Productivity

It was a beautiful, clear morning as we pulled away from the marina in Clearwater, Florida.

There were at least 10 of us on board. We had met out there at the marina in order to go offshore about 20 miles and go diving.

I arrived with my big pile of diving gear that I bought for myself after I completed my certification. A brand new BC, regulator with auxillary (often called “the octupus” as a slang), even a dive computer.

I didn’t really know where we were going, exactly. I was going with some people from my diving group as well as the instructor. I knew it I would get wet…and that’s about all I knew.

Have you ever sat down and really figured out WHY you want to see your blog or business take off?

What’s your mission?

Let me tell you a story…

An awful lot of bloggers fall into this trap. Recently, I heard it referred to as “the cycle of stupid”.

See, I have a mission. And simply put, bloggers will keep falling off the grid unless they exit this cycle of stupid. That doesn’t help the world. Nobody gains when you arrive at the almost inevitable end of the cycle of stupid – which is… quitting.

So, the cycle of stupid looks like this…

I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my business.

No, nothing bad is happening. However, I am looking at the way forward and thinking of making some changes. Some of it has to do with some of my various observations in the internet marketing niche.

One has to evolve, and we can’t keep doing things the “old” way and expect them to keep working. Let me attempt to explain… 🙂

I was having a discussion with somebody the other day. This person wanted to make money online. It didn’t really matter how, they just wanted money.

The plan (as they put it) was to find one of the most successful people online… and simply copy them. And, the understanding of the “how” was to start a blog and promote stuff.

You know you should write about something. You haven’t posted to your blog in days. You’re not too proud of that fact. But, what do you write about?

So, you rack your brain. You come up with a few ideas, but perhaps you stall because you’ve kinda written about it before, or you’re not sure anybody but you will even care.

You might look at other bloggers and wonder, “How the hell do they keep getting all those great ideas for posts?”

Well, I don’t know. But, I’ll tell you how I go about it…

The numbers don’t lie. The problem is, many of us don’t know the numbers and pay little to no attention to them.

I’m not talking about your website metrics. I’m talking about something bigger than that, yet much simpler. That simple metric is…

What is your TIME worth?

Have you ever actually calculated it?

Every time I survey my readers about the biggest barrier facing them, I can sum it up with one word… Overwhelm. And is it any wonder? If we look at the field of internet business, there are about a thousand different ways to go about it. New ones are coming out all the time, and…

There is something bad going on.

In fact, it is rather disheartening sometimes. It really is a cold, hard fact of life that we’re up against here. And nobody is exempt.

Today, I’m going to be blunt as a spoon. Because it needs to be said.

You might have winced at that question just now. These days, the words “business opportunity” just don’t have the ring to it they once did. Instead, we think things like MLM, pyramid schemes, and disguised affiliate programs where you make somebody else rich and get screwed.

I see some of these things. They advertise as if you’re “starting your own business”. There are promises of thousands of dollars per month with just a few hours of work per week. They parade success stories of people who quit their job and now make more money at home than they did when working. Come to find out, all you are is an affiliate for them. You’re selling THEIR stuff. You’re using some cookie-cutter affiliate site which you’re supposed to go market. In some cases, you actually have to PAY THEM to get started with this.

There are two ways to make more money: (1) Make more money, (2) spend less.

Sounds like a life lesson passed down from our grandfather in a lecture about saving money. Of course, it is sound advice. Smart advice to apply to our business and our personal finances.

I’ve talked about minimalism before and I think there is a lot of truth to the workability of it. It is the idea of simple living, reducing the number of possessions, and increasing self-sufficiency. When you get rid of stuff in your life, you gain more time and you gain more mental energy. Many people have changed their lives for the better simply by getting rid of a lot of their stuff (to whatever degree they’re OK with).

What about applying it to our businesses?

My readers know that I tell it like it is. And, I’m about to do it again.

… Because I get asked questions fairly often, and sometimes those questions make me want to bash my head up against the wall.

The typical template of that question goes something like this….

If I work X hours per day, how long will it take me to be making $____ per month?

Ugh.

So, time to dish out some truths. Once you understand these things and accept them, the closer you’ll be to actually creating the success that you want online.

