Productivity – Page 7

7 Secrets of Blogging Daily

February 1, 2015 by Paul 1 Comment

In yesterday’s post I shared the exact strategy I use and recommend for how to make money blogging in 2015 and beyond.

One of the key parts of that strategy revolves around building the habit of daily blogging as shown here in this snippet for the flow chart I laid out yesterday.

Blogging on a daily basis is probably one of the most challenging parts of building a successful blog.

It’s not hard to write a few blog posts here and there, whenever we feel like it, but to develop the habit of blogging daily is a totally different thing.

In this post I’ll share some tips and strategies that I’ve recently started utilizing to help me stick to a daily blogging schedule for 33 days now.

Each one of these strategies can help you to be more consistent with your blogging.

#1 – Join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge

When I decided that I wanted to develop the habit of daily blogging, one of the first things I did was to join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

The 21 Day Blogging Challenge is a challenge put on my Empower Network that helps bloggers around the world develop the habit of daily blogging.

Psychologists have said that it takes a person at least 21 days to develop a habit, so the idea behind the challenge is to encourage you to make a commitment to blog every day for 21 days.

Anyone can participate in the challenge – regardless whether you’re using the Kalatu Brand Station to blog or your own WordPress site or any other blogging platform out there.

It’s free to join and once you join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge, you’ll be granted access to a private group of bloggers who are participating in the challenge and offered daily encouragement, and motivation to continue on your journey.

Each day you simply write one blog post and then you share it in the community page on facebook.

At the end of the challenge, there are some small prizes you can get access to and some training resources that can help you to build an even more successful blog.

I did my first 21 Day Blogging Challenge at the end of December, and have continued to blog ever since.

There is actually a brand new group starting tomorrow – February 2nd – so if you’d like to join, simply click on this link to get free access – 21 Day Blogging Challenge

#2 – Find a Blogging Style That You Enjoy and Can Stick to Daily

Each person has a different personality type and a unique style of communicating.

Some people, like myself, are most comfortable communicating in written word when it comes to Blogging.

I do also like to use videos from time to time, but I find creating videos too time consuming to be able to do it on a daily basis.

The main reason for this is that I prefer to make long videos and not the short 30second to 3 minute videos that some people enjoy making.

So for me, I have chosen to use test-based blog posts with pictures as my primary style of writing posts.

However, other people prefer to make videos. Writing a post such as this one might be too time consuming for them.

My friend and team member – Chris Landry – he prefers to shoot short videos for his blog posts, instead of writing text.

That’s HIS style of Blogging, and that’s awesome!

Some people prefer to make audio podcasts, where they just speak into a voice recorder and record their blog posts that way.

And of course some people prefer to mix things up and do all three.

The point here is don’t try to be something you’re not!

If you’re reading my blog post and the idea of writing so many words makes you want to throw up, then TEXT based blog posts are probably not your thing! That’s fine!

You can use video and/or audio blogging as your preferred method and keep the text to a minimum.

Nothing wrong with that.

Just realize that your style might be different from mine or anyone else.

#3 – Make Money an Incentive

One of the biggest incentives besides sharing your passion and wisdom with other people can be to make money with your Blog.

I’m not just talking about building a full time business with a Blog, but making ANY amount of money can be a HUGE motivator.

When I first started Blogging, I installed Google Adsense on my Blog I think the very first week.

If I remember correctly, at the end of the month of sporadic blogging, I think I made around $3 – $5 with my Blog.

That is NOT big money at all.

It’s almost completely insignificant, right?

WRONG!

There’s something magical about making money from blogging.

Even if it’s just a few dollars here and there which flow into your pocket and pay for a coffee, it can be a LOT of fun to get paid for blogging.

Over time, my Adsense earnings started to add up, and eventually I would receive cheques in the mail for over a hundred dollars which was pretty exciting to me at that time.

It can be a LOT of fun to get a cheque for over $100, just for blogging about your passions.

If you’re using the Kalatu Branding Station, then a monetization strategy is already built-in for you from the get-go, but if you’re using some other blogging system then find a way to monetize your Blog.

It can be a lot of fun and as many successful bloggers have proven, those seemingly small amounts can start to add up very quickly and you could potentially start earning a significant income from your Blog!

#4 – Reading Other People’s Blogs

I have found that reading other people’s blog posts can be really helpful for maintaining consistency.

