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How to Get Good at Blogging if You’re Not a Writer

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Sometimes when I have conversations with people who read my Blog on a regular basis, they are surprised to hear that English is my second language.

Until I was around 9 years old, I didn’t know a single word of English except for words like “okay” and “hello”.

My family and I moved to Canada, from Poland, when I was 9 years old and when we first moved here I couldn’t communicate with any of the kids in my class.

In high-school I did well in math, and computer science and other subjects, but English was always a challenging subject for me.

I detested having to read books and writing essays.

If there was a Coles notes available on a book we were reading in school I would buy it and read that instead of the book.

My spelling and grammar were never really that good.  Paragraph structure?  Not really my thing.

So if you want to be a Blogger but English is not your first language, or you’re worried because your spelling is bad, or your grammar is bad, or you suck at writing, in this post I will reveal how I got over all of these things and ended up producing well over 700,000 words of content on my Blogs.

Get Better at Blogging by Reading

One of the little “secrets” I learned about 20 years ago was that reading CAN be fun *IF* what you’re reading about is interesting to you.

I hated reading books in high-school because I found them so boring and annoying, but when I was 19 I decided to try buying a book that I thought I might enjoy reading.

And you know what? I did!

It was one of my first ever personal development books and I really enjoyed reading it.

Then, I bought my first novel, a book called “Total Recall” which was later turned into a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That book was around 400 – 500 pages long and I was so captivated by it, I read it from cover to cover in like 2 days.

I couldn’t put it down.

Sometimes I hear people saying that they don’t really like reading books, and I totally understand what they’re saying because I used to hate reading as well.

However, I think what it really comes down to is that if we have never been exposed to content that is ENJOYABLE to read then we will hate reading.

It would be like if all you were ever allowed to watch on TV was some boring TV shows that your parents like or your teachers like and you have never seen any TV show that you find interesting.

You would probably think that TV is boring too then right?

But the second you put on a movie or a TV show that you actually like and find interesting, then watching TV becomes fun.

It’s the same thing with reading.

So how does reading relate to becoming a good Blogger?

Reading can help you become a better writer in two main ways:

#1 – Reading Trains Your Subconscious Mind

As you read your favorite books by your favorite authors, you will automatically absorb their writing style at a subconscious level.

You’ll pick up vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure and writing style automatically just by reading.

Virtually all published authors have their work professionally edited and proofread so you’ll be learning from a reliable source.

When your subconscious mind reads sentences in books that have been proofread and edited, it begins to form patterns of communication in your mind.

Your thinking will literally change to model the writings of the authors that you read.

Reading blog posts or watching movies doesn’t always have the same effect as most blog posts are not professionally edited or proofread, and TV shows and movies are scripted to speak in conversational English that doesn’t really follow any structure.

That is why books are so powerful.  They TRAIN you on becoming a more structure thinker and writer – automatically.

Also, as you read books in the genre that you’re most interested in, which will most likely also be the genre that you write about in the future, you also learn how authors communicate in that genre.

For example, as I’ve read through over 1,000 personal development books in the last 20 years, I’ve learned that the authors in these books communicate in a certain way with their audience.

There’s a certain style that works well in this genre, and it’s different from other genres.

So by reading books by authors in the niche market that you’re in, you’ll develop the ability to write in a similar style.

#2 – Reading Gives You Ideas for Content

One of the reasons I hardly ever experience what people call “writers block” is because I have read over 1,000 books myself.

When I read books, I get ideas from all of these different authors and then my mind goes to work to reconcile and amalgamate all the content that I’ve read and to form ideas and opinions and beliefs about how I perceive the world to be based on all these things that I read and my life experiences.

Not only that, but if I ever feel lost for things to write about, I just turn around and walk over to my library of books and pull one book off the shelf and flip to any random page and get an idea for what to write about.

What most people enjoy reading about is not just concepts that you learned from someone else, but how you applied those concepts in your real life to produce certain results.

Reading books gives you ideas and concepts, and then living your life and applying some of those ideas and concepts gives you CONTENT to write about.

Get Better at Blogging by Journaling

Another great way to get better as a Blogger is to start a journal.

I have been journaling for almost 20 years now.

Every few days or so I’ll sit down and write in my journal.

I write about anything and everything that comes to my mind and I don’t filter out or censor anything.

That is one of the most powerful things that journaling can do for you.

It allows you to express yourself fully, with total honestly, with no filters and no censorship and no judgement.

NOBODY is allowed to read my journals except me.  I keep them private and I don’t give anyone access to read them – ever.

By doing this, I know that what I write in my journals is safe and nobody is going to judge me for it.

Knowing that has made it easier for me to start putting my thoughts on paper without feeling any form of judgement.

See most of us go through our lives never having the opportunity to say what we want to say without the fear of judgement.

When we speak to our friends or family about something, they usually only allow us to say a few sentences or paragraphs before they reply back in the conversation.

