Marc's Blog

Are Your Blog Posts The Right Length?

October 28, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

I have written a few blog posts discussing the length of blog posts. It is a very interesting topic with experts taking different sides. Each time I read different blog posts about blog post length, my opinions sometimes change.

The ideal blog post length could very possibly be one of the biggest enigmas the blogging world knows of.

There Are Two Blog Post Lengths

Super long and super short. The super long blog posts are thousands of words long. These blog posts typically outperform the shorter blog posts on search engines. In the eyes of many SEO experts, longer blog posts equate to more traffic.

From a content standpoint, writing longer blog posts makes it possible to use examples to strengthen your claims. If a blogger claims that Facebook advertising is a great way to get more blog traffic, then I’m sure you would want more information. You may also want a case study which shows a brand using Facebook advertising to get more blog traffic at a low price.

Shorter blog posts solve problems that longer blog posts either create or ignore. Shorter blog posts prevent information overload. Imagine reading the 5,000 word blog post versus reading the 250 word blog post. The 250 word blog post can be read much quicker.

Shorter blog posts are designed for a high retention rate. Visitors are more likely to read a 250 word blog post word for word than a 5,000 word blog post. Longer blog posts are designed for more minutes per visitor. Even if a visitor reads 20% of a 5,000 word blog post, that person spends more time on the blog post than the person who read all of the 250 word blog post.

What Should You Do?

You can either choose writing short blog posts or long blog posts. There’s no in between. What you should do depends on four things:

What you are trying to accomplish? Do you want more blog traffic from the search engines? Do you want to construct your blog like a restaurant (when people come, they stay longer) or a fast food restaurant (people come more frequently but don’t stay as long)? There is nothing wrong with constructing your blog like a restaurant or constructing your blog like a fast food restaurant. And unlike the case with traditional restaurants VS McDonald’s, it is possible for both types of blogs to provide value.
What stage of the writing journey are you in? Writing a 250 word blog post is less time consuming than writing a 1,000 word blog post. If you are a new blogger, writing the shorter blog posts every day will allow you to build a strong commitment towards blogging. If you have been blogging for a few years, then you most likely have enough commitment to write 1,000 word blog posts.
What is your writing style? If you find it too tedious to write 1,000 word blog posts, then that’s not your writing style. At the same time, if you believe 250 words isn’t enough to convey your message, then go for the longer blog posts. In the end, blog visitors will only stick around if your blog posts are valuable.
How much time do you have? If you are a blogger who can only find 15 minutes per day to write blog posts, then shorter blog posts would be your cup of tea. If you are a blogger who can commit an hour per day to writing blog posts, then you have enough time to write 1,000+ word blog posts. At that point, it’s a question of whether you would want to write blog posts of that length or not.

The One Thing All Bloggers Need To Do

Regardless of which writing style you choose, there is one thing that you must do. You must make your blog posts easy for your readers to properly digest. That means smaller walls of text, shorter sentences, and tiny paragraphs.

Imagine how different this blog post would be if it were one massive paragraph. If it were, I bet you wouldn’t have reached this point.

When I write my blog posts, I make sure no paragraph is more than five lines long. Most of my paragraphs stop at the 2-3 lines range. If I make them longer, it becomes more difficult for people to read them on their computer screens.

That’s one of the reasons I create small breaks of text like this.

But the way you organize the text of the blog post is just one part of making a blog post more easily digestible.

The second method is just as valuable, and it is something I often forget to do. You must include relevant pictures throughout your blog posts that strengthen the meaning of your content. I don’t always do that on my blog. Some bloggers go as far as adding 10 different pictures per blog post. You can see how I used pictures to strengthen my content in a blog post that got published on Jeff Bullas’ Blog.

The pictures provide value and illustrate my points more effectively. My brother refers to these types of pictures as food for the eyes.

Not only are pictures food for the eyes, but they are also food for the brain. Pictures (especially infographics) have received more attention over the years because of staggering facts such as the human mind being able to comprehend an image 60,000 times faster than text. We like to see pictures, so give us food for the eyes (and brain) whenever you can.