There’s something about seeing another person writing on a daily basis that helps you with your belief that it IS in fact possible to write a blog post every day.

This is yet another reason why the 21 Day Blogging Challenge can be so helpful.

When you join the challenge, you’ll be given access to a private group for all the participants and you will be able to see all of the blog posts that are written every day by the participants.

When you see 100, 200, 500 or more people blogging on a daily basis, there’s just something that happens in your mind where your excuses that it’s not possible melt away.

Also, by reading other people’s Blog posts, you’ll get ideas for what to write about yourself as well.

You might read someone’s Blog post and not really agree with their opinion – great, so write a Blog post sharing YOUR opinion on the subject.

You might read someone’s Blog post and realize that they just skimmed the surface of the topic – great, so write a Blog post that goes into more depth on the subject.

You might read someone’s Blog post and realize that what they have written could be summarized in a 3 minute video instead – great, so shoot a quick 3 minute video on the subject.

Or you might read multiple people’s Blog posts on a similar topic and decide to combine all the best information from all of those blog posts, along with your own experience and opinions into one single blog post that has it all.

It’s just like how some of the most successful authors out there are also prolific readers of books, if you want to develop your skills as a blogger, it can be very helpful to start reading blogs.

#5 – Have an Accountability Buddy or Two

Another very useful thing to have is an accountability buddy.

Someone who is also committed to blogging daily and who you can share your blog posts with, get inspiration, motivation and ideas from.

Sometimes you might be having one of those days where you just hit writer’s blog and have no clue what to Blog about, and your accountability buddy can help you out with some ideas.

Even just having an accountability buddy that reads each post you write, and leaves a short comment and you do the same for them, can be of huge help.

There’s something about being accountable to another human being, who we don’t want to let down, that can help us to stick to our desire to become a successful blogger.

If you don’t know anyone like this, you can join the 21 Day Blogging Challenge and you’ll get access to a group of several hundred bloggers who have made the commitment to blog daily.

I’m sure you’ll be able to find at least one or two people in there that you could introduce yourself to and become accountability buddies with.

#6 – Track Your Stats!

If there is one thing that I have heard more times than I can remember from people who started blogs and were about to give up on blogging because of feeling discouraged, it would be this statement:

“Paul, I don’t know…this blogging thing is not working… I’ve written a bunch of posts, and NOBODY is even looking at my site…I haven’t gotten any comments on any of my stuff, nobody is reading anything.”

You have no idea how many times I’ve heard this.

Look, the fact is that when you invest time and energy into writing a blog post, or creating a video, one of the DEEPEST DESIRES that we all have is for other people to consume our content.

If NOBODY is reading your stuff, you’ll stop Blogging!

One of the reasons that people are SO ADDICTED to Facebook is because of the “LIKE” Button and the comment sections.

When people post a picture of themselves or their kid or their dog or cat, they sit there and wait for someone to hit that “LIKE” button.

When they see someone “LIKING” their content, they feel good.

When they don’t, they feel like crap.

It’s the same thing with YouTube.

If you upload a video to YouTube, and you come back 24 hours later and hit refresh and you see that your video views is 0 people or 1 view (yourself), you WILL feel discouraged.

There’s a deep desire that we all have for our content to be consumed.

When that content is not consumed, we feel like failures!

The challenge with BLOGGING is that what most people THINK that they should be tracking is comments.

Meaning, they write a Blog post, and then a day later they come back and see how many comments were left on that post.

If they see a bunch of comments, they think the post is successful.

If they see zero comments, they think it’s a failure!

The truth is, however, that just because you’re not getting comments, it doesn’t meant that people are not consuming your content and it doesn’t mean that they’re not enjoying it!

Look, the reality of the situation is that 95-99% of people who will ever visit your blog and consume your content and get value from it, will NOT leave a comment!

Based on my blogging career for 8+ years I can say that my stats show that over 99% of my visitors NEVER leave a comment.

There’s NOTHING wrong with that. I’ve spoken to MANY of my readers over the years and I asked them if they liked this or that post, and they said yes they enjoyed it.

When I ask them why they didn’t leave a comment then, they said “I don’t know..I had nothing else to add” or “I’m not sure, I loved the post, but just didn’t want to leave a comment.”

This is NORMAL!

This is why it’s so important to track your blogging stats, and NOT comments as your measure of success.

I highly recommend that everyone installs Google Analytics on their Blog and track their stats on a regular basis so that they can see how many people are visiting their site.