That’s normal.  It’s what conversation are supposed to be like.

However, that doesn’t really give us an opportunity to express our thoughts in a cohesive way for more than a few moments.

That is why most people struggle to write blog posts that are longer than a few paragraphs as well… because they NEVER practice THINKING in a certain direction for more than a few moments.

Journaling can help you to become good at that.

I’ve sat down many times and have written in my journal, non-stop for several hours!

It’s so freeing and liberating to be able to express how I think or feel, on paper, without someone interrupting me as often happens in normal human conversations.

Doing this also allows you to develop your ability to write blog post content that is longer than just a few sentences or paragraphs.

Most people notice that most of my blog posts are over 1,000 words long and I’ve had many people ask me “Paul, how the heck do you write such long blog posts?!”

The answer is because I journal! 🙂

Also, of course as you write more blog posts, you’ll get better at writing better blog posts automatically!

Get Better at Blogging by Expressing the Real You

Reading books and journaling are two things that can help you become a better blogger long term.

However, there is one more thing you can do that will help you become a better blogger RIGHT NOW.

Here’s how…

… what you want to do is you want to just sit down and think about the main message that you want to communicate to your audience.

Before you write a single word, just close your eyes and visualize a person in front of you and just think about the message, the feeling, and the energy that you want to communicate to them with your blog post.

Like if that person was in your home, sitting in your living room, and you wanted to help them out by teaching them or explaining to them this concept that you want to write about  in your blog post.

Don’t worry about the words that you would use at all, but just imagine a scenario playing out in your head where you’re having a conversation with the person, without hearing any “audio”.

Just see yourself talking, your lips moving, and maybe you’re moving your arms around and explaining the thing you want to explain to them.

And then see the other person GETTING IT.  See them understanding the basic premise of what you were trying to communicate to them.

See them smiling and thank you for teaching them this thing that you’re wanting to teach or communicate in your blog post.

Then, open your eyes and just start writing your blog post, writing down whatever words that naturally come to you.

Don’t worry about spelling.

Don’t worry about grammar.

Don’t worry about sentence or paragraph structure.

Don’t worry about ANY of that stuff, because here’s the truth…

… the truth is that 99% of what you write and communicate in your Blog posts is expressed in the ENERGY behind the words, and not by the words themselves.

It really doesn’t matter if your spelling and grammar and sentence structure sucks.

The only thing that matters is the energy that you have to wanting to communicate and help another human being.

If you come from that place of wanting to help, to share, and to inspire someone else with you writing, it makes no difference how well you write.

The right message will communicate even if your writing is horrible.

And as you do this, over time your writing and your blog posts will get better and better and better.

99% of the value in a blog post is your INTENTION and ENERGY behind the words that you write… all the other stuff like spelling and grammar and everything else is only like 1% of it, so don’t worry about it at all.

Just WRITE!

Just BLOG!

Just start blogging today and keep blogging.

Don’t worry about being slow at it.  You’ll get faster.

Just START.

You’ll get better and better over time anyways.

3 Fatal Mistakes New Bloggers Make And How to Avoid Them

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Over the past 9 years as a Blogger, I’ve had many people come to me for advice on how to build a successful blog.

I’ve seen some people build blogs years ago that they continue to run to this day.

The majority of people, however, give up on their dreams of building a successful blog within just a few weeks or months.

From my observations, the people who don’t make it as bloggers all exhibit some or all of these fatal symptoms that kill their blogs.

#1 – Ridiculously Unrealistic Expectations

A reasonable, mature adult understands that if they wanted to become a doctor, they would have to go to post-secondary school for 6-12 years and spend $100,000 – $500,000 on their education.

And then once they finish school, they would be able to open up a practice, and most likely spend the next 3-10 years paying off that debt.

And then once they’ve been a doctor for about a decade or so, they would expect to start making a solid six-figure or higher income especially if they decided to specialize and become a surgeon or something like that.

That same person understands that if they wanted to become a police officer, or a firefighter, or a lawyer, or an accountant, or an architect, they would also have to dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to learning a skill and then to practice getting better at that skill before expecting to be making a good, solid income from that vocation.

For some weird reason, those same seemingly mature adults have this weird, totally unrealistic expectation that making money online somehow happens overnight, with virtually no investment of time or energy required from them to make a six or seven figure income online.

If you want to build a successful blog that eventually generates an income stream for you and you want to make money online, you’re going to have to realize that it is NOT going to happen overnight.

You are going to have to invest some time, some energy and some money into learning the right things, from the right people to help you become successful.

Compared to a formal education such as the one required to become a doctor or a lawyer though, learning to make money online is nowhere near as intense and definitely nowhere near as expensive.

I’ve had people call me about a week after they’ve started a blog, having written one or two blog posts, and they’re wondering why they haven’t made tens of thousands of dollars from their blog yet.