In Conclusion

The length of your blog posts depends on your writing style and ability to provide value. The ultimate goal of every blog post is to provide value. Some bloggers achieve this goal with 250 words while other bloggers achieve this goal with 5,000 words.

Some blog posts provide more value than others, but word count isn’t the only factor that determines the amount of value that gets provided.

This topic on the ideal blog post length will rage on for many decades to come. Some data will suggest writing 2,000 word blog posts while other data may suggest shortening your blog posts.

In the end, if you can enjoy blogging while providing value, you’ve hit the right blog post length. What is your ideal blog post length? What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any tips for writing better blog posts? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Get More Traffic From Your Email List

October 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

When most people think about the success of their email lists, they think about the growth of those email lists. These people ask questions like “How do I gain twice as many subscribers?” and “How do all of these top marketers get thousands of subscribers every day?”

Yes, it is important to grow your email list. I ask myself questions related to email list growth all of the time.

However, the growth of your email list is not enough. The value of your email list is more vital. As an extreme example, if you want 100,000 subscribers tomorrow, I could more than easily give you those 100,000 subscribers. I simply hire someone to create 100,000 unique email addresses and then those email addresses get added to your list.

They are fake, and an email list with 1,000 targeted subscribers would perform better than the email list with the 100,000 fake subscribers.

This example is primarily designed to establish the difference between growth and value of an email list. The results you get from your email list (i.e. clicks, sales, relationships) determine the value of that email list.

Now for a more realistic example:

Marketer #1 has an email list of 10,000 people. Of those 10,000 people, 100 of them click on the link to the blog post. Marketer #2 has an email list of 3,000 people. Of those 3,000 people, 300 of them click on the link to the blog post.

In this scenario, I would rather be Marketer #2 than Marketer #1. Size is only part of the equation. The masters of email marketing are able to get results like Marketer #2 while growing an email list like Marketer #1. How is it possible to combine the two together? This blog post shows you how.

Note for the reader: Growing your email list is important, but this blog post will be more geared towards what you do once you have the email list. If you want a blog post more focused on growing your email list, go here.

#1: Send More Emails To The People On Your List

Sending an email blast lets your subscribers see you in their inboxes. If you consistently send awesome email blasts, two things happen:

Trust is built
People know when to check their inboxes for your content

I know exactly when to check my inbox for Seth Godin’s content because he always publishes his blog posts at the same time of day. I figured out when he publishes his blog posts after receiving numerous emails filled with value that always landed in my inbox at the same time of day.

Sending more emails to your subscribers also means more results. Let’s say your average email gets 50 clicks from your subscribers. If you send one email blast to your list per month, then you get 600 clicks from your email list per year. However, if you send one email blast per week, then you get 2,600 clicks per year. That’s a difference of 2,000 clicks.

For some marketers, sending one email blast per month versus sending one email blast per week can be the difference between hundreds of thousands of clicks. While you shouldn’t be excessive with your email blasts, sending at least one email blast per week builds recognition between you and your subscribers.

Once the recognition is built and you continue providing value, the trust comes naturally.

#2: Resend The Same Email To The People Who Didn’t Open Your Email The First Time

Some services such as iContact make it possible for you to segment the people in your list. You can segment the people within your list to provide them with content more specific to their needs.

You can also create a segment containing a list of people who did not open your email blasts. For my most recent email blast, I will create a segment of all of the people who did not open the email. Then, I change the subject line of the email and send the identical email to those people one day later.

On the surface, this strategy resembles excessive email marketing. Sending two emails in two days may sound like a lot. However, the only people who get the email are the people who did not read your first email blast.

This is an important distinction. It is possible that some people lost your email blast within their inbox. Maybe it went into spam mail. There are many different ways that even the most loyal subscribers can skip over one of your email blasts.

If they see your email the next day, the loyal subscribers will open the email and read your message. You can also get the attention of some of your other subscribers who have not been opening as many of your email blasts.

For some marketers, this one decision has led to a 10% increase in open rate for their email blasts. In the email marketing world, a 10% increase in open rate is very significant. The best part is that you don’t have to put in any additional work to make it happen.

All you do is change the email’s subject line and resend it to the people who didn’t open the email blast the first time.