For example, here are my analytics for the the past month or so since I started blogging daily.

As you can see, I am getting traffic on a daily basis, more on some days than others, but it’s pretty consistent.

If you look through my Blog archives, however, you’ll see that not every post has comments on it!

Some posts have many comments, and other posts don’t have any comments.

I don’t use comments as a measure of success / failure though, because I learned a long time ago that it’s not a reliable measure.

If you’re a Kalatu Brand Station user, setting up Google Analytics can be done very easily as built-in integration for Google Analytics is part of Kalatu, however if you’re using some other blogging platform then make sure you find a way to get analytics installed.

#7 – Blog About What YOU Want to Blog About

Another common trap I have seen many bloggers fall into is listening to some so-called “guru” or “expert” who tells them that they MUST pick a highly targeted NICHE for their Blog and to write NOTHING but highly targeted content on that Blog.

A lot of this stems from old search engine optimization techniques that used to work, where you would register a domain and build a website that’s very targeted to one keyword or one niche market, and if your website didn’t deviate from that single focus, then Google would reward you with more traffic.

This is an old, outdated strategy and it doesn’t work anymore.

I have seen so many people being so concerned about picking a single topic for their blog and being deathly afraid of writing a blog post on any other topic than what their site is about.

You don’t have to worry about this!

There’s nothing wrong with blogging about whatever topic you want, regardless what your main blog topic is.

I’ve tried building niche blogs where all I write about is one single topic and nothing but that, and I’ve also built a blog that has many different topics, and you know what I discovered?

People read my blog for ME, not my TOPIC…

They might originally be attracted to my blog because I write a post or a series of posts on a specific topic that they’re interested in, but if a week later I write a blog post on a totally different topic, they don’t care!

The most important thing is to just blog daily… and WHAT you blog about is NOT that important.

Most of my blog posts tend to be related to making money online, blogging, personal development and marketing, but that’s not because I specifically sit there and force myself to only write on that topic.

The reason I write about those topics more often than not is because that is what I *WANT* to write about on that day because that’s what’s interesting to me.

But if tomorrow I had the desire to write about a really cool new dog-training technique that I just discovered and tested out with my dogs, then that’s what I’ll write about.

Or I might decide to start writing about weight loss strategies, or producing music!

Don’t worry so much about what you’re blogging about, just GET BLOGGING!

Over time, as you blog more and more, you’ll develop a loyal audience that will most likely be interested in 90% of the stuff you blog about anyways, and when you do write about the 10% that they don’t really care about, they’ll just skip those posts, but other people might find THOSE posts the most valuable to them.

Blogging is about creating a connection and a relationship between two human beings – YOU as the Blogger and YOUR READERS.

YOU are not a TOPIC…you’re a human being. You have multiple interests.

When you get together with your friends or family, you talk about different things, right?

So why would it be a problem to blog about different things on a Blog?

It’s not…

Blog about what you’re passionate about blogging that day. Period. End of story.

The most important thing it to just blog. 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this article and I hope that you decide to join us in the 21 Day Blogging Challenge.

There’s a new one starting tomorrow – February 2nd, but if you’re reading this after that date, just sign-up for the challenge anyways as we have new ones starting on a regular basis.

17 Magic Phrases That Will Satisfy Your Client’s Logic Center and Boost Your Sales

January 30, 2015 by Paul 3 Comments

There’s a really funny fact about how human beings make decisions…

That fact is that human beings make decisions based on EMOTION, but they justify those decisions with LOGIC.

The reason why is because we live in a society which is in complete denial about this and it makes fun of people who make emotional decisions.

In other words, these three facts are at odds with each other in our daily lives:

Fact #1 – Human beings are WIRED to make decisions primarily based on emotions and feelings.
Fact #2 – Modern society tries to convince us that LOGICAL decisions are smart decisions and emotional decisions are STUPID.
Fact #3 – Most people don’t like feeling stupid, they prefer feeling smart.

Can you see how this creates an issue?

You’re basically a human being, that is wired a certain way – essentially wired to make emotional decisions – and you’re living on a planet that as a society pretends that LOGICAL decisions are smart and EMOTIONAL decisions are stupid.

And the crazy thing is that we’ve all bought into this lie, and so how do we cope with it?

Well, the strategy for dealing with this that most people utilize is this:

Make a decision about something…. emotionally, based primarily on your feelings.
Gather LOGICAL facts about the situation to JUSTIFY the emotional decision you just made, and if anyone asks, produce those logical facts to “back up” why you made the decision.