If you do the right things, and you follow the right system, and you have the right mentoring, making money online can happen pretty quickly, but if you have to mentally prepare yourself to KEEP GOING, KEEP LEARNING and KEEP INVESTING in yourself, in your business and your education if you’re going to make it in this business.

If you’re going to give up after 2 days, you’re being a wuss and wussies don’t make money online.

#2 – Not Understanding the Power of Small Wins

As a new blogger, or a new Internet marketer, you’re always one small win from winning big.

Here’s what I mean by this…

… when I started blogging, there actually weren’t a lot of people out there blogging yet, and the industry hadn’t really established itself in such a big way as it has now.

Because of this, there were very few bloggers out there who had created any HUGE success for themselves.  I could count them on one hand.

The benefit I had when I was starting out during this time was that I didn’t really have a lot of big hot-shots to compare myself to, so instead I just focused on comparing my success on any given day or week or month, to my PREVIOUS successes.

For example, I still remember when I sat there wondering how long it would take to get my first 10 subscribers.

It actually took a while.  But when I finally got my 10th subscriber I remember being so excited!

Then I set a goal to hit 20 subscribers, and once I hit that, I again celebrated and was very excited.

I kept increasing my target by very small increments and I kept seeing these small “wins” that kept me going.

Then, I started focusing on seeing how long it would take to get my first real COMMENT from someone other than my wife, or my friends or family…. like a REAL STRANGER that I didn’t know coming to my Blog and leaving a comment.

When I got my comment I celebrated as well!

These small tiny wins is what kept me going in the beginning and kept me motivated.

There were many small milestones that I set for myself, long before I even started putting focus on getting my Blog to make money.

Of course today it’s much easier to make money with a Blog as so many things have been systematized, tested and perfected by companies like Empower Network – but even today I would recommend that new bloggers set small milestones for their blogs which can give them the small “wins” that will help to boost their confidence even before they start making money from their blogs.

#3 – Allowing Small Loses to Kill Their Confidence

On the other side of the same coin, most people also totally underestimate how big of an effect small loses can have on your confidence as a new blogger.

I’ve seen people start blogs and begin to gain some momentum for a few weeks and then they get ONE negative comment on one of their blog posts where some idiot leaves some idiotic half-baked opinion on what the person wrote, and the emotional rejection and hurt that the blogger feels completely knocks them out of the game.

Of course if you ask them about it, they’ll never admit it.  They pretend like it’s no big deal, and that it didn’t hurt them, but all of a sudden you no longer see them writing any more blog posts – EVER!

Trust me, I’ve been there.

I’ve written blog posts which I’ve poured my heart and soul into and I’ve had morons come to my Blog and post nasty comments, being total pricks.

It hurts when that happens, especially if you’re brand new to blogging.

There’s no shame in admitting that those things suck and that they hurt your feelings.

So how do we overcome this?

Firstly, one of the things that I learned from one of my mentors is that IF you become a successful blogger, you WILL have some people who will not like you and they’ll leave stupid comments on your blog posts.

So what I did is I created a milestone for myself where I actually told myself that when I get my first nasty comment, it means that I’m starting to get popular.

Meaning, I re-framed it in my  mind to be a positive thing!  So when I got my first nasty comment, yes it hurt a bit, but at the same time I was really excited because I thought to myself “OMG!  I got my first hater!  This is so cool!  It means my Blog is becoming more popular, and I’m starting to make waves in the industry and as a result I’m pissing off those people who are NOT my target audience.  Awesome!”

Secondly though, the most important thing you MUST embrace as a tool to help you deal with these small “loses” that will inevitably show up in your life as an entrepreneur and as a blogger is to be a part of a community with a support structure in place to support you.

Think of it like this…

… if you were a professional athlete, and you got injured while playing on the field or on the ice or on the court, and you were lying on your back, hurt…. what would happen?

Your SUPPORT TEAM would come to your aid and they would help you!

If you were struggling with your game, or with some aspect of your health, what would happen?

Your coaches and your trainers would step in and help you!

If you were struggling with your mental game, because you were struggling with something in your life, and it was affecting your game, what would you do?

You would go and talk to your coach and get some help, right?

ALL successful people have coaches and mentors that help them.

It’s no different as a blogger.

That is why I love the Empower Network system so much.  It doesn’t just arm you with the Kalatu blogging platform to make sure you have the world’s best, state-of-the-art blogging system at your fingertips.

What Empower Network really brings to the table is COMMUNITY and SUPPORT.

For example, those people who join my Empower Network team have ME and the rest of my team to help them and to support them.  We all help each other succeed.

If someone on the team is struggling, we help them out.  That’s what teams are for.

Bloggers who try to do it all by themselves, without participating in any community, and without getting any coaching and mentoring and help from anyone else, rarely last!

They give up before they ever build any success because it’s not easy to do this all by yourself.

Of course it’s possible, but why would you want to anyways?