#3: Promote Your Blog Posts Within Your Autoresponders

An autoresponder is the most important part of email marketing. When people subscribe to an email list, they get a series of emails delivered to their inboxes within a few days. These autoresponder messages are designed to strengthen the relationship between you and your subscriber. After you write the messages, they run on autopilot.

Within your autoresponder messages, you can promote (almost) anything. In my autoresponder messages, I decide to promote my blog posts. The reason for my choice is that most of my email blasts promote my blog posts. The autoresponder is a way of making my subscribers more comfortable with my email blasts—high value blog posts.

If I only sent videos in my email blasts, then my autoresponder messages would only consist of videos. The autoresponder sets the tone for what type of content subscribers should expect and how the relationship will build.

For my blog, this also means consistent traffic to specific blog posts. Sometimes, I will choose to promote one of my blog posts that I know is good, but for some reason it isn’t getting as much traffic as expected. I sometimes put these blog posts within an autoresponder so they get consistent traffic.

That consistent traffic combined with social media traffic allows those blog posts to perform better on the search engines.

Your autoresponder messages are the most important messages for building a relationship between you and your subscribers. If you build the relationship right, sales will follow. Choose your autoresponder messages and the blog posts you promote within those autoresponders carefully.

#4: Write Irresistible Subject Lines

The subject line of your email blasts are just as important as the content within the email blasts themselves. The reality of email marketing is that there are only two reasons why people would open up an email:

The subscriber automatically recognizes your name and has admired your content for a long time
Irresistible subject line

For almost all of your new subscribers, #2 applies more often than #1. Your new subscribers learn who you are as they read more of your email blasts. Writing irresistible subject lines is an art that requires constant experimentation.

Some of the rules differ by niche but other rules are the same. The best way to discover what works is by observing what works for other people and seeing if that will work for you too. I noticed that the email marketers who used more lowercase letters got my attention.

The traditional email subject line looks like this: 5 Ways To Get More Followers

The format that gets more attention looks like this: 5 ways to get more followers

While it’s just a small difference, I gave it a try anyway. Sure enough, more people opened my email blast.

There are plenty of pull-words and other tips that you can use to write irresistible subject lines. Some of the best methods involve outside of the box thinking with this question, “How do I get their attention.”

Nowadays, including “Donald Trump” in the subject line gets massive attention. Imagine the whirlwind of attention someone would get if the subject line misspelled Trump’s name. If you want to go viral, that would work. Whether you’d want to go viral for that though is entirely up to you.

The moral of the story is that there are plenty of tips on the web for writing irresistible subject lines. However, don’t be afraid to experiment on your own and try to discover your own methods. Maybe the email blast with the subject line “Please don’t open this email” gets more opens and clickthroughs than any of your other email blasts.

Learn the tips and then expand upon them through trial and error.

In Conclusion

Growing your email list is important. The results you get from your current email list are more important. It is easy to get 100,000 fake people on your email list. It is far more difficult to get 1,000 targeted people on your email list.

How you engage with the people on your email list determines the results that you get. In the beginning, you may not get many results, but that is true with all entrepreneurial endeavors. While results don’t come often in the beginning, patient persistence brings forth the results beyond our wildest dreams.

How do you engage with your email list? Which of these tips was your favorite? What results do you want to see from your email list? Do you have any email marketing tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Things To Do On Instagram Right Now

October 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Instagram is booming. With over 300 million users, Instagram has quickly emerged as “just another social network” to one of the top social networks on the web. Brands have capitalized on the opportunity and have accrued large audiences on Instagram.

However, not everyone uses Instagram for business. While Twitter and Facebook are established as great social networks for business, Instagram is usually left out. Although Instagram gets left out, it has a lot of firepower.

Instagram recently rolled out paid ads, and these ads should soon enough bring forth sensational results. Why? Facebook owns Instagram, and Facebook ads are the best type of social media ads today. You can get highly targeted likes for less than $0.01 per like.

Facebook has mastered the social media advertising game. Instagram is next. Imagine how game changing it would be if you could get highly targeted Instagram followers for as little as $0.01 per follower.

