podcast is not the end of the world.”   What You’ll Learn:

  • How to be a solution to a problem
  • Ways to get more podcast listeners
  • Utilizing Reddit and Facebook for your podcast
  • Learn how to increase your revenue
  • Lone hosting vs. Co-hosting a podcast

  Key Links From The Show: Dan’s Site Entrepreneur Showdown with Dan Franks and Joe Cassandra Reddit Patreon   Recommended Books: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson Productivity Planner by Intelligent Change

E99: Reconnecting With Your Power And Achieving Self-Mastery In Your Life With Tim Matthews

by Leave a Comment

Tim Matthews runs The Powerful Man, a company which supports 1 million men as they reconnect with their powerful lives. This mission allows more men to impact the world in a way they know they’re capable of doing.

 

Quotes To Remember:

“Follow what feels right.”

“You need to release some of the heaviness that’s been weighing you down.”

“You have four pillars of your being: thoughts (which are beliefs), feelings, language and actions.”

“Language carries vibration.”

“The clearer you are on the ‘what?’ and the ‘why?’, the quicker, easier you’re gonna achieve it.”

“Flexibility is one of the biggest assets, biggest strengths that you can learn to harness.”

“Some things do take time.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not being where you want to be right now.”

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to get rid of toxic environments
  • Tips on developing self-worth
  • How to continue and stay on top of your game
  • How to develop a stronger “WHY?”

 

Key Links From The Show:

Tim’s Site

Simon Sinek’s Site

 

Recommended Books:

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

 

Support Breakthrough Success On Patreon

Please consider supporting Breakthrough Success on Patreon. I publish five episodes per week which I carefully prepare for, and I choose to not run ads in my podcast to enhance the listener experience.

I offer my patrons various perks, and even a donation as small as $1/mo would make a big difference for growing and maintaining Breakthrough Success.

You can support Breakthrough Success by going here.

E98: Developing An Impeccable Work Ethic With Joshua Spodek

by Leave a Comment

Joshua is a bestselling author of Leadership Step by Step, Adjunct Professor at NYU, leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, columnist for Inc., and founder of Spodek Academy.

 

Quotes To Remember:

“I didn’t plan it. I just found out that this improves my life.”

“You develop discipline by doing things that requires discipline.”

“It’s tough to sleep at night if you are not living by your values.”

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Thoughts on developing work ethic
  • How to be consistent on your work ethic
  • Work ethic experiments you should try
  • Tips on mentality transformation

 

Key Links From The Show:

Joshua’s Site

 

Recommended Books:

Leadership Step by Step by Joshua Spodek

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Affluence without Abundance by James Suzman

Why I Wake Up Before 5 am

by Leave a Comment

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.

 

E97: Find, Land, and Get Paid To Speak With Austin Iuliano

by Leave a Comment

Austin is a digital storyteller and social media personality. Austin loves to teach and inspire fellow entrepreneurs how to build their personal brands on  http://dscience.co. He consults personal brands and startups.

 

Quotes To Remember:

“When you are up on the stage, you are automatically perceived as an expert.”

“To learn how to command a stage, practice, practice, practice.”

“You have to be able to connect with your audience.”

“Public speaking is a sweet spot where opportunity meets preparation.”

“Get an audiobook membership.”

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Learn how to get your audience attention
  • How to find public speaking opportunities
  • How to organize meet-up events
  • More tips on public speaking

 

Key Links From The Show:

Austin’s Site

How to Market Yourself as a Speaker: Find, Land, And Get Paid to Speaker

Toastmasters International

Eventbrite

Stacking Growth Conference

 

Recommended Books:

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn

Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone

The Power of Broke by Daniel Paisner and Daymond John

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

3 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t As Successful As You’d Like

by Leave a Comment

The only blog growth stories we hear are the ones where the blogger went from zero visitors to over 100,000 visitors within a timeframe. These success stories dominate what we read, but there are more stories of bloggers not growing their audiences and feeling stuck.