Meaning, for example, if a go to a car dealership and I see this one car that just makes me feel AMAZING… like when I sit down inside of it I feel totally excited and exhilarated and I imagine myself driving that car and just feeling AMAZING inside it… I may in that moment make my decision to buy it.

Boom… the decision is MADE. My brain has already decided.

BUT, that doesn’t mean that I actually buy the car in that instant.

Instead, my mind goes into a pattern of thinking that sounds a bit like this…

“Okay, I fricken WANT this car. It’s SO NICE! Hmmm… but wait… I don’t even know what model this is… or how much it costs… or what the gas efficiency is, or what all the features are… hmmm… if I were to buy this right now without first figuring out all that stuff, and my friends and family saw me come home with this car and I didn’t know any of those things, they would make fun of me!”

So the sales guy walks over and asks you what you think about the car, and you pretend to be all LOGICAL about it…

“Oh, yeah…it’s a nice car… but what kind of gas efficiency does it have?”

And then the sales guy tells you that… and you PRETEND like what he’s saying plays into your decision, but in reality the decision has already been made, and now you’re just gathering “Facts”.

“Oh, that’s good right? Well, what kind of financing option do you guys actually offer on this?”

And then the sales guy tells you all about the financing options and why they are the BEST options for you…. and again you PRETEND like what he’s saying plays into your decision, but in reality the decision has already been made, and now you’re just gathering “Facts”.

We play this DANCE with the sales reps gathering FACTS, up until the point where in your mind you think to yourself “Okay… I *THINK* I’ve got enough facts gathered here, so that if I come home and one of my family members asks me about this or my brother in law asks me about this, I can throw all these facts at them and PRETEND like it was a totally LOGICAL decision that made total sense, and I THINK I’ve got enough facts here that they’ll buy it…. that they’ll believe that I made a logical decision, so that they don’t think I’m STUPID.”

We *ALL* do this.

Heck, when I bought THIS house that I live in right now, my wife and I DECIDED to buy the house about 15 seconds after parking our cars and walking through the front gate.

We walked onto the property and withing 15 seconds we looked at each other and smiled…the DECISION was already made.

At that point we hadn’t even seen the inside of the house!!!

We hadn’t seen ANYTHING…

… and of course, since it’s a HUGE decision to buy a house for almost a million dollars, we didn’t tell the realtor “We’ll take it.”

No, we went inside, looked around, I took a crap-load of photos, we then went home and thought about it, then we came back a second time for a second look, and then we compared other properties in the area, and then we got a house inspection so that we would have “Logical Back Up” to prove to anyone that may ask that this was a SMART decision.

Once we got to the point where we went through all the “Logical Back Up” in our minds to prove to us that this was a smart investment and a great house for us, we made an offer and bought the house.

And of course if ANYONE ever asked us about the purchase, like as to WHY we bought it, we would start talking about all the LOGICAL reasons it made sense. 🙂

That’s what people do!

How to Satisfy Your Client’s Logic Center

Okay, so if we know that clients make emotional decisions, but they back up those decisions with LOGIC, how do we deal with that?

Well, here’s the best way to look at the situation.

You’ve got this client in front of you… and you have to visualize them going home after making the decision to buy whatever it is you’re selling, and when they go home their annoying brother-in-law or sister-in-law is going to come for a visit.

And this client’s brother-in-law or sister-in-law is one of those people that is just really annoying and they like to argue and analyze every decision that the person makes to try to prove to them that they made the wrong decision – and that they acted on emotion and impulse, instead of LOGIC.

And YOUR JOB as the “Sales Person”, is NOT really to help your client make that decision —- because remember, they’ve ALREADY DECIDED!!!! —- your job is to simply give them enough “LOGICAL AMMO” to shut their brother-in-law or sister-in-law UP!

In other words, you’ve got to help them JUSTIFY the decision they’ve already made with logic.

So how do we do that?

Well, the interesting thing is that people actually have a hard time separating information into EMOTIONAL DATA vs LOGICAL DATA.

Meaning, if you’re telling the client certain information about your product, a lot of times the client doesn’t know if the information you are telling them falls under the “Logical” column or the “Emotional” column.

For example, going back to the car situation, if the sales person says “This car can go from 0 to 60 in 7 seconds…”

The client’s mind tries to process that and think “Wait…is that a good thing? Is that a logical reason to buy the car? Or is this an emotional thing?”