Why NOT embrace a community of like-minded, positive bloggers who are also pursuing their blogging dreams and who will encourage you when you’ve suffered a small temporary loss?

How to Boost Your Chances of Blogging Success

Want to significantly boost your chances of becoming a successful blogger?

It’s very simple…just do these 3 things:

  1. Set Realistic Expectations and Have Patience
  2. Set Small, Achievable Milestones For Your Blog and Celebrate Your Successes
  3. Join a Blogging Community and Get a Coach or Mentor So You Have Support When You Have Your Small Loses

These three things may sound very simple, but it’s what I did to grow my blog and every single person that I know who didn’t succeed as a blogger was missing either one or all of these factors.

Is Kalatu Better Than WordPress?

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I’ve been a WordPress Blogger for 9 years now and recently I’ve switched over to the Kalatu Blogging Platform from Empower Network.

In this article I’ll share my first impressions about Kalatu and whether I think it’s better than WordPress.

Firstly, I’ll start off by saying that it’s not really a fair comparison to compare Kalatu vs WordPress since Kalatu IS BUILT ON WordPress.

Meaning, Kalatu is a blogging platform built on top of WordPress, so it takes all the functionality that you already get with WordPress and simply adds additional functionality on top of that.

I think the better way to approach answering this question is to compare what you get with a standard out-of-the-box installation of WordPress, versus what you get with Kalatu.

Kalatu Features

Here are just some of the features that I’ve found pretty useful that you don’t get with a standard WordPress installation.

#1 – The Kalatu 21 Day Blogging Challenge

One of the first features that you’ll notice when you get started with Kalatu is that it has a 21 Day Blogging Challenge system built right into it.

What this does is it encourages you challenge yourself to write one blog post per day for at least 21 days.

The purpose behind this is to help you establish the habit of daily blogging.

Most psychologists say that it takes about 21 days for us to form a habit, so the 21 day blogging system is designed around that concept.

Every day, you are encouraged to write a new blog post and the system actually helps you to write those posts by offering suggestions and blogging templates that you fill out as a starting point.

You can either use the built-in templates, or you can just write your own blog post from scratch.  It’s totally up to you.

#2 – Kalatu Achievements

The next thing that you’ll find included with Kalatu, and tied into the 21 Day Blogging Challenge system is an achievement tracking system.

The Kalatu Achievement System is designed to make blogging fun and allows you to earn and unlock badges for completing various things.

For example, once you complete your first blog post, you’ll earn the “First Post” badge.

As you earn badges, you also move up in levels in the system so that you know that you’re doing the right things as a blogger.

The achievement system is still in it’s early stages with improvements coming soon, but even now it’s a pretty neat little system that rewards you for achieving certain blogging milestones.

#3 – Kalatu Social Media Card

The Kalatu Social Media Card, allows you to connect your Blog with your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

You simply click on each of the social media sites, and authorize a connection with Kalatu and it does the rest.

It goes in and updates your Kalatu Themes to connect your audience with your various social media sites.

For example, by connecting your YouTube account, the Kalatu YouTube sidebar widget will automatically pull in and display your latest YouTube videos from your channel.

#4 – Kalatu Theme Customizer

Kalatu comes preloaded with five professional looking themes, with more on the way.

The cool thing though is that the Kalatu Theme Customizer also allows you to fully customize each theme to your liking.

For example, if you want to change the font for your theme, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

If you want to customize the home page header, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

If you want to add in an opt-in form that will automatically allow your blog visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can do so with the click of a few buttons.

None of the features require any coding, or scripting or pasting in any code.

Everything is done for you, you just have to do a few simple configurations.

You have control over your banner ads, your author box, and your social card settings as well.

Pretty much anything you might want to customize on your theme, you can do it through the theme customizer tool.

 #5 – Kalatu Tutorials

Another cool thing that Kalatu comes with is a set of tutorials for how to use the system.

There are videos and guide books that show you how to setup your Blog, how to map your domain properly, how to configure things and how to use the features that Kalatu comes with.

Of course this is on top of all the training that Empower Network has for helping you to become a successful blogger.

#6 – Kalatu Google Analytics Integration

Kalatu also has a very simple system for adding in Google Analytics integration.

All you have to do is take your Google Analytics tracking ID and paste it into the Kalatu Google Analytics integrator and click the save button.

By doing that, Kalatu will automatically incorporate full Google Analytics tracking into all of your themes.

This might not seem like a big deal, but I’ve found that a LOT of people who are not computer programmers find it difficult and confusing to try to get Google Analytics setup on their WordPress Blogs.

Also, with WordPress, if you ever change your theme, you have to re-do your Analytics integration, but with Kalatu it’s all automatic!

Not a huge deal, but it’s a nice feature to have.

#7 Kalatu Widgets

Kalatu Widgets

Kalatu takes a slightly different approach to widgets.

