performance report

After some iffy months, my performance on this month put me back on track. Not only did I make some big steps in May, but I also set the foundation for more successful months to follow.

Personal Development Plan

Before we continue, I want to give a big shout out to Jim Johnson for giving me this plan. He’ll be featured in a Breakthrough Success Episode later this month.

A Personal Development Plan is a plan that you use to feed your mind with more knowledge. I am going to develop my Personal Development Plan as I go, but here are some of the highlights:

Read for at least 30 minutes every day

Listen to 30 minutes of audiobooks every day

Carry at least one book with me where I go so I can read during time I’d normally waste waiting for someone or something

Interview at least 7 people each week for Breakthrough Success (I prefer to do more episodes than I need to so I’m ahead)

Breakthrough Success—Most Downloads This Month

I had a call with my podcasting coach towards the end of the month (by the way, I find I’m more on track after coaching calls. A business coach is great for anyone). We talked about Breakthrough Success’ downloads.

At some point, he asked me if we were going to hit a download record this month.

I told him that this month might be the month with the second most downloads in the podcast’s history. Breaking the previous record seemed like a long shot.

But here’s the thing. While I was doing some of the tasks my coach told me to do, there were other tasks that I completely neglected.

That changed over the last few days. I did more of what me coach told me to do, and sure enough, Breakthrough Success has been downloaded more in May than in any other month (a little over 2,000 downloads, but that’s since I haven’t promoted it as much as my blog).

I am really excited about Breakthrough Success’ future, and I am not too far away from getting 10,000 monthly downloads.

200 Reviews Before Episode 200

The goal I’m focusing on for June is getting 200 reviews for Breakthrough Success before reaching Episode 200. In case you didn’t know already, I am heavily investing myself into Breakthrough Success.

On May 30th, Breakthrough Success had a total of 32 reviews. I know there are 31 days in May, but I’m basing the review total on the day I wrote the Performance Report.

Episode 200 will air on July 12th, and I am super excited for it. That gives me less than 50 days to get the remaining 168 reviews I need to fulfill my goal.

You can support the goal by reviewing Breakthrough Success here.

If we get to 200 reviews before Episode 200, I will turn Breakthrough Success into a DAILY podcast…and each week, one of the episodes will be me taking you behind the scenes with what I’m doing and sharing insights.

Review Of May 2018 Goals:

#1: Land 5 Clients For My Coaching Services—this did not happen, but I have a process in place and have been working to make this happen. I’ll give myself the same goal for June.

#2: Host 2 Webinars—this just did not happen. I haven’t hosted a webinar in a few weeks and know I need to get back into the game.

#3: Revamp The CMP Sales Page—there were a bunch of migration problems with my websites and the tech end was a mess. Everything is back to normal, but the (at least) two week long problems hurt my morale for revamping the sales page

#4: Add 20 Videos To CMP—same with revamping the CMP sales page, but it’s actually good I didn’t do this. You’ll learn why later.

#5: Read 10 Books—I did this 🙂

Books I Read

As A Man Thinketh by James Allen

The Going Pro Manifesto by Brian Moran

A Coach And A Miracle by Jim Johnson

Five Stars by Carmine Gallo

Procrastinate On Purpose by Rory Vaden

The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha

Wishes Fulfilled by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Reinvented Life by Damion Lupo & Christofer C. Askby

Kiss That Frog by Brian Tracy

I’m more than halfway done with both Think And Grow Rich: The Legacy and my second read through of Mike Michalowicz’s The Pumpkin Plan. I’ve also read Kindle books which were not included in this Performance Report.

June 2018 Goals

#1: Create A Keyword Research Plan For The Rest Of The Year: Madeleine Taylor talked about her keyword research plan in Episode 186 of Breakthrough Success (airs on June 22nd). I’m following it to a tee. Basically, I find a bunch of good keywords that inspire the blog post ideas. I will get back to more consistent blog posts soon but have been bogged down by the book I’m working on.

#2: Finish The Book: I will write some words for it each day, but I am dedicating all of June 12-14 to finishing the book. The only things I will be doing during those three days other than writing the book are exercise, eat, spend time with family, and sleep. This is a strict routine that, combined with the other work I put in, should allow me to easily finish the book in June.