Sitting in Las Vegas in October, Nathan Hangen, Lisa Morosky and myself were wrapping up our panel on turning your blog into a business. Jordan Cooper, as moderator, asked us for any final advice before we wrapped up. Nathan replied…

“Yeah. Stop blogging.”

He got a chuckle from the audience, but there is truth to it. Nathan was referring to the blogger hamster wheel. It is a wheel kept spinning by broke bloggers.

Ever had that feeling when you get to the end of a day and realized you haven’t really accomplished anything?

You went into it with the best of intentions. You had a mighty to-do list, and you told yourself, “Hello new day. Prepare to be pwned.” You have that cup of coffee and you set out on your quest of efficiency.

Several tweets, wall updates, blog comments and emails later – it is lunch time. Well…. I guess that was work. But, I’ll get the REAL work done after lunch. Yeah…

Today, I want to extend upon my post from yesterday about gratitude. Today and tomorrow, I want to do a couple of gratitude posts on the blog. Today, I’ll talk business. Tomorrow, I’ll get personal.

I find it utterly amazing to be able to do what it is that I do, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel gratitude for that.

Last week, I was invited to be interviewed in front of a local internet marketing group here in the Tampa area. I had around 25 people show up, some driving as much as 50 miles, just to come see me be interviewed. In the process, I had this guy raining all kinds of kudos down on me. It was weird, in all honesty.

I had a thought. Yeah, it happens every now and then. 😉

See, the other day I was talking to somebody. This person was in the advertising business. This means she saw a lot of clients and was busy. VERY busy. We’re talking 15+ hour days. Sitting in the office until 2AM. Sometimes up and at it by 4AM.

Overwhelm. No time. Busy.

These days, people seem to wear the “overwhelm” badge with pride and I don’t know why.

I recently wrote a piece about the two Circles Of Life and how which one is chosen will really dictate the level of success you see in life. I got a lot of AWESOME comments on that post. I read every single one and I’m really glad the post resonated with so many of you.

Today, I want to eleborate on the six points that I stated briefly at the end of that post. These are six principles which, I believe, stand as common traits of the successful. When you talk to successful people or read auto-biograhies from well known entrepreneurs and CEOs, you very often see these 6 things in play.

Let’s address them one by one.

So, I was cleaning out my office this last weekend. I decided to do some minimization and get rid of some pending to-do items sitting around the room. So, I tackled a pile of notes sitting in my “someday” pile.

On one of the many pads of paper sitting there, I found some notes I had taken in San Diego at Frank Kern’s event last year. I went through it and got some nice little reminders. But, one of the sheets had something that I remember Frank talking about. And at the time I remember thinking, “This stuff comes before any online success can be had and is so important”.

So, today, I bring you my interpretation of the concept. I’ll just call it “The Circles Of Life”. There are two of them, and we all need to make a personal decision which one we will live on.

So, you want to build up a popular blog. You want to make some money from it. You want to feel that sense of accomplishment. Plus, this stuff is fun!

So, you sit down at the computer. You open up Firefox. You check your email. You check Google Reader. You read other blogs and get some ideas for your own blog. This is exciting stuff!

Oh, crap. It is late. Time for work, life, sleep.

Next day, perhaps you feel like tweaking your blog. So, you spend a few hours on it, messing around with code. You research PHP stuff. You go through a ton of trial and error with your Wordpress theme. After many hours, your blog might look a little different. But, traffic hasn’t changed. You haven’t even written anything yet

I want to tell you a story.

Back before I had any form of public reputation as a blogger, I made some money by doing programming work. In fact, even as I was running PCMech, I was doing client web development on the side to earn more money. PHP/MySQL development was my thing.

As things evolved with PCMech, I saw the need for some kind of content management system. See, I began PCMech in the days where we were manually creating HTML files and linking them together. I’d use Microsoft Frontpage to manage things as a site and hopefully keep everything working. I eventually evolved to using server side includes to make certain things common and make site changes not such a pain in the butt. But, I needed a real CMS.

So, I began making one myself. I put all kinds of work into the thing and was using it to power my own site. Then, it dawned on me that I could probably make some money with it. So, I called it Miraserver and began to sell licenses.