It’s going to happen, and at this stage of the game, you can grow a large Instagram audience without paying a penny. While a post on a Facebook Page is seen by a small percentage of your fans, an Instagram post will get seen by a large chunk of your audience. The average photo or video posted by an Instagram brand reaches 25-35% of that brand’s followers.

You don’t want to wait any longer. Instagram is the social network that needs your attention now. Regardless of whether you’ve been focusing on Instagram all along or Instagram for business never crossed your mind, these are the four things you must do on Instagram right now.

#1: Post Daily

Each time you post a new picture on Instagram, your audience sees your content. As you begin posting pictures more often, the people within your audience start to remember you. Some people in your audience will remember you so well that they will go to your profile for new posts.

In other words, they won’t wait for your posts to show up in their home feed. They want to see your latest Instagram posts the moment you cross their minds.

When you post every day, you become a familiar face to the people within your audience. As more people engage with your Instagram posts, there will be certain people who you also become familiar with. This is how relationships on social media are built.

The relationships you build on social media can lead to great opportunities. Some of the relationships I built on social media led to podcast interviews, guest blogging opportunities, and more.

Finally, by posting daily, you have a stronger incentive to grow on that social network. If you have thousands of pictures on Instagram, that is an incentive to make all of the work you put into your Instagram account worthwhile. That same incentive is not as powerful for a Twitter account with only five tweets.

Posting daily lets you embrace Instagram, see its potential, and grow an audience of people who appreciate your content.

#2: Use Canva To Create Awesome Pictures

One of the main reasons people don’t post on Instagram every day is because they don’t believe they have that many pictures worth sharing. There are only so many pictures within the camera roll. What do you do when you run out of awesome pictures to share?

There are two solutions.

Take another picture
Create a picture

I prefer creating my pictures and then posting them to Instagram. Canva is the best free tool on the web for creating pictures. You get numerous templates, background colors, and add-ons to choose from.

If you don’t like their add-ons, you can always upload your own pictures (or pictures from the web) to Canva’s dashboard.

#3: Consider Outsourcing The Work

The largest barrier that held me back from utilizing Instagram was time. I saw Instagram’s potential but would never have the time to get to it. With the mix of growing my Twitter audience and now focusing most of my time on Udemy, my time was spread too thin for Instagram.

Now most of my work is outsourced. All I do on Twitter now is engage with my followers because everything else has been outsourced. All of that time I once spent following people and scheduling tweets gets devoted to other parts of my business.

Now I am putting more time and effort towards Instagram. But even now, outsourcing still reigns. I hire people to create the pictures for my Instagram account and this blog. I didn’t create the picture you saw at the top of this blog post.

And I have no shame in admitting that. Outsourcing some of your Instagram activity allows you to buy back valuable time that you can repurpose into other parts of your business. Even if you don’t outsource your Instagram activity, you need to outsource something in your business immediately.

#4: Use HootSuite To Schedule Posts From Your Desktop For Free

The second largest barrier holding me back from utilizing Instagram was poor desktop compatibility. Since I do most of my work on my Mac Book Pro, and Instagram isn’t as optimized for the desktop as it is for mobile, I didn’t spend much time on Instagram.

Then HootSuite came through in the clutch (again) by making Instagram a part of the dashboard. Now it is possible to schedule Instagram posts for free straight from the HootSuite dashboard regardless of whether you are using a mobile device or a desktop.

The bridge has finally been connected and made free for everyone. But if you do not cross that bridge to Instagram Domination, then the bridge serves no purpose.

If you don’t have time to schedule your Instagram posts, you can easily outsource that work to someone else so you can focus on your Instagram account’s growth.

In Conclusion

Instagram is a booming social network that is only going to get bigger and better for business. If you do not utilize Instagram yet, then now is the time to start. Right now, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts about Instagram for business? How do you use Instagram? What tips do you have for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Make A Comeback With Your Blog

October 21, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

The main reason most people give up on blogging is because they don’t make money right away. These people look for a short-term way to make money, hope blogging will be the solution, and then get disappointed.

In the long-term, blogging can become very profitable, but in the short-term, blogging doesn’t make a lot of money. This realization results in many people leaving their blogs behind and leaving them in the back of the internet’s closet.