#3: Promote CMP: This is where not doing the 20 videos came in handy. I now have a three step approach for my flagship course.

The first step is to promote it. That means creating swipe copy, hosting webinars, creating a landing page with PLC, using Facebook ads, and creating affiliate links.

After I promote CMP and get traction, I’ll then tweak the sales page so it converts higher (and make a bigger push for affiliates).

After sales are coming in at a consistent and frequent rate, I’ll make more changes to the training course. There’s several hours of content in there already.

All I’m doing this month for CMP is promoting it.

#4: Land 5 Clients For My Coaching Services: My existing approach has some potential, but I will also take a page from my conversation with Nancy Ganzekaufer (airs on July 2nd). One of the things we discussed is that she doesn’t do free consults anymore. She said she only did this when her calendar got crowded with free consults and she shifted to paid consults and gradually got fully booked again. However, I will experiment with no free introductory calls for potential clients.

#5: Go Back To This Performance Report DAILY: I’m an action taker, but sometimes I go off the path. I set a goal for my blog for the following month and end up accomplishing a goal for my podcast instead. This has been a common theme in many of my Performance Reports. However, I will return to this Performance Report EVERY SINGLE DAY.

That way, I am more in sync with the goals I set out to accomplish.

In Conclusion

May was a great month after a few months of iffy results. Even though I didn’t accomplish all of my goals for May, some of them were unnecessary and I took action to accomplish the other goals.

Reading 10 books per month is an easy goal for me, but I won’t list that as a goal from now on. It’s something I expect myself to do, and I want my goals to focus on things I do to move my brand forward instead of knowledge acquisition.

I’m not knocking knowledge acquisition. In fact, I recommend creating a Personal Development Plan (Jim Johnson talked about that in Episode 187 which airs on June 8th).

However, I prefer to separate the two since one simply provides the stepping stones for the other.

What are your thoughts on this Performance Report? Do you have questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Don’t forget to review Breakthrough Success here if you haven’t already.

This was a month of reconnection after a stomach virus took up a week of February. Sometimes, I believe we can feel alone as we create content for our audiences. I know you and others will read this Performance Report and consume more of my content.

However, when I’m typing this Performance Report or creating any other piece of content, it’s just me. Then I get comments (which I will catch up on) and realize that there are people consuming my content.

I reconnected with the fact that I’m providing the content to real people who go beyond grouping terms like content creators and entrepreneurs. Hosting webinars this month helped me grasp this concept under a new light. I’ll talk more about that later.

iCalendar For Productivity

Now that I learned how to use iCalendar productively, I honestly don’t think I need another productivity tool.

One piece of advice I frequently came across in books was to schedule tasks into your day or else they won’t get done.

That’s why I wrote out different tasks and when I would do them on a sheet of paper. However, that took up time, and those pieces of paper got messy when I needed to make adjustments.

Enter iCalendar (or Google Calendar or your equivalent). I now schedule my entire day on iCalendar so I know what I have to do and when.

Here’s an example of what a day can look like on iCalendar (I could only get part of it in the shot).

I can look at this day and see what’s scheduled and when I have to do everything. I can also see how long each activity is supposed to last. This results in mini deadlines within my day.

I know I have a limited amount of time to pursue a task. If I go beyond that limited time, my schedule will soon become a mess due to the way I squeeze tasks throughout each day.

I’ll also print out each day from iCalendar so I can cross out each task with my pen upon completion. Crossing out your goal or using a checkmark with a pen is very different from just deleting it from iCalendar once you’ve completed the goal.

Webinars Are A Big Part Of My Future

I finally hosted my first webinar of 2018. While that one had no audio, my second webinar had audio and had a big impact on some of the attendees. With Twitter’s big changes having a significant impact on my traffic, I am now looking for new ways to drive traffic to my brand.

Webinars combined with ads will open the doors to more traffic, and more importantly, conversions.

I’ve already hosted a webinar for the Content Marketing Success Summit All-Access Pass. I plan on promoting Virtual Summit Blueprint next and working my way up to promoting the Content Marketing Plaza which is my flagship course.

For my first webinar (I’m referencing the webinar with audio), I got an EPC (earnings per conversion) of $1.38

That’s a small margin for error when using CPC (cost per conversion) ads to drive traffic to the webinar.

