Goal Girl’s Blog

Kaizen is a Japanese concept, of continuous improvement. It encompasses the idea of making changes, monitoring the results, then adjusting accordingly. A good concept to keep in mind on a goal quest. Great things can be achieved through the accumulation of tiny changes. I’m losing a few pounds a week toward the stated goal of fifty pounds… along the way I may adjust my exercise program or my diet, and probably will adjust my mindset many times between here and there.

I didn’t one day decide to become a successful internet marketer, then waved my magic goal stick and became one… I’m learning a little more every day, putting marketing campaigns out there, tweaking them, monitoring them… trying something a little different the next campaign based on what I’ve learned.

I didn’t pull a black belt out of a hat either. I worked very hard at learning the curriculum, teaching my muscles to move in new ways, developing habits of motion, applying power principles, monitoring the result and then adjusting. It took me a little longer than some to earn my black belt, as I took a year off to have a baby, but in all I chipped away a little bit every day for roughly six years before I was ready to test for my black belt.

This is one reason for keeping your goals measurable, i.e. so that you can measure as a starting point, and then periodically measure to see the affects of cumulative change over time.

So what did I do with the “frustration and discouragement” I suffered yesterday?   Today I brushed up four squidoo lenses, created a new one (content pending…), submitted three articles, submitted some rss feeds, posted some blog and squidoo page comments…

I feel a lot better.   I’m building a strong foundation for a towering success.   I’d have gotten a lot more done, but could only work on this during breaks in my normal work day.

Oh,  I also checked out the Lunar Electric Rover application on the NASA website, tres cool.   This was developed by a company in Virginia called AMA … http://ama-inc.com … excellent job guys!

Yes, road-blocks, speed bumps and long, long uphill climbs will come. Expect them. Prepare for them. How? When you set a goal, set your action plan. Then Act, act, act. Action plan implies action. You can’t steer a stationary vehicle.

I’m frustrated and discouraged with the affiliate marketing efforts this past week, hence the motivation for this post. Part of this is the lack of results thus far (in terms of money).  I had a great day last Wednesday, got a lot of stuff done on a new marketing campaign, but then… my daughter got sick, and when a four year old gets sick, they need attention, coddling, and occassionally, cleaning up.. they need all your discretionary time.   After a couple of days, K was feeling much better, but now I was sick, my mother was sick and my younger brother was also sick.   At one point my eyes were swollen shut from the cold and I could hardly read anything.

And also the frustration of marketing over a month without a single sale.    And not much traffic here either.  Even though I don’t expect to make money from this blog any time soon, saving my focus for One Week Marketing, I would like to see a little traffic…

Am I in “The Dip”?  Probably not yet… pretty early for that I think.    How do I deal with this frustration?  I act.  I push to finish my checklists for the campaign I started last week.  I write, write, write.  I try not to get to distracted by hundreds of things, though I do reserve an hour a day to read marketing papers, emails, ebooks, blogs, etcetera.   That said, I didn’t get a lot done today because K’s pre-Kindergarten was closed due to the ice storms.

Because my work-day job is pretty demanding, I am probably moving through the learning curve a bit slower than many would.  But I’m moving, grin.   Even unproductive campaigns are not a waste of time, because I learn from each one.

Ok, it’s only three weeks into the new year, so I guess I’m not *that* late posting my goals for the year! I really don’t have a ton goals, because I don’t want to spread my focus that thinly. Here they are in short form:

• Lose 50 pounds of fat.
• Reach $200/day in affiliate sales by year’s end.

That’s it. Those are my goals, which I will outline in greater detail below and discuss on a regular basis.

Lose 50 pounds of Fat

The Why’s:

• To decrease wear and tear on my knees.
• To be able to keep up with my preschooler and live to see her grow up.
• To enhance my martial arts practice.
• To not develop diabetes, which is prevalent in my family.
• To eliminated my pcos symptoms.

The How’s:

Cut Carbs. You may argue against ‘fad diets’, and that is fine. For me this not about following a fad diet. I have a metabolic syndrome related to insulin resistance. Among other things, it contributes to my weight issues (and vice versa by the way). I know from past experience that I can eat up to around 50g of carbohydrates a day and still lose weight at a good rate. In the past, however, I’ve taken those carbs as things like lower-carb bread, coatings on chicken, a tiny portion of chips or fries, etc… Well, I am doing it better this final time. In case you didn’t know, fifty grams of carbohydrates buys you a heck of a lot of leafy greens. Spinach, for example, has just over a gram of carb per cup (raw). A lunch of say, three cups of spinach with 1/2 cup of chicken, avocado, a tablespoon of bacon crumbles and an olive oil vinegret still leaves me with around 45g of carb to ’spend’, 48g if you subtract fiber from total carbohydrate (I’m not). A quarter cup of blueberries costs me around 5.5g (39.5 left). Dinner: A poached flounder filet with a cup of asparagus = roughly 5.5, let’s call it 6g since I put lemon juice on my asparagus. 34g to go. Add a cup of cooked cauliflower with a pinch of shredded cheese… now I’m down to about 30g of carbohydrate. Breakfast: Four scrambled eggs with half a cup of brocoli and 2oz of swiss cheese=~13g carbs, so I still have 17 grams to go! So add half a cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced and sauteed to breakfast, leaving 14g. I could add a cup of mushrooms to the spinach at lunch, to bring me down to 11g. I could add half a cup of babaganoush for something close to that.