And if the mind doesn’t KNOW, then the information that you told the client just gets filed under the “Unknown” category in their mind, and that means that they don’t yet know enough LOGICAL information to justify their buying decision.

Now, here’s the challenge…

What if you’re TELLING the client certain LOGICAL reasons why the decision IS in fact a great decision for them, but their mind isn’t labeling that information as LOGICAL?

Well, when that happens, you can spend ten hours talking to the client and giving them a TONNE of “LOGICAL AMMO” to shut their critics up, BUT if their mind is not receiving that information as LOGIC, then it won’t work… they’ll WANT to buy the thing from you, but they just won’t have enough logical data yet to hold up to the scrutiny that they imagine they’ll be put through.

And here’s the bad news…

… if a client imagines having their decision scrutinized by someone – be in their husband or wife or brother-in-law or whoever – and they imagine FEELING STUPID… then in the majority of cases, they will NOT buy whatever it is that you’re selling, because the benefits of whatever you are selling don’t outweigh them feeling stupid!

Make sense?

So…here’s what you have to do…

You MUST give your clients enough logical ammo / information to justify their buying decision.
You MUST help the client REALIZE that the information you gave them falls under the “LOGICAL” category.

In other words, you not only have to give your client enough logical information to justify the decision, but you have to essentially POINT OUT the fact that this is LOGICAL information you’re giving them, when giving it to them.

Now, you can’t just say to the client…“Hey, Mr. Client… Since you’re a human being like the rest of us, and because I’m a sales professional that has studied human psychology, I *know* that you’ve already made an emotional decision to buy this car… and I know that you just need some logical facts to back up your decision so that you don’t look like an idiot in front of your brother-in-law…so here are some logical facts that you can use to shut him up.”

NO! Don’t do this!

Remember, the client is NOT just trying to hide the fact that they make EMOTIONAL decisions from their brother-in-law or their spouse…they’re ALSO trying to hide the fact from YOU!!!!

They don’t want YOU – the sales guy – to think that they are STUPID either!

So you have to play the game…

… you have to PRETEND like they are making a logical decision here…:)

So how do we do that?

How do we tell the client logical facts that they can use to justify their decision, while at the same time making sure that the client labels that fact in their mind as a “LOGICAL” reason to buy?

Well, interestingly enough, a lot of it has to do with language patterns.

There are certain WORDS and phrases that our minds are conditioned to listen for when trying to decide if the information is LOGICAL or EMOTIONAL.

So what are these words and phrases?

17 Phrases That Satisfy Your Client’s Logic Center

Fact! (Then make your statement)
Look, here’s the bottom line… (Then make your statement)
Scientific Fact: (Then make your statement)
Proven Fact: (Then make your statement)
Listen to / Read these facts carefully: (Then make your statement)
Here’s a(n) (interesting) fact for you: (Then make your statement)
Absolute fact! (Then make your statement)
This fact is verified by… (Then make your statement)
Want more proof? (Then make your statement)
Face it… (Then make your statement)
This statement is supported by … (Then make your statement)
Many studies have already proven that… (Then make your statement)
The future will prove this fact… (Then make your statement)
Studies will soon prove that… (Then make your statement)
A new study by (insert who) proved that… (Then make your statement)
Pure fact! (Then make your statement)
Experts agree… (Then make your statement)

You’ll probably notice that a lot of these phrases use the word “fact” in them.

The reason for this is because the word “fact” is programmed into our minds in such a way that it elicits a pattern where you brain labels whatever information that is shared after hearing that word as FACTS and FACTS are logical.

Meaning, for example if I say this…

“This car has the best fuel economy…” your mind may or may not label that as a LOGICAL reason to buy the car… because it’s unclear whether or not this information is my opinion or if it is in fact the best car with the best fuel economy…

but if I say this…

“Want to hear an interesting fact? This car has the best fuel economy of any car in it’s class…” your mind is MUCH more likely to assume that this information is LOGICAL, and not an opinion.

It’s just what the mind does when it hears the word “FACT” injected into the sentence.

So, in order to HELP your client to be able to logically justify an emotional decision they already made, you MUST become aware of things like this and help them out by labeling your facts as facts!

Meaning, if you know some facts about the product you’re selling, and they are in fact FACTS then make sure you point that out to your clients mind by using these types of phrases.