You don’t hear much about these stories because they’re not on Page 1 of Google’s search results.

You might be in that situation right now. You’re producing valuable content but don’t see the traffic returns you’re hoping for.

The success of any content brand is based on your ability to drive traffic and conversions. All of the tactics for growing your content brand go back to these two principles.

So why do most blogs struggle? Why do most people feel stuck and not like they’re hitting their traffic goals. In this blog post, you’ll learn three key reasons this is the case.

 

#1: Not Enough Content Marketing

Most people follow what Brian Dean refers to as a “Publish and Pray” approach. These people create great content, put it on the web, and that’s it. At the most, a random tweet promotes the new piece of content.

If we want people to take the time to engage with our content, then we must take the time to effectively share that piece of content with our audiences. Before you publish your next blog post, plan out how you’ll promote it.

List all of your social networks on a piece of paper and how often you’ll promote the blog post when it goes live. One picture on Instagram, four tweets, one Facebook post, and one Pinterest pin are some of the options. And don’t forget about your email list.

When you come out with a new piece of content, approach from all touch points. However, the way you promote the content when you publish has the same importance as the post-publish plan.

How do you promote a blog post you wrote three months ago? For me, I frequently tweet my older content and pin it on Pinterest. Right now, those are my two major social networks for promoting evergreen content.

However, I also make it a point to link to my older content in my newer content. When my new content racks up visitors from all of the promotion I’m doing, some of those visitors will trickle to the older blog post that I mention in the newer blog post.

A lack of content marketing is often the main reason why content creators don’t get the traffic numbers they’re aiming for.

 

#2: You Don’t Leverage In-Content Relationship Building

While this is technically content marketing, it deserves it’s own section. That’s how important in-content relationship building is.

This is more than just responding to your visitors’ comments. This is mentioning people in your content and letting them know that you mentioned them.

This one strategy alone is amazing for building relationships, and some of these people may decide to share your content.

Even if they don’t share, they read your content and know who you are. Have a lot of relationships like that, and a lot of surprising opportunities and visibility can come your way in the long-term.

Force yourself to mention at least three people in each blog post you write. That includes outbound links as you can tell someone that you mentioned their content within your content.

When I publish a blog post, part of the marketing is reaching out to all of the people I mentioned. I’ve formed healthy relationships from this one tactic. The results have included social shares and guest appearances on my podcast.

Relationships are key in any niche you’re in. The most connected people in your niche are still looking for ways to get more connected and meet more people. In-Content Relationship Building allows you to do that.

 

#3: You’re Not Putting In Enough Time

What you put in determines what you get out. For some people, it’s not putting in enough time in the right areas.

I recently learned that when people say they never have enough time, that just means they aren’t using enough of their current time properly. If I go for a long stretch without doing any work (i.e. over an hour), I will also feel like I don’t have enough time in a day to get everything done.

You have enough time. The question is how are you using your time. Are you using at least an hour of your day to promote your content? Are you focusing on the right tasks or focusing on necessary but small impact tasks that can be delegated?

If you are not achieving the results you want, it always goes back to how you are using your time. Even if you think you’re using every minute to the best of its ability, you’re doing something wrong if you’re not achieving the results you want to achieve.

The first two tactics hold true for most people, but sometimes we need to take a deeper look at our work ethics and everything we do to find the answers we seek.

 

In Conclusion

Just because you may not be hitting your goals now doesn’t mean the script always has to read that way. Taking a deeper look at what you’re doing and continuing to self-educate yourself will help you in any area.

For blog traffic specifically, it comes down to consistently creating high value content and then promoting that content to your audience. Once you figure out what works best for you, it all comes down to how much time and effort you put in towards your goals.

Chances are you put in time and effort already, but even if you feel like you’re putting in a lot, chances are you need to put in even more.

What are your thoughts on these reasons most bloggers feel stuck? Do you have any tactics for overcoming stagnant traffic growth? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.