That’s why I’m promoting the Virtual Summit Blueprint at $197 in some of my future webinars. That way, I have more room with the EPC assuming everything else remains equal. In the everything being equal scenario, the webinar featuring my Blueprint would have a whooping $5.79 CPC.

That’s more than enough room for an ad.

The only challenge I have is that the first webinar I did was in-house. Everyone in the audience already knew me. Most of the people I get from ads may not know who I am which would affect the conversion rate.

CMSS II

One of my greatest successes in 2017 was the Content Marketing Success Summit. Over 50 speakers gathered together to share their insights and give attendees an incredible experience.

Now we’re in 2018, and I’m eager to run another virtual summit. I love the model, but I made two big mistakes last year.

The first big mistake was doing most of the work by myself. With the exception of video editing, I literally did everything by myself. I created the webpages while playing my part as customer service and the affiliate manager.

If you think that’s stressful enough, add the fact that I got excited and launched the Productivity Virtual Summit less than three months after CMSS. I was essentially working on two virtual summits at the same time. I believe this is possible with more preparation, but I definitely overdid it.

That’s why I’m only doing one virtual summit this year. My codename for it is CMSS II which will feature all past interviews and a bunch of new ones. The goal, which is very doable based on how many people I know and interview for my podcast, is to have a total of 70-80 speakers for CMSS II. It will be the same landing page and everything with a few minor tweaks.

Right now, the launch is slated for some time in November. I haven’t finalized dates yet since I want to see what other affiliate promotions are happening in November, but it is slated for November.

That gives me 7 months to prepare instead of the 3 months I got to prepare for the previous summit (while preparing for another one at the same time). I have more time to recruit affiliates and land top level speakers for the summit.

Books I Read

I didn’t keep track of this the way I should have. I read the books that I re-read each day, but I need to strengthen my reading habit for April.

I have 10 audiobooks that I haven’t read yet. The reason is that lately the bike has been bothering me, and that’s when I listen to most of my audiobooks. I also need to start biking again, so I’ll do more of a stretch beforehand to get on the bike and listen to more audiobooks.

I also need to read more paperbacks and hardcovers as well.

At the same time, I want to ensure that I’m reading books but taking action as well. This is the juggling act many of us face, and a focus on audiobooks will help me on the action taking part.

Review Of March 2018 Goals

#1: Run FB Ads For The Content Marketing Success Summit: While I do not have FB ads running for CMSS, I have hosted multiple webinars. Once I have a high converting webinar (likely in April), I will use Facebook ads to get more attendees.

#2: Get Involved With 4 Cross Promotions: This didn’t happen but I have reached out to several YouTubers about collaboration series. I’m excited about putting out daily content on YouTube soon and hope to collab with a bunch of awesome people.

#3: Plan Out A CMP Promotion: I have a vague idea of when I’ll promote CMP again. I know it will be after CMSS II, but I’ll run some webinars for it beforehand to get the conversions solid.

#4: Write The Draft For My Next Book: I made progress but not enough progress. I still have a decent way to go but can get it done in April.

#5: Delegate More Tasks: I either stayed the same or slightly improved.

April 2018 Goals

#1: Run A Webinar On FB Ads With A $3 NEPC: I intend on making a net profit of $3 for every opt-in to my webinar. I’ll test it first and then run FB ads right after. EPC stands for earnings per conversion, and I added the N for net. That’s why NEPC is there.

#2: Finish The First Draft Of My Next Book: I have two rounds for my book. The first round is me getting to 30,000 words and laying out all of the topics. The second round is more focused on storytelling and incorporating examples throughout the book.

#3: Confirm CMSS II Dates: This is something I can do in less than an hour, but I need to go back to last year’s launch and analyze what worked before I determine how long the launch will be and when it will take place. I also need to make sure my launch doesn’t conflict with another launch in my niche.

#4: Start Uploading Daily YouTube Videos: I am very excited about this goal. I’ve always wanted to hit 100K subscribers on YouTube, and while I am a long way from that goal (I’m about to break 3K), I am excited to be back in action. You’ll see daily videos from me soon enough.

#5: Get Traffic From Twitter Again: Twitter’s new rule about no evergreen tweets in a repeating cycle threw my traffic off towards the end of the month. My goal will be to regain traffic that I lost by using Twitter in new ways. I believe these changes are better for Twitter overall but will be a pain for marketers in the short-term.