Instead of having 10,000+ different widgets available to you like WordPress does, Kalatu simplifies the whole widget system by only including the most useful and effective widgets that you will need for your blog.

This means that you no longer have to spend hours going through hundreds of different WordPress widgets that all say they do something, only to find yourself disappointed when they fall short of your expectations.

Of course the trade-off is that if you are looking for some highly customized widget for you blog, it may not be available on the Kalatu platform.

However, having said that, the idea behind the Kalatu platform is that they will constantly be expanding their library of widgets with the best widgets available out there.

Meaning, if someone out there creates a really cool WordPress widget that you might have to pay $20 or $50 or $100 for, there’s a chance that Kalatu will also create a widget similar to that one or even better, which you may be able to get for free.

Since Kalatu is going to be a paid platform with tens of thousands of users worldwide, the company has money in their budget to develop these high-end widgets that you might not find in the WordPress widget directory.

Also, as a blogger for 9 years now I have come to realize that even though WordPress technically has this huge marketplace of like 10,000 widgets – in reality I have only used about 10 different widgets in my blogging career.

A LOT of the WordPress widgets out there are crappy, poorly coded, and may even contain malware, viruses and other things that could cause problems for your WordPress blog.

This is why the geniuses behind Kalatu have chosen to not allow external widgets to be installed on the platform – ensuring that whatever widgets you do decide to activate in Kalatu is going to be a high-quality, solid widget that does the job well and doesn’t contain and problems or issues.

I’ve actually had my WordPress site shut down by my hosting company before, due to issues with a WordPress widget I downloaded and installed on my WordPress blog.

It was just some widget that pulled pictures from my Flickr account, but somehow it was poorly written and it overloaded my hosting company’s servers so they shut down my site.

I had to go through all my widgets and deactivate them one by one to find the one that was causing the issue.

In the end I got my site re-activated without any issues, but it took a whole afternoon of troubleshooting to figure what was wrong.

That’s wasted time I should have spent blogging, instead of messing around with my WordPress site.

With Kalatu, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

#8 Kalatu Headline Helper

Yet another cool feature that’s built into Kalatu is a headline helper.

Ever write a blog post and then felt stuck trying to figure out what title to give it?

The Kalatu Headline Helper helps you eliminate that problem.

Essentially you just click on the “Give Me a Headline” button that shows up in your post editor, and you’ll see a pop-up window pop up and ask you what subject you’re blogging about.

You just type in what you’re blogging about and it will give you a headline suggestion.

If you like the suggestion, you click one button and it inserts that into your blog post title.

If you don’t like that suggestion, you just click the “Give me another.” button, and it gives you another suggestion.

You can keep clicking it until you find a suggestion that you like.

#9 – Kalatu Writers Blog Solver

Ever get stuck not knowing what to write about?

Kalatu has a solution for that.

They have a little button that says “Give Me An Idea!” in the post editor, and when you click that button the Kalatu Random Inspirational Idea window pops up and gives you a random suggestion for the type of blog post you could write.

If you like the idea, you go ahead and write about it, and if you don’t like that idea you just click the “Give Me Another Idea” and Kalatu gives you another random idea.

You just keep clicking that button until you like an idea and then you go ahead and write the blog post.

#10 Kalatu Blogging Community and Training

The features I just listed are just SOME of the features and benefits you get with Kalatu that you don’t get with a WordPress installation.

However, there is one other HUGE benefit that you get with Kalatu that WordPress doesn’t offer, and that is the Kalatu Blogging Community and Training.

Kalatu is Empower Network’s new flagship blogging platform which combines some of the newest state-of-the-art blogging technology to help you become a successful blogger.

However, Kalatu itself is just a tool and a tool is only as good as the person using it.

That is why a tool, any tool, by itself is not enough.

That is why the Empower Network blogging community and training system is so powerful.

Empower Network doesn’t just focus on tools and technology, they also focus on YOU the content creator at your blog and they provide you with the training, the support AND the tools you’ll need to be a successful blogger.

In my 9+ years as a blogger I have never seen training on becoming a successful blogger like that which you can get access to with Empower Network.

There’s nothing else out there that even comes close the the track record that Empower Network has for inspiring, training and producing world-class bloggers.

If you want to be a successful blogger in 2015 and beyond, you have to get access to the best training on the planet, and Empower Network provides that.

If you want to be a successful blogger in 2015 and beyond, you also have to be plugged into a blogging community of like-minded people.  You won’t find a better blogging community than the one you’ll find in Empower Network.

Learn From My Journey

If you’ve been thinking about getting into blogging, or you’ve dabbled with blogging in the past but just never reached the level of success that you want from it, you may find my new eBook “Breaking Free in 2015” interesting.

In the eBook I share my journey of how I went from burger flipper to corporate zombie to six-figure Internet marketer.

I share my story and the lessons I’ve learned along the way in hopes to save others from making the same mistakes I made.