Some of these people come back to their blogs and ask themselves, “How do I start over again?”

These people want to become bloggers again and understand that although there isn’t much short-term profit, the long-term profit can be huge.

But blogging isn’t all about money. If you don’t enjoy writing blog posts, you won’t have fun and you won’t make money. The most successful bloggers also love what they write about. That shouldn’t be shocking.

If you find yourself returning to your blog for the first time in several months, or if you need to renew your blogging spirit, it’s time for you to make a comeback.

Type Away

If you consistently write over 1,000 words per day, it will quickly become a habit. Habits are easier to stick with since they eventually become encoded into our work ethic without second thought. For me, writing thousands of words per day is a habitual process because that’s how many words I write every day.

So how does typing thousands of words per day become a second-nature habit? The first step is to understand how habits are formed in the first place. If you do the same activity every day for a little over two months, that activity suddenly becomes a habit.

For two months, it was difficult for me to keep the commitment of writing 1,000 words each day. Now keeping that commitment is just as easy as keeping my commitment of eating food and drinking water. Writing thousands of words per day has become an essential part of my day.

The other step is to give yourself an incentive to continue. Give yourself a reward for staying commitment and a reason to avoid stopping. No technique works better than the Jerry Seinfeld technique. Here’s the technique in a nutshell:

Get a calendar
Put a red “X” on each day you stay true to your commitment (i.e. writing 1,000 words in a day)
Make that streak go as long as possible

Soon enough, you will be riding on a hot streak. Once you are on a hot streak, you will never want it to end. It’s one of the reasons I still play on the piano, write over 1,000 words, and do something for my Udemy courses every single day.

I have hot streaks in multiple areas. It would be a shame for me to let any of those hot streaks go back to zero.

Figure Out Why You Left Or Lost Your Enthusiasm For Blogging In The First Place

We’ve all heard of the phrase, “Don’t make the same mistakes again.” If you make a mistake the first time, it is still possible to make the same mistake a second time. Some people make the same mistakes dozens of times.

Identifying why you took a course of action that led to a mistake is one solution to not making the same mistake again. Knowing why you stopped blogging or lost your enthusiasm for it will let you know how to avoid making the same mistake.

Once you know what happened, you can then create adjustments that prevent you from making the same mistake again. Build habits that prevent you from making the mistake(s) that resulted in you losing your enthusiasm or stop blogging all together.

The Best Is Yet To Come

Each time I felt down about my business, I would always think of this saying. I’ll never forget the impact it had on me the first time I heard it. Depending on how seriously you take this advice and how you combine it with your work, these six words may become your prophecy.

When you write your blog posts and look at your stats, understand that the best is yet to come. Just because you may not be getting many visitors now does not mean that will always be the case. This saying doesn’t guarantee success, but it will inspire you to put in more work than you have ever put in before.

This was the piece of advice that made me realize I had to outsource most of my business now so I could repurpose my time towards more important goals. The more work you put in the more luck you get. Believe that the best is yet to come, and you will always have something to head towards.

In Conclusion

On some days, blogging gets challenging. For some reason, our goals seem to become the most challenging as we approach the accomplishment of those goals. During one stretch, I felt incredibly challenged with trying to grow my Twitter audience. In five years, I wanted to have 100,000 Twitter followers. It felt impossible.

Then, I hit a breakthrough and now have over 250,000 Twitter followers. In my original plan, I still wouldn’t be past 100,000 Twitter followers.

Maybe the reason why you feel uncomfortably challenged is because you are about to hit a breakthrough.

4 Step Formula To Always Living Your Ideal Day

October 19, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Prepare to get surprised. Living your ideal day each day is not as difficult as it sounds. It all starts with a decision to be a better you and then knowing and implementing the rest of the steps (don’t worry if you don’t know what those steps are. That’s what this blog post is all about).

Living your ideal day every day comes down to a four step formula that gets easier to implement over time. The best part about this four step formula is that you can always utilize it to live a more ideal day even when you reach your goal of the ideal day.