In Conclusion

The biggest win, without question, was getting back in the webinar game. I see so much potential now that I’m taking webinars seriously.

The revenue I generate from the webinars will help pay off current expenses while expanding my horizons…all while boosting my profit (reminder: that’s different from revenue).

What are your thoughts on this Performance Report? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

While I’m hard on myself for most performance reports, I am very happy with my overall performance in November. I have some very interesting ideas for 2018 and plan to finish strong in 2017.

Speak Out For Net Neutrality

Before you read the performance report, read this. It’s important and I know you’ve heard about it from someone.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai, big phone and cable companies, and their lobbyists want to destroy Net Neutrality. Destroying net neutrality would let cable and phone companies decide who’s heard and who isn’t.

What’s that mean?

If for some reason one of these companies (let’s say AT&T) gets paid off by a site like Amazon to make their site run faster and the Amazon site run significantly slower (think about trying to load Amazon on a 10-year-old computer but worse).

Or they could just block Amazon all together. That means all of the self-published authors writing books on kdp.amazon.com lose a big chunk of their audience because greedy companies and lobbyists are trying to fill their pockets.

What about the people who use Amazon FBA to make a living? And Amazon’s just one of the many websites that would be affected. Google, Facebook, and any website you visit (including yours if you have one) are all at risk. This wouldn’t just affect the big guys. It would affect all of us.

They could shut me (or anyone) down because I’m talking about net neutrality, or just because they feel like it or have a conflict of interest. This quote sums it up:

“Our world is digital – all digital. To make the most of it, my delivery truck and your delivery truck should have equal access to the same highway system and connecting roads. Just like we do in the physical world.” — Ad Age

This is like Chris Christie’s Bridge Scandal, but digitally spread across whoever AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others would like to choose. They can slow down digital bridges and even tear them apart. As our world revolves around digital, this wouldn’t just disrupt businesses, but also the entire nation.

Here’s an idea for the companies and lobbyists who want to end Net Neutrality. Instead of making money by threatening some of the most innovative companies on the planet (and possibly getting them to pay up for normal load times which everyone gets now…and to avoid getting blocked out entirely), why not do something innovative that actually generates revenue and results in happier customers?

Just a thought.

Here’s the link if you want to help.

I know you didn’t expect to hear about Net Neutrality in this Performance Report. I promise it won’t come up again. The rest of the Performance Report is strictly business. I’m enjoying my privilege to write my content on the free web where the big companies don’t decide what websites I can and can’t visit (or have to wait very long before they load).

Daily Blog Posts Will Return In 2018

I feel so happy just to write that. I’ve mentioned daily content in past performance reports and found myself struggling to reach that goal each month. That’s when the frustration mounted and it seemed as if I got harder and harder on myself in each performance report.

Now I finally have a system that works for me.

I don’t just publish a new blog post every day. I write exactly one blog post every day. With past experiments of content batching and writing multiple blog posts at the same time, this approach works best for me.

You may be naturally better at batching the content, but I prefer to write one blog post each day. Nothing more and nothing less. If I have a second idea I really want to write about, I let all of that excitement overflow into the next day.

It only takes me 30-45 minutes to write most of my blog posts, and I get started on them first thing in the morning. Now I can write 365 blog posts or more each year.

If you include contributors, we could return to the golden 12-hour standard, but I’m not ready to make that commitment yet. However, this commitment is a big step in the right direction.

One Final Step To Daily Podcasts

If it were free, I would have no problem with hosting my own daily show. However, a daily podcast comes with a significant boost in storage and editing costs. I have a month to figure out how I’ll reduce these costs and generate more revenue from the podcast to make a solid profit.

I’m landing interviews as if Breakthrough Success will become a daily podcast on New Year’s Day. I want to be prepared to host daily episodes when the time comes.

With this part of my content strategy in sync, I’ll publish over 730 pieces of content every year (blog + podcast). Plus, I get to interview 365 awesome people who will have a positive impact on my growth.

I love creating content, and 2018 looks to be quite the treat for that part of my life.

My Reading Habit Is Changing

In past months, I’ve read as many as 30 books. These books weren’t quick reads either. Tools Of Titans is like six books wrapped into one.