I also reveal what I believe to be the best strategy for making money online in 2015 and beyond.

If you’d like to download a free copy of the eBook  click here or on the picture.

 

Do You Have a Score Board for Your Goals?

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This is what I see in my field of view, just above my two computer monitors, every single day.

It’s my Score Board.

Now, you might be asking, what the heck is a score board and what’s it for?

A Score Board is basically a tool that I use to help me FOCUS on the most important quantifiable result that I want to achieve in my life right now.

Personally I use a very simple whiteboard that I hung on my wall, in a location where it is always in my field of view while I’m at my computer – which is quite often.

The “Score” that I have right now registers in my mind when I’m consciously looking at the score board, and also subconsciously when I’m just looking at my computer monitors.

I have nothing else in my field of view to distract me.

Why You Need a Score Board for Your Goals

So why do we need a score board for our goals?

What’s it for?

Well, what a score board does is it allows you to select ONE goal achieving metric that is most important to you right now that you can track on a daily or weekly basis, to help you reach that goal.

If you think about it, most of us have multiple goals that we’re pursuing at the same time in our lives and it can get pretty confusing trying to keep track of them all.

What usually happens if you don’t have a score board is that the EASIEST goals, which require the least effort and the least growth on your part end up getting completed first.

What a score board does is it highlights the MOST IMPORTANT, not the easiest goal that you want to achieve in your life.

Of course we all would love to be able to achieve all of our goals all the time, but in reality that never happens.

We set many different goals, and accomplish a few of them, while the majority usually fall to the wayside.

A score board can help you to make sure that doesn’t happen with your MOST IMPORTANT goals.

Think about sports.

In sports, the coaches and the leagues track hundreds of stats on each team and their players.

As you’re watching a game, you’ll hear the commentators spouting out all kinds of numbers, stats and percentages.

But at the end of the day, regardless what the stats are showing, there is only ONE set of numbers that everyone is paying attention to…

THE SCORE!

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter if the players are playing well, and their stats are good or bad, or which team had the better stats…

…at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is the final score of the game – that’s it!

Everything else is secondary.

In the same way, you want to have a score board in your life, so that on a daily basis you can see if you’re making progress towards your most important goal – or not.

When you do this – you activate a part of your brain that is incredibly powerful at seeking out and achieving goals.

Our minds are VERY powerful, but most of us don’t know how to activate that power, because we confuse our minds with too many goals, too many metrics, and too many things to track at once.

By putting up a score board, you FOCUS your mind on what you want it to help you achieve.

In my example above, I wanted to make sure that I write 21 blog posts in 21 days for the 21 Day Blogging Challenge I am a part of with Empower Network.

Since starting the challenge, I have had MANY distractions pop up in my life, such as getting sick with the flu, having some flooding in my basement which required emergency drainage work to be done on my house, and MANY other things that could have easily thrown me off track.

But by being CLEAR on what goal was most important to me during the last 21 days, I was able to write my 21 Blog posts in 21 days no matter what else was happening in my life.

How to Use a Score Board

The first thing you’ll need to do is go out and get yourself a scoreboard.

A whiteboard is best, but you can also use a piece of paper that you pin to a wall or a cork board.

Ideally, you’ll want to place the score board somewhere where you can see it most often throughout the day.

If it’s in your field of vision, it will register better with your subconscious mind.

Once you have your score board setup, you’ll want to figure out what specific metric you want to track.

Here are some criteria for picking the best metric to track:

  1. Quantifiable – Make sure that the metric you pick can be easily and accurately quantified.  For example, if your goal was to lose 25lbs of weight, you could track your daily weight on a scale.  That’s a number that’s easy to track and it’s accurate.The score board has to track something that gives your mind an idea of whether you’re moving CLOSER or FURTHER away from your goal.If your goal is to make a certain amount of money online, you could track your total online income, or the last 30 day’s income etc.Or you could track certain stats that lead to making money online, such as total number of visitors to your site, or total number of leads generated, or total email subscribers, or Facebook fans or whatever you’d like.

    Whatever you track, make sure it’s easily quantifiable and that the thing you’re tracking is something that brings you closer to your goal.

  2. Changes Often – Ideally you’ll want to pick a metric that changes often, such as on a daily basis or several times a week.You don’t want to track something that only changes once a month or once you complete your goal.  For example, you wouldn’t want your score board to say “Lost 25lbs? Yes / No” as that would mean that your score board would just say “NO” the whole time, until you lost 25lbs and then it would change to “YES”.That would not be useful.The more often you get up to go and update your score board with a new score, the more you’ll activate the “feel good” part of your brain that was designed to achieve goals.

    Of course, don’t overdo it either… you don’t want your score board to have to be updated 50 times a day otherwise all you’ll be doing is updating your score board!

    I usually like something that I can update once a day or once every few days.

    And if on some days I have to update it a few times, that’s okay too.