#1: Craft It

You can’t reach your destination if you don’t know where you are going. The first step of this formula is to simply identify what your ideal day is. For some people, this involves thinking outside of the box. Imagine if there was just one day when you didn’t have to do any work except for the work that you chose to do.

If you choose an ideal day filled with no work whatsoever and a day filled with watching TV, then this blog post isn’t for you. However, if you choose an ideal day where you are only addressing your most important work, then this blog post is for you.

My ideal day has slight variations based on my business’ path. Here are the main things I would like to do every day:

Write some blog posts
Do some videos for my Udemy courses
Do some videos for my YouTube channel
Play the piano
Run
Engage with my social media followers
Do one Periscope broadcast

Some of these activities get split up and I manage to do them every other day. However, this is a general idea of what type of work I am doing on my ideal day. What does this mean?

Everything else is a distraction.

Bold, italics, and underlined—the whole package. I’ve never done that on my blog before, but I made an exception because this is such an important point. That brings us into the second step.

#2: Outsource Anything That Doesn’t Fit

Just a few months ago, scheduling tweets and following people on Twitter would have been on that list.

No longer. They were distractions that I outsourced a few weeks ago. Although they are important for the growth of my Twitter account, they were distractions nevertheless. Now my Twitter audience grows like normal, but I get a few hours back every week.

That’s how Udemy course creation found its way on the list. I also have more time to expand my audience on Pinterest and sending pins every day. My bad. I meant to say I outsource all of that Pinterest activity. If I had to spend hours growing my Pinterest audience and sending dozens of pins each day, I wouldn’t have as much time to live my ideal day.

So I’m outsourcing a lot of my activity to other people. Does that make me a lazy entrepreneur? It makes me lazy in the same sense as a billionaire. My guess is that most billionaires have outsourced 99% of their businesses. Billionaires still do a lot for their businesses, but no billionaire is a solopreneur of any kind. Their employees do most of the work.

It is easy to perceive someone who outsources most of his/her business as a lazy entrepreneur, but it’s quite the opposite. Many of these people are more productive than anyone else with their time.

Remember, your ideal day is super important. Anything that stands in the way is an obstacle that stands in the way of your ideal day.

#3: Turn Each Activity In Your Ideal Day Into A Habit

I can write blog posts with my eyes closed (but I don’t. That’s no fun). Writing thousands of blog posts across numerous blogs and writing over a dozen books allowed me to memorize the entire keyboard.

That’s what happens when you do the same activity every day for a long period of time.

One activity I listed in my ideal day that may shock people was playing the piano. It’s something I started recently, so I haven’t had much time to talk about it in my blog posts. According to science, it takes a little more than two months to turn something into a habit.

After playing the piano for over two months, it has now become a habit. I never go to bed now unless I play the piano (on vacations, I make an exception). On some days, I am only playing the piano for five minutes. On other days, I am playing on the piano for well over two hours.

What inspired me to play the piano was a reawakening of my passion for music. What inspired me to play it every day was a powerful case study of a girl who dances for 365 days straight. If you haven’t watched the video yet, leave this blog and watch it now. You’ll be glad you did, and the content will still be here.

#4: Always Anticipate Having Less Time

No matter how much I outsource my business, I always feel as if I have less time than I need. No, I’m not spoiled or unproductive with me time. Rather, this feeling makes me more productive. There are two types of people in the world:

Person #1: “I have all of the time in the world.”

Person #2: “I am running out of time. It’s literally like sand slipping through my fingers.”

Person #1 has no urgency to act and achieve. Person #2 on the other hand has a larger incentive. If I believe it will take me six hours to accomplish one of my goals, I only give myself four hours to accomplish that same goal. More action is taken, and I discover ways to streamline the process much quicker than if I were to have those extra two hours.

The less time you have, the more urgent something becomes. Urgency creates effective action.

In Conclusion

Living your ideal day is important. We know that, but living the ideal day every day is not a fantasy. It is quite possible with a mix of direction and effort. This four step formula is the direction you need. Now it’s just a matter of putting in the work.

Right now, I want to hear from you. Which step in this formula do you think is the most important? How do you see this four step formula happening in your life? How close are you to living your ideal day? 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.