The FINAL Daily

Alright, my friends.

This is it. Today is the final issue of The Daily for 2017. I’m going to be shutting down and will be resuming around January 3rd or so.

This whole experiment in doing a daily email has been a lot of fun. A little challenging at times. Not every issue is my best work. I think I might have annoyed a few people with one of my emails talking about Bitcoin, for instance. 😉

But, overall, I hope you are enjoying these daily emails. As you can imagine, it does take some time to do it. I have big plans for it in 2018… and some things yet to work out.

But, that’s what I’ll be doing during this holiday break. Chilling out, working on the home remodeling project (of course), spending time with my family… as well as working on those plans for 2018.

Speaking of which…

In my final Daily for the year, I figured it might be interesting to give a sense of some of what I have in mind for the Blog Marketing Academy in 2018.

I still have details to figure out. Plus, as I said earlier this week, part of the executive role is in making plans like this become actuality. But, here’s my intentions and the bigger picture…

In 2017, I slowed down my blogging frequency quite a bit. I practice The Redwood Strategy and that’s why you don’t see me blogging all the time. In fact, The Daily is pretty much my blog now. The website is more about full-length articles.

In 2018, that will continue. The content strategy for the blog will focus on large mega-posts. I will be working in more videos into them, too, with the better video setup coming to my newly remodeled home office.

The 2018 content plan involves The Daily as a major thing. One thing I love about The Daily is that I can write these emails from anywhere. My family and I have a lot of travel plans in 2018. We’re heading out to Texas in February and out to the west coast (California, etc.) in the summer. Content that I can produce from anywhere, easily, is important for me.

I plan to expand the Daily subscriber base, too. I want these emails to be something all of my subscribers get, not just a segment of them. Plus, I’ll be doing more outreach to get more people onto The Daily.

Many have asked about my podcast. Do I plan to bring it back? Well, more than likely, yes. There’s no doubt that the podcast had a positive impact on my business. Thing is, unlike The Daily, the podcast is definitely more work to produce. Plus, being out traveling in the RV makes podcast production more difficult. So, if I bring it back, I’ll need to change things up some. But, I’ll do it. I have some ideas. 😉

One thing is that I will be putting together a more portable podcast setup. I have a gorgeous setup in my office. But, in the RV, no. But, in my ideal setup, I could literally record it on my iPhone, upload to Dropbox, then have my assistant do everything from there. That’s the goal. 🙂

I also plan to set up a series of free workshops for the main blog. Essentially, evergreen webinars on various topics. People will need to opt in for them, of course. More on this soon. 🙂

So, that’s the jist of my content plan, in terms of formats. The Redwood Strategy for the blog, more videos on those posts as well as evergreen workshops, The Daily, and the podcast.

Now, let’s talk about The Lab…

The Roadmap Project is my internal project for redoing and re-aligning all training content around the 5-phase roadmap. It involves a lot of new creation and updating of existing material.

The Roadmap Project is going to be completed in 2018. I am confident that there will be no body of online business training like it anywhere else.

We’ve also recently turned the office hours into full Live Workshops. Every 2 weeks, we’ll be doing an exclusive training workshop on some in-demand topic (often by member request), along with a full Q&A session. I may give non-members the ability to buy into these workshops, but I don’t know yet.

I am also developing a proprietary software setup in-house to radically increase the level of INDIVIDUAL support to all Lab members. It’s a real trick to provide individualized, proactive support to such a large group of people at the same time. But, that’s exactly what is needed in order to deliver the ultimate win to the highest percentage of people.

Training videos are great. But, SUPPORT is what makes or breaks it. And, while I’m already very accessible to my Lab members, this new setup is going to take it to another level.

Along with that, I’m eying a few other changes to The Lab…

• A partner program for service providers who can perform work for Lab members to get them out of a jam. Providers will be vetted by me so my Lab members don’t have to go out onto the wild-wild west of Fiverr.
• A resource rolodex of tools and shortcuts (with arranged discounts for members if one can be arranged)
• A brand new onboarding process

With all of that, Lab membership pricing will also be increasing. We’ve already gotten rid of the lifetime memberships simply because it makes no sense to deliver this level of service for one, low one-time fee. It isn’t sustainable business.

But, the monthly/annual rates will go up, too. And it is simply because the value of the program is increasing and I want to provide the best service. I don’t wish to compete on price. I want to compete on value. With lower prices, I end up getting people who too often get in their own way because they won’t spend any money to develop their own business.

So…

That’s the general plan. 🙂

Over the next couple weeks, I’ll work out the details.

Then, the trick will be to make those plans become actuality. That’s what executives do.

It will involve some new systems. New ways of doing things.

But, it should be a good year. 🙂

But, actually, my real success is going to be whether my students have a good year, too. My success is borne out of their success. And they will remain my prime focus in 2018.

…

Thanks so much for being here.

And… at least in terms of The Daily… I’ll see you next year! 🙂 Have a Merry Christmas.

– David