So, on my horrible, fad diet, I would have eaten in a day:

3c spinach
~4oz chicken
1/2 avacado
tbs bacon crumbles
1c mushrooms
2tbs olive oil vinaigrette
1/4 cup blueberries
1 medium flounder fillet
1c Asparagus w/1tbs lemon juice
1c cooked cauliflower
1tbs shredded chedder
4 eggs
1/2 cup brocolli
2oz swiss cheese
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup of babaganoush (eggplant, tomatoe dish)

Hmm… I see plenty of veggies here for 50g of carbohydrate. Now I would probably add a little more of (healthy) fats to this menu… maybe instead of flounder, a good piece of fatty salmon? Anyway, the point is, a “lower carb” diet can be a very healthy one if healthy choices are made. And low carb works for me; I lost 20 pounds last summer on low carb (and have kept it off), and just need to get back into my routine. I expect this to result in a reduction in calories as well. I’ll add my daily fat, protein, caloric targets to this post later.

Exercise:

• I’ve recently added a 2-hour pilates private session each week to my routine.
• My daughter has discovered “Kid’s Club” at 24-Hour Fitness, so now she helps me stay motivated to go there three evenings a week.
• When I get to the point that my knees aren’t killing me all of the time, I’ll increase the time I put into my martial arts (at one point, prior to my daughter’s
  birth, I was doing Kenpo around ten to fifteen hours a week…).
• I’m also adding one day a week in the pool on my lunch break.

The When(s):

Here is my 50lbs-before-January 1st, 2010 goal broken down into smaller bites (with my current weight being 219lbs):

• 13lbs by April 1st, 2009 (206lbs)
• 26lbs by July 1st, 2009 (193lbs)
• 40lbs by October 1st, 2009 (179lbs)
• 50lbs by January 1, 2010 (169lbs)

Reach $200/Day of “Online Income”

Let’s clarify… since online sales will ebb and flow, the goal is to average $200/day over the course of a week, i.e. $1400/week, whether that is all made on Friday night at 8pm, or if it arrives in dribs and drabs over the course of a week.

The Why’s:

• This will give me capital to reinvest in my online endeavors to excellerate the growth of my business.
• Doesn’t quite replace my salary, but puts me on the path toward that wonderful state.
• I’ll meet the coolest people along the way (already am meeting some!).
• Eventually, when I go full time, I’ll be able to set my own hours… *very* important to a single mum!
• Who wouldn’t love an extra $72,800 a year?

The How:

• I love blogging, and I love it even more as I go along, but I think initially I’ll focus on Bum Marketing as my money maker, rather than trying to do battle on multiple fronts. I’ll continue to post to this blog (did I mention that I love it?), and I’ll keep the Google Adsense and The Goal Store, because it doesn’t take anything away from my Bum Marketing efforts, but I’m not going to spend a whole lot of energy on SEO just yet. I think good relevent content will go a long way toward that end.
• Squidoo, in conjunction with Bum Marketing. Squidoo, as others have quipped, has “Google Juice.” And it’s a lot of fun to boot. And addictive. Something addictive that will contribute to my bottom line more than my wasteline? I’m there, Baby!
• PotPieGirl’s One Week Marketing.
  One Week Marketing method, which puts Bum Marketing and Squidoo together in a very succinct, well laid out weekly marketing plan with checklists, tweaking exercises, etcetera.
• “Kaizen,” the Japanese concept of constant, continuous improvement. Each marketing campaign will teach me something I can apply to the next one. When I learn something that makes a measurable difference in results, I can then apply it to existing campaigns (without obsessing about the old ones too much ). Each week (or more?) I’ll add another OWM campaign. Together, over time, the rewards from these will add up.

The When:

Before January 1st, 2010(hopefully long before!), I will have my first week of $200 days.

