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My 2014 Resolutions

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Every New Year is a year that we set the bar higher. You may have given yourself a lot of goals for the New Year, and I want you to leave a comment sharing your goals. I will offer tips and advice that will help you accomplish those goals as well. Here is a list of my 2014 goals:

  1. Publish 6 books. I have been inspired by John Locke to pursue publishing numerous books again. At first I thought I would publish 1-2 per year. I was mistaken. My book Lead The Stampede may end up being published before summer.
  2. Launch 15 Udemy training courses. Udemy is something I have been using for a short amount of time, but I have already been able to create training courses about blogging and Twitter.
  3. Get 1,000 daily visitors on my blog. I have been consistently getting 150 daily visitors on my blog.
  4. Earn $50,000+ annually. I won’t go into how much I am earning now, but this is a possibility.
  5. Have 100,000 Twitter followers. If I go back to gaining 200+ followers every day (I’m currently at 150+ daily followers), I will have 100,000 followers before the end of the year. This will also help out towards my goal of getting 1,000 daily visitors on my blog.

I choose to publish this blog post a week after the New Year so everyone would be reminded of their New Year’s resolutions. What are your resolutions?

 

UPDATES:

Instead of publishing 15 Udemy training courses, I am going to publish 2-3 training courses with at least 40 hours of content each. Quality over quantity.

I am also aiming for 50,000 followers on Pinterest.

I will publish at least 4 books, but I will strive to publish 6 books.

 

 

Why Narrowing Down Your Customer Audience Is Better Than Expanding It

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Many people are focused on creating different products to satisfy the needs of different people. They want to create products that millions of people would want. Then they want to create another product that a different group of a million people would want. The problem is that the web is a very noisy place. There are millions of sellers who sell the same products. Some of them do a better job at making their product unique than others, but they are selling similar or identical products.

Instead of going into the mainstream head first, you need to narrow down your customer audience. Instead of writing a book about social media (2 million potential customers), you can write a book about a specific social network such as Twitter (200,000 potential customers). You can also write a book about how to perform a specific function on Twitter such as getting more retweets (50,000 potential customers).

The numbers are not real, but they serve as an example. Most people would decide to write a book about social media since the amount of potential customers is the greatest in that area. However, the competition for social media is a thick one. The competition for Twitter is smaller, and the competition for performing specific functions on Twitter is even smaller.

The mainstream is the place where too many people go. In order to get noticed, your products have to satisfy a small group of people. If the audience size is 2 million, and your product satisfies 200,000 people, that is a small audience compared to the big audience of 2 million. The smaller your audience, the more specific your product is. When your product is specific, it will get more sales because your product will solve specific problems.

Don’t focus on the quantity of customers. Focus on the quality customers: the people who will buy all of your products and tell all of their friends about them.

How To Implement Strategic Blocks Of Time Into Your Day

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When you think of taking a break, what do you think of? Do you think of family time, watching television, relaxing, or something similar? Those breaks are necessary in order to wind down from doing a lot of work. However, it is possible to utilize some of those breaks in a strategic manner.

I wanted to find a way to learn more about my niche while taking a break at the same time. Watching television didn’t do me any good towards that goal, but I came up with the solution when I was on Amazon. I saw business books on sale, and I decided to get the ones that I believed I would learn the most from.

That is why I have been able to do reviews on The Pumpkin Plan, Purple Cow, and The 12 Week Year. Reading books written by the experts of my niche is how I take some of my breaks, and what I learn during those breaks is incredible.

How are you taking your breaks? I challenge you to take a strategic break (I call them strategic blocks) once a day in order to learn more about your niche so you can be more successful. You will be amazed with what you learn.

The Difference Between Being Busy And Being Productive

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Just because someone is busy does not mean that person is being productive. Being busy and being productive are two things that many people get mixed up. You can be busy but unproductive. You could also be busy and productive at the same time.

Being busy means being occupied with a task. The task may be to look through your email, respond to clients’ emails, or writing a blog post. However, not all tasks are productive. In order to identify which tasks are productive, you need to ask yourself what your main goals are. After you ask yourself what your main goals are, ask yourself how the task at hand lines up with your main goals.

Checking your inbox most likely has nothing to do with recording a video for YouTube. Checking the inbox makes you busy but unproductive. Writing a blog post related to a book you are writing is productive towards accomplishing the main goal. Therefore, writing the blog post allows you to be both busy and productive at the same time.

Always being busy does not necessarily mean you will get better results. It is how you spend your time when you are busy that decides the kinds of results you will see in the long run. If you are busy and productive at the same time, your results are going to look really good.

 

Focus On What You Are Good At

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Niche SpecializationWhen it comes to time management, one of the tips is to reduce the amount of time spent procrastinating. Reducing the amount of time you spend procrastinating will allow you to accomplish your goals, but you should not focus on the negative aspect of time management.

While spending less time procrastinating is good, you should spend more time focusing on what you are good at. By focusing on what you are good at, you will give yourself more self-esteem and get more done in a shorter amount of time.

In order to get really good time management, you need to do something that you are good at and that you enjoy doing. The successful people enjoy what they do, but they are also good at what they do.

The mindset has the ability to affect everything that you do…good or bad. Instead of looking at the glass as half empty, look at the glass as half full. Instead of focusing on eliminating the procrastinators, focus on the positive: the things you are good at. By focusing on what you are good at, you will want to spend more time doing what you are good at. The procrastinators will get reduced on their own, but only if you focus on what you are good at and passionate about.

 

One Powerful Way To Produce Higher Quality Videos

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reading script

Videos are more important than ever, and I believe that videos have the potential to be game changers for any business. However, too many people are ignoring one method that will allow them to produce higher quality videos.

All you need to do is create an outline for your video. The outline should highlight everything that you want to talk about in your video. What do you want to tell your viewers? What tidbits of information do you need to include? What examples and testimonials do you want to talk about? The best way to get all of this information into one video with few retakes is by writing an outline.

In addition, you should put this outline somewhere you can see it while doing the video. You can put the video directly above the camera you are using or on a wall that no one can see. You don’t have to memorize the outline you create. You just need to see the outline while doing the video.

This tactic will allow you to say everything that you want to say and not blank out when you are recording the video. Give your viewers your best by taking the time to create an outline for your videos. With an outline, your videos will become longer and get more views.