  3. Accumulated or Average Numbers are Better Than Numbers That Reset – I find that tracking numbers that accumulate or average over time is more exciting for me than something that “resets” often.For example, instead of tracking “Total # of Steps Taken Today” from a step counter, which would reset every day, I would track “30 Day Average Step Count”.Or instead of tracking, “Email Subscribers Today”, I would track “Total Number of Email Subscribers”.There’s something about seeing a number going UP and UP over time that gets the mind excited.

    In the network marketing world, you could track “Total # of Presentations Done” or “Total # of Leads” or “Total # of Team Members” etc.

How I’ve Used a Score Board to Boost Sales by Over $500,000

I first heard about the concept of score boards about 20 years ago, but I didn’t actually learn how powerful they can be until about 10 years ago when I was in charge of growing the sales numbers of a technology company.

This was back in the days when I still worked in the corporate world and I was put in charge of a team of sales people who had reached a point of stagnation and very little growth.

One of the very first things that I did when I was put in charge was to put together a tracking system to accurately track each sales person’s statistics over a period of a year.

Meaning, once my tracking was in place, each sales rep was able to see EXACTLY how much their sales totals were for the past rolling 52 week period.

I had my assistant put in charge of tracking and updating our numbers on a weekly basis.

Every week, she would update the numbers for the previous week, and she would print them out and post them on the wall in my office.

Then, the sales guys would all run into my office and stare at their updated numbers for a few minutes.

By doing this, I gave my sales team FOCUS.

They knew exactly what I was tracking and measuring their performance on.

I didn’t really have to say anything to them.  They just realized that I was tracking those numbers and they started focusing their energy on growing their numbers.

By using this tool I grew our yearly sales by more than half a million dollars.

Score Boards Work

If you study how the human brain works, and research systems and techniques for achieving goals and being productive, you’ll get a more in-depth understanding as to what makes something as simple as a “Score Board” so powerful.

But for now, you don’t really have to spend the next 6 months doing research.

Instead, get your Score Board setup today and you’ll experience how powerful of a tool it is first hand!

🙂

Grow Your Blog Audience by Polarizing

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About eight years ago I learned a very important lesson from Dr. Wayne Dyer, the best-selling author of over 40 books.

In one of his coaching programs he shared a story about when he was first getting started as an author that really helped me out.

Most of his books are centered around topics such as spirituality, inner peace, intuition, intention etc.

The story he shared was about when he first started becoming fairly successful as an author and when he was finally starting to sell quite a few copies of his books.

As his book sales and popularity started to grow, an interesting phenomenon started to happen to him.

The Rise of the Haters

What started to happen to him is that at the same time as he was getting more popular and loved by his fans, he started also getting letters from people who hated his work!

If you’ve ever read any of Dr. Wayne Dyer’s work, you’ll understand when I say that his writing is VERY peaceful and spiritual and very calming…

… yet SOMEHOW even Dr. Wayne Dyer gets HATERS who hate his work!

He tells the story of one time, early on in his career, when he received a box from a man with a little note attached.

When he opened the box, and read the note, it basically said that the man hated his book, thought it was complete garbage and was “returning it”.

Inside the box was the book with every page torn out and shredded!

Can you believe it?  Someone actually sent Dr. Wayne Dyer a shredded copy of one of his books – LOL.

That was not the only time he has received “hate mail”.

He has gotten many letters and emails from people complaining about his books and his work, as has pretty much EVERY successful author on the planet.

Of course they also get a tonne of fan mail from people who LOVE their work as well!

The reason Dr. Dyer shared this story in the coaching program was because he wanted to communicate the importance of NOT allowing your “haters” to stop you.

You MUST go after you dreams in life and not let “haters” stop you.

So how does this relate to growing an your Blog audience and your email list?

Well, to grow your audience you MUST learn to polarize!

What does polarize mean?

Polarizing Your Message

Polarizing is essentially the process of moving people to form a stronger opinion of you, regardless whether that opinion is positive or negative.

There are many ways to do this, but essentially the main idea is to SPEAK YOUR TRUTH and to not be afraid to express your beliefs publicly on your Blog.

I’ll give you an example of this right now.

I believe in the Law of Attraction.  I believe that the Law of Attraction is real, and it is an incredibly powerful tool that you can use in your life to either manifest what you want by learning how to use the Law of Attraction to your benefit – OR – you can also manifest what you don’t want, usually by being ignorant about how the Law of Attraction works.

The Law of Attraction does NOT care whether you believe in it or not – it still works, either way.

It’s a Universal law, that works just like gravity.  Gravity doesn’t care if you believe in it or not – it continues to work either way.

The Law of Attraction is NOT the only law of the Universe, there are others, but it is one of the most powerful Universal laws out there.

Now, by writing what I just wrote – I just polarized my audience (ie. you).

See, if you don’t believe in the Law of Attraction, and you think it’s just “woo woo crap” that New Age people delude themselves with, then reading what I just wrote probably polarized you at least a little bit against me.