If for example, the product you’re selling was just voted as the best product by such and such magazine or some experts did an analysis (ie. logical ammo), then SHOW the client this magazine or the proof and SAY to them “The fact that our product is the best in the industry has recently been verified by experts in this magazine…look.”

See what I mean?

Of course you never want to lie to your clients.

Don’t make up facts that aren’t actually facts!

There’s enough positive, logical truth and facts about whatever you’re selling, that you shouldn’t have to make up any lies!

If not, then don’t sell that product – EVER!

Summary

The fact that people make emotional buying decisions and justify those decisions with logic is one of those interesting things about human being that top sales people and top producers know, but most people don’t realize.

Most of us spend so much energy in life pretending to be rational, logical creatures, that we will often argue and say “No way! I don’t make emotional decisions! Not me…I’m all logical.”

LOL. Yeah, right.

You make emotional decisions just like I do…and then you back them up with logic.

The cool thing is that if we admit this, and we realize it, we can help a LOT of people to get the things they want in life — and of course make a lot more money as well ourselves — just by helping them out a little bit, by giving their mind the logical ammo it needs to justify their buying decision.

The truth is that most people already made their decision long before they spoke to you as a sales rep… or that emotional decision happened at some point in the conversation, but they’re still not going to buy from you if you don’t give them enough logical ammo to withstand scrutiny from the “LOGIC POLICE” waiting for them at home, or at the next family dinner.

So give the client what they need in order to justify their decision, by giving them the logical reasons why your product or service is right for them, and make sure you LABEL the information you’re giving them in their minds as logical reasons by using one of the phrases I mentioned above or something similar.

Do You Have a Score Board for Your Goals?

January 20, 2015 by Paul 2 Comments

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:

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.
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.
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!

🙂

How to Easily Take and Share a Screenshot in Windows

January 18, 2015 by Paul 1 Comment

Do you want to know how to easily take screenshots in Windows?

I have found that taking screenshots can be cumbersome and annoying.

Windows 7 and 8 come with a snipping tool which makes it pretty simple to take a screenshot of your screen, but if you want to share that screenshot with someone or upload it to facebook or to a Blog, the process requires multiple steps such as:

Load Windows Snipping Tool
Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
Select the area you want to capture on your screen
Windows Snipping Tool takes the screenshot
Save the file to your computer, giving it a name you’ll remember
Find the file on your computer and share it with someone, or upload to Facebook, or to your Blog

As you can see, there are 6 steps involved here.

It’s not that difficult, but it’s not a very efficient way of doing things if you take screenshots quite often.

Want to know a much better way of doing it?

Use ShareX

My friend, Tyler Cruz, shared with me that he uses this tool called ShareX for his screenshots.

It’s a neat little tool that you can download for free, which shortens the process of taking a screenshot considerably.

The reason it’s more efficient is because it automates a few key steps.

#1 – Auto-load on Windows Startup

You can setup the tool to automatically load up when you load Windows.

This means you don’t have to remember to load up the Windows Snipping tool each time.

ShareX simply maps itself to a hot-key you preset and then it just works.

The default setting that I use is the hot-key CTRL + Print Screen.

So any time I want to take a screenshot of anything, I just hit CTRL + Print Screen and ShareX pops up and gives me a selection tool to select which area of my screen I want to take a screenshot of.

#2 – Setup Automatic Uploading of Your Screenshot File

Once the software takes a screenshot of an area of your screen, you can set it up to automatically upload your file to an FTP server or any type of cloud service like Dropbox or Flickr or Photobucket or whatever you want to use to store your uploaded images.

I just set up mine to automatically upload the file to my FTP server so that I don’t have to waste any time uploading manually.

Also, I have my FTP server directory setup so that it puts all my files into a sub-folder on my Blog, so this way all my screenshots are also visible to anyone I want to share them with just by giving them the URL to the file.

#3 – Setup Automatic Copying of File URL to Clipboard

Once the software takes the screenshot, and uploads it to your FTP server or file sharing site, it can automatically copy the URL to the image directly to your clipboard.

This way, a few seconds after you take your screenshot the URL to the image is loaded up in your clipboard and you can then PASTE it into any window.

For example if I’m chatting with someone on SKYPE, and I want to show them something really quickly, I’ll just take a screenshot by hitting CTRL + Print Screen and then selecting an area on my screen and then as soon as I do that, the software uploads the file and copies the URL to my clipboard.