Breaking this down:

• First Affiliate Sale by February 1st, 2009
• First $100 week by April 1st, 2009.
• First $500 week by July 1st, 2009.
• First $1000 week by October 1st, 2009.
• First $1400 week by January 1st, 2010

This will definitely stretch me, because I have a ‘day’ job and a four year old, but I know this is doable.  For one thing, my efforts should be cumulative using the One Week Marketing method.

Motivation poster seen lately: “Optimism : Obstacles are just stepping stones to success.”

Do you cringe, run, hide when things get difficult? ‘Things’ getting difficult just might be an indication that you’re on the right path, if only you’d keep on keeping on! Read on…

I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s book The Dip, and this short little book has changed my perspective.

What happens at around mile 20 of a 26 mile race (marathon)? Many non-elite runners experience what is called “The Wall”. Those who prepare for it either don’t experience the wall, or are able to push through it. “The Wall” is partly a physical barrier, i.e. glycogen stores are low, the aches and pains accumulated over the course of the race so far are talking your mind out of finishing. The Wall is largely mental though. At meeting the wall, you must decide: are the rewards of finishing the marathon greater than the cost of continuing?

How does the wall gives an advantage to the runners who can surpass it? It weeds out the competition, creating scarcity… in a market economy this is a good thing if you are doing the marketing. The bigger the dip you’ve pushed through, the greater your chances of being “The Best in the World.” There are incredible marketing advantages to being number one versus any other number. Market share may be linear from number two down, but the share number one achieves breaks that curve.

In The Dip, Godin also discusses when it is a good idea to quit and concentrate your resources elsewhere, coining the phrase “strategic quitting.” Want to know more? You can buy it here: The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

The Dip is a small book, only 80 pages, including blanks and title pages, but there is no fluff here; it’s all value. Thank goodness it’s not priced proportionally to the value within, or no one could afford a copy.

I can totally buy into the premise of this book. I started my professional career as a marine biologist. I loved it, but there were so many kids coming out of college who wanted to be marine biologists that the market for that skill set was flooded. I looked at my supervisor, who had been in the field for something like fifteen years at the time, and he was only making maybe $15,000 more than I was starting out, and I figured the stress-level and experience differential between his job and my job was worth a heck of a lot more than that. Through a series of fortunate opportunities, I ended up leaving the marine biology field and entering the IT world with both feet. The initial jump doubled my salary off the bat. In the nine years since, my salary has continued to increase to the point where I’m now making roughly 2.5x’s what my old boss was making with 15 years’ experience, and at roughly the same stress-level. And I haven’t had a hard-head catfish spine go through my boot and arch of my foot in nearly a decade now. Well worth it!

Inertia.  You may the best at defining goals with laser-like precision, giving them deadlines, and formulating an action plan.  Unless you take the first step toward your goal and keep walking, your chances of achieving your goal are pretty darn slim.  

Why is it so hard to get moving on a goal’s action plan?   Is it the plan?   Too many steps?   Too vague?  Is the connection between the proposed actions and the desired results too iffy?    Or is it the goal?  Do you really have a driving need to reach your goal?   Is the goal something that really motivates you?  Can you see yourself, goal reached or surpassed, and when you do, are you happy?  Maybe your goal needs to be honed, redefined, or in some cases abandoned (if increased effort is not going to bring you any closer to success, and is not going to increase the rewards… why am I doing this?).  For a good discussion on when to do the latter, read Seth Godin’s “The Dip” which you can find here.

As part of my goal to replace at least $2000/month of my income with residual income, I searched around for possible paths.    I found Squidoo.com, a great place to publish sort articles, called lenses, with some good monetization modules… very quick, very easy.   Through Squidoo itself, I came across a *lot* of lenses discussion how to drive traffic to your lenses, improve their rank, bios of “Squid’s” who make a regular income through squidoo.   If one of your goals is to make an online income, I highly recommend anything written by PotPieGirl.   My favorite is “One Week Marketing Action Plan - From PotPieGirl.”  PotPieGirl is offering the first 18 pages of her eBook for free, which by itself is a great value.   This is the marketing plan that I personally use…  It has clear action steps and checklists.  It explains the why of each action.  It’s very well written.

Today I read a good post on a goal setting technique to help make goals more concrete to your subconscious.  Sort of a twist on “fake it ’til you make it.”  I found the post, of all places, on a real estate website.   The article is actually a guest post by Mel Reed.   Mel talks about wording your goals in such a way as to trick the mind into believing that they are a done deal.  When the mind believes you are already successful, a lot of the barriers that come from anticipating the hard work coming on the road to success.   

Mell goes further and says to write your goal down on a card, in past tense, date it with a future date by which you plan to achieve your goal, and sign it.  He further mentions the attributes of a “SMART” goal, specific, measureable, attaintable, relevant, time-specific.   I’ve discussed these (except maybe the point of goals needing to be attainable) in recent articles.