Meaning, your opinion of me just strengthened in the direction of  “Hmm..I don’t know if I like this guy..he believes in that woo woo stuff.”

AND if you DO believe in the Law of Attraction, and you think that I’m totally right about what I just wrote above, you opinion of me just strengthened as well probably in the direction of “Hmm…I like this guy…he believes in what I believe in too.  Cool!”

Of course it’s no secret that I believe in the Law of Attraction.  Most of my readers have known about this since pretty much the first day I launched my Blog, so it shouldn’t be any surprise to anybody by now.

I just used this as an example so that you understand what polarization means.

Polarization means being truthful and honest about expressing your beliefs and being OKAY with the fact that SOME people will be TURNED OFF by what you write, while other people will be TURNED ON by what you write.

It means speaking your truth and not caring.

It means NOT trying to please EVERYONE.

If you try to please everyone you become irrelevant.

People will not want to read your Blog or subscribe to your email list if you are too scared to have an opinion!

Being Okay With Unsubscribers

Since starting my blogging journey I’ve built an email subscriber list of just under 10,000 people.

It actually used to be over 10,000 people, but I’ve been doing a bit of “pruning” lately.

Now let me share a little “secret” I have for building an email list of over 10,000 people.

POLARIZE, POLARIZE, POLARIZE!

When I first started building my email list, and I had my first 10 to 20 email subscribers, I got my first unsubscribe.

In my mind I thought “Oh NO!  Someone unsubscribed!  What did I do wrong?”

And so I looked at the reason they unsubscribed, and they didn’t put any reason.

I felt bad and wondered what I did wrong.

Then, I kept blogging and soon I had 50 subscribers, but with more subscribers I also had more unsubscribes as well!

I tried to figure out why people were unsubscribing and a few of them left a reason!

Their reasons were usually something like “Too many emails” or “Not interested in your crap” or “Scam” or something like that.

The funny thing is that I would get people saying “Too many emails” when I was sending out emails daily, and I would get the exact same message when I emailed my list once a month!

I would get people saying “Scam” as their reason for unsubscribing when I would write a Blog post where I would promote some kind of product or service as an affiliate, AND when I would write a Blog post that was just pure VALUE given away for free to my readers.

In other words, as I looked more and more into my “Unsubscribers” trying to figure out why the heck they are unsubscribing, I realized that no matter what I did or didn’t do, they still unsubscribed!

Meaning, it didn’t matter if most of my Blog posts were pure value, without me promoting anything ever, or if I was promoting multiple things in a month, and it didn’t matter if I was emailing daily or weekly or monthly…

… no matter what I did, I realized that a certain percentage of people are just going to unsubscribe and there’s nothing I can do about it.

BUT, what I did realize is that if I just keep blogging and keep WRITING what I believe, and do the right things to grow my list, my email list of subscribers will grow just as my list of unsubscribers will grow as well – and that’s OKAY!

In fact, over the last 8 years as my list of subscribers has grown to just under 10,000 people, guess how many people have UNSUBSCRIBED from my email list?

Yup, that’s right…I’ve had over 12,500 people UNSUBSCRIBE from my email lists for one reason or another!

Isn’t that crazy?

This means that I’ve actually had over 22,000 people subscribe to my email lists at one point during the last 8 years, and over 12,000 decided to unsubscribe.

And you know what?

I don’t care!

It doesn’t hurt my feelings.

I am completely neutral about it.

I don’t “hate” those people, nor do I dislike them.

They’re probably awesome people, living awesome lives, but for some reason or another, they either didn’t resonate with something I wrote on my Blog, or they simply weren’t interested in continuing to receive emails from me, or any number of possible reasons.

Whatever the reason is – I don’t care!

I don’t concern myself with those people who unsubscribe.

I only concern myself with those people who stay subscribed, and who DO resonate with my message, my beliefs and who want to continue to receive emails from me.

By making that energetic shift – of BEING OKAY with technically the MAJORITY of people NOT resonating with everything I write or with how I write my emails or how often I send them out, it allows me to form a stronger bond with those people who DO like what I’m doing.

I’m HAPPY with polarizing my audience.

I want people to either LOVE what I’m doing and stay subscribed for more or HATE what I’m doing and unsubscribe.

I don’t want people to be indifferent.

And that is one of the biggest things you have to realize about building an audience, and building your email list.

You MUST learn to be okay with the majority of people not liking you for who you are, and still feel comfortable enough to express who you are, because that is the ONLY way that you’ll build a solid following of people who DO like you for who you are.

DON’T try to be neutral, diplomatic, unopinionated, and hope that by staying sterile and neutral about everything you’ll attract the largest audience.

That is not the way it works.

You grow an audience by growing a pair and expressing your opinion, your beliefs, and being YOU.

Some people will LOVE you for it, some people will HATE you for it, and that’s okay!