Then I just go to my chat window and hit CTRL + V (hot key for PASTE) and boom the software puts the URL to the file in the chat.

This way the person can click on the link in the chat window and see the screenshot.

Or if I want to upload something to Facebook, I’ll take a screenshot and 3 seconds later the file is uploaded to my FTP server and the URL is ready to be pasted.

Then I click Upload in Facebook and when it asks me for the location of the file – instead of spending time looking for the file on my computer’s hard drive I just PASTE the URL into the input box which asks me where I want to upload my file from.

This way Facebook actually pulls the file from my FTP server and uploads it to Facebook.

There are many other features that this software has, but even with just these three simple settings, I’ve shortened my screen capturing process from six steps to just three:

Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
Select the area you wan to capture on your screen
File is uploaded and the URL to it is copied to my clipboard, ready to be shared

Where to Get ShareX for Free

You can download ShareX for Windows for free by clicking here or on the picture below:

My 2015 Strategy For Making Money Online

January 17, 2015 by Paul 1 Comment

Just before the new year started I had some time to sit down and really think about what I believe would be my best strategy for making money online in 2015 and beyond.

I looked back over the last 20 years of my life as an entrepreneur and the last 8 years as a blogger, affiliate marketer, network marketer etc., and I realized that my strategy up to this point has looked something like this:

Basically, when I started Blogging in 2006 I focused on that for a period of time and didn’t really do much else in terms of making money online as I was still very much working full time in the corporate world.

In early 2008 I got more serious about making money as a Blogger and started to build up my monthly blogging income to making several thousand dollars a month.

Then I decided to put the majority of my focus on affiliate marketing with PPC traffic, as I wanted to be able to quit the corporate world by the end of 2008.

By January 2009 I left the corporate world and focused entirely on affiliate marketing with some sporadic blogging from time to time.

As my affiliate income started to grow I started to get excited as it was growing so much faster than the income I made from blogging.

Then in November 2009 Google pulled the plug on affiliate marketing via their Pay-per click Google Adwords system and banned over 100,000 affiliates, including me.

My affiliate income basically disappeared overnight.

I went back to blogging for a short period of time, now having to re-build consistency with my blog and me readers.

Then, I decided to try doing affiliate marketing using SEO strategies.

That didn’t really work out too well, so I went back to blogging again…. once again having to re-build consistency and re-build my following.

Then I decided to try getting back into network marketing for a period of time.

When that didn’t work out with the company I was with, I decided to go back to blogging again – having to re-build consistency yet again!

Basically, over the 8 years that I’ve been a blogger I’ve started and stopped blogging on a consistent basis more times than I can count.

During certain period of time I’ve written daily blog posts for a month straight, and at other times I didn’t write a single blog post for a month.

Essentially I’ve been very inconsistent with my blogging audience and my email list.

Having said that, I still managed to build a following of over 10,000 email subscribers with my Blog, but in hindsight that list would probably be 10 – 20 times bigger if I just remained consistent!

I was still able to achieve my goal of being able to leave my corporate job behind in 2009 and to make a six-figure income from the comfort of my own home, but I probably COULD be making a 7-figure or even an 8-figure income if I did things differently.

(Income disclaimer – Results not typical. Just because I make a six-figure income from home doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to also. See my income disclaimer below.)

Modeling Successful Online Marketers

When I sat down and documented what I have done to try to analyze what has worked for me really well and what hasn’t, I also did a careful analysis of some of the top income earners that I know who are making 7 and 8 figure incomes online.

They all made money online using different methods, however there emerged one single pattern that virtually all of them followed – with rare exception.

Pretty much all of them are doing one of two things:

#1 – Blogging daily, or at the very least 5 days a week.

#2 – Emailing their list daily, or at the very least 5 days a week.

If you look at virtually every successful marketer online, they are all doing ONE of these two things OR BOTH!

I’ve been a blogger for over 8 years, but I’ve never done ONE or BOTH of those things CONSISTENTLY for more than a month or so at a time.

That is the difference!

So, based on this, my NEW strategy for 2015 and beyond looks like this:

Basically what I’m planning on doing is to create a foundation of Blogging and/or emailing my list every single day or at the very least 5 days a week.

That is PRIMARY and mandatory for my business.

If I do nothing else, I want to stick to blogging and/or emailing my list every single day.

See, by doing that, by creating valuable content every single day, I *KNOW* that my online income will skyrocket at some point – it’s just a matter of time.