But now my reading habits are changing. I no longer intend on reading 30 books every month. My new target is 10 books per month because I now spend ore time reading articles. This is part of my new initiative to provide more outbound links in my blog posts. I can’t link to a page in a paperback book, but I can definitely link to someone else’s blog post.

I also learn a lot from reading articles. While I am reading content from my favorite writers, I’m also finding new writers on Medium. I’m slowly turning into a Medium junkie, and I am perfectly fine with that.

The Race To 400K

I know that you shouldn’t get fixated on the numbers on social media. I feel like I’ve been stuck at 300K Twitter followers for a while, and surpassing this milestone is more symbolic than anything else.

With that said, I do have a spreadsheet tracking how many followers I need to gain each day, but I don’t view social media as a numbers game. Those who do will eventually lose.

A Big Revelation

For a long time, I was confused and disagreed with a big part of Neil Patel’s work schedule. For people who click the link, I understand that Neil changed his work schedule so he isn’t grinding for as many hours (he uses more time to recharge).

However, one single task dominates the others by storm. That one task is sending emails, and he’s usually in his inbox for four hours every day.

I thought to myself, “Why would you spend that much time in your inbox? You could be creating so much content (even more than what he’s already doing)!”

Then it hit me.

During those four hours, Neil builds relationships, communicates with his audience, and leverages opportunities that and in his inbox. He spends much more of his time marketing his content than creating it, and that’s why Neil can scale a new blog up to 100,000 monthly visitors in under a year.

I now plan to commit at least an hour of my time each day to sending emails. Whether that means replying to emails or outreach, I’m sending emails for an hour each day. I plan to delegate this task so I have a helper rather than taking this responsibility off my shoulders.

You should delegate most of your business, but don’t delegate everything.

Books I Read

From now on, I’ll skip the parts where I share the podcast episodes and blog posts I published because those lists will be too long in 2018. That’s why I’m heading right into my reading list for the month.

I did surprisingly little reading this month. I read Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank  You Economy and re-read The 12 Week Year (I strongly recommend The 12 Week Year. It was one of the first productivity books that had a big impact on me, and it had an impact on the re-read as well).

Review Of November 2017 Goals

1. Get Consistent CMP Sales: I’m still working on this, but I took steps in the right direction this month. I included three packages so CMP now ranges from $497 to $1997 depending on which package you want.

#2: Fully Activate My Freelancers: I’ve communicated more effectively with my freelancers and created Google Docs for them. I wish I used Google Docs to lay out instructions and changes to the plan much earlier.

#3: Have All Of This Year’s Content Scheduled: Boom! This one is done. I just have to schedule podcast episodes. I can’t schedule them all in one month due to storage space limitations, but the episodes are all done. Blog posts are scheduled past 2017 🙂

#4: Crush It With Content Marketing Secrets: It has been a long time since I looked at something I did and said, “WOW,” to myself. I set very high standards for my work which is why I rarely have that wow feeling, but Content Marketing Secrets provided me with that wow feeling. And over 1,000 customers (mix of free and paid) now have their Kindle edition of the book.

December 2017 Goals

#1: Land 7 Coaching Clients: I am taking a new shift to coaching clients. I was originally skeptical of coaching because I thought it would take up too much of my time. However, I discovered how to make the process efficient and effective for my clients. If you are interested in my coaching services, you can contact me through my email marc@marcguberti.com.

#2: Make Breakthrough Success A Weekday Podcast: In this Performance Report, you’ll see that I wanted to turn Breakthrough Success into a daily podcast. I decided to go for a weekday podcast at the end of November and into early December, so I didn’t modify my earlier thoughts that I wrote. I want to give my listeners the weekends to catch up on any episodes they missed to avoid overwhelm.

#3: Make CMSS Evergreen: I know this summit can positively impact the lives of more people, but I need to make it evergreen for it to impact more people.

In Conclusion

This was a very good month for me, and I believe December will be even better. I only have three goals listed which allows me to focus my time on a few areas instead of spreading it thin. I’ll be creating a lot of content in 2018 and have some very exciting things planned.

Also, if you have some extra time, please fight for Net Neutrality. I’d greatly appreciate it.

What are your thoughts on November 2017’s Performance Report? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.