On top of that layer of daily blogging and/or emailing my list daily, the second later on top of that is embracing network marketing on a more consistent basis over a longer period of time.

I’ve kind of had a love/hate relationship with network marketing, mostly because I didn’t really understand it properly like I do now.

I didn’t know how to produce results in network marketing on a consistent basis or how to build a team long term.

Also it took me a long time to find a network marketing company with a product that I’m passionate about.

So now I also plan on being way more consistent with network marketing BUT it still comes second to Blogging which is my primary foundation.

See, once I’ve got my solid foundation of daily blogging and/or emailing my list every day, THEN I can pursue the many different income streams that show up in my life.

All those things are ON TOP of my foundation of Blogging.

Meaning, if I want to promote an affiliate offer that I’m super excited about, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

If I learn some new Facebook traffic strategy, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

If I want to take a paycation (vacation where you make money while vacationing!), I can do that – AND I can blog about it at the same time.

If I learn some new SEO strategy that I want to try out, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

New exercise program? Sure, I can do that, and Blog about it.

Basically, instead of bouncing around from strategy to strategy, making money online using all these different methods and then getting frustrated if something doesn’t work out or the environment changes on me and trying to go back to blogging again, now I’m just going to Blog on a consistent basis and just do all those other things ON TOP of Blogging.

See, long term I know with 100% certainty that if I just blog daily and communicate with my followers on a regular basis, I will achieve all my financial goals – period, end of story.

Why Not Just Blog Daily and That’s It?

Some of you might then think to yourself “Well if you already know that you’ll reach all your financial goals just by blogging, then why bother with all those other things anyways?”

That’s a great question, and I actually know some people who have tried doing that.

They just said to themselves “I’m just going to blog every day, and I’m not going to get involved or even look at ANY other systems out there, or any other ways of making money online, or network marketing or anything else…I’ll just Blog every day and make money by blogging.”

Without exception, EVERY single one of those people did NOT succeed as Blogger.

Why?

BECAUSE they ran out of things to Blog about!

See, Blogging is an amazing tool for personal development and learning how to communicate and for building a long-term online income – BUT – if the ONLY thing you ever do in your life is sit in front of your computer and Blog, you’ll run out of content!

And you’ll most likely have a really hard time attracting and maintaining an audience as your Blog will be BORING and all based on theory.

See, one of the reasons that I’ve been able to build a following of over 10,000 email subscribers with my Blog is because I’m ALWAYS trying out new things, testing out new things, and then Blogging about my results or the lack of results.

When I try a new diet and I Blog about it, people are interested because they’re curious to see if the diet actually works!

Even if they’re not trying to lose weight right now in their life, they’ll follow along because they want to know if the strategy works just in case they ever want to lose weight later on in their life.

And when I try out a new income stream, they want to know how it’s working for me.

So they tune in and read my Blog posts.

This is why I believe that Blogging is an awesome foundational strategy for making money online long term, but it has to be coupled with actually LIVING LIFE and BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR.

If the ONLY thing you’re doing is sitting at home and Blogging, pretty soon all your posts are just about Blogging.

I see many people making this mistake.

They start a Blog and their Blog’s topic is “Blogging”.

They write their first 5 or 10 posts talking about “How to make money with your Blog”, where they share 5 to 10 things THEY just learned about Blogging.

Nothing wrong with that.

But then, after 5 or 10 posts, they run out of things to say as nothing else is happening!

See, I *LOVE* the fact that I’m a scanner type personality where I’m always trying out new things, looking at new income streams, going to different events, trying out new personal development strategies, taking on new hobbies, meeting new people, etc.

By doing all of those things, I have a TONNE of content for my Blog for years to come!

I NEVER run out of things to Blog about, because there’s always something new I’m learning and some area in my life that I’m growing in and it’s a lot of FUN for me to share what I learn with others.

If you’ve struggled to make money online and jumped around from system to system, from strategy to strategy, trying out blogging here and there for short periods of time like I have in the past, you may want to consider making the decision that I made to get SERIOUS about consistent blogging.

Even if you’re a TOTAL BEGINNER, if you start TODAY, one year from now you could have over 360 articles/blog posts written on your site, you could be an established authority and a recognized name online and you could have a sizable online residual income growing.

If you’re interested in doing that, I invite you to join my team at Empower Network and start blogging today!

One year from now, you’ll be VERY GLAD you did!