Goal Girl’s Blog

I wrote this post last March and never published it.  It’s still relavent, so here you go.     I’ve fallen down on the job as far as maintaining this blog and a couple of other goals, but I’ll forgive myself and move on now.

Photo Credit: Rob Wallace

Have you set too many goals? When you first get excited about the process of goal setting, and really get the bit in your teeth, it’s easy to vomit goals all over the place. The problem with this is that goals have to live in the real world, and unfortunately, the real world doesn’t usually stop so that you can pursue every single goal that pops into your head.

That’s ok. Try a bunch of goals on for size, the ones that you are really passionate about will stick with you and the rest will fall by the side of the road. Let them go for now; you may revisit them later when things get a little less busy.

Pick the one or two goals that really light your fire. This is what I am having to do. While losing a lot of weight would be a wonderful thing to do. I’m finding that with my current work schedule, it’s just not possible to do everything I need to do to make that a workable goal for the time being. I can still eat healthy food, try to get a little more exercise by say, letting my 4 year old piggy back while I hang laundry or park far away from the door, but as far as spending a couple of hours a day in the gym… with a 50-70 hour work week, that’s just not feasible.

What I find I can do with the little time I have is stuff relating to my other goal of replacing income. When I succeed at that, I’ll have a better shot at the weight loss goal, because ultimately that success will buy me a lot of time. Residual income does that for you.

So for right now, I’m focusing on that part of my goal-suite. I’ve found a product that I can believe in. The guy who owns that product treats his affiliates like gold, really helps them along… and this may be why his product has such great gravity in ClickBank (meaning that a lot of affiliates are making sales with that product). I was actually surprised when I found out who the true creator of the product was, since he used a pseudonym. I signed up for the emails that he sends his affiliates and it turned out to be a marketing guru whom I greatly respect, and from whom I’d already learned tons of good stuff.

My problem has been a)finding time to properly implement One Week Marketing/Bum Marketing and b)inertia.. when I’ve had a particularly difficult week at work (several of those lately), it’s super hard to get myself to get out of bed and work on my marketing projects after my daughter has gone to bed. With the resources that this fellow provides though, I can kick out two or three articles a day by stopping in a coffee shop by my daughter’s daycare 20 minutes before I pick her up. Now that’s not a ton; I know people who habitually write ten articles a day, but given enough snowflakes, you eventually have a snowball. I’m able to do something every single day to help grow my business.

And something I need to make a note of and put in my back pocket for later is this: By building a relationship with me over time (several months), I’m eager to promote this guy’s product. I believe in his success, so success seems that much more tangible when I play ball on his team. Of all the gurus I’ve read, contacted, subscribed to, this one guy is the only one who has really gotten down to a friendly, personal level.

Hopefully soon that success will buy me more time to spend with you guys and gals!

The First Installment of Five: Time-honored Tips to Boost Your Goal Chasing Success.

Stop swimming against the tide! Yes, there are significant advantages to swimming against the tide. Being the one fish swimming left when the rest of the school is swimming right can get you noticed. Being the best at doing something a little different and/or more difficult than the rest of the herd can result in great rewards. For an excellent treatment of this, read Seth Godin’s “The Dip”.

In some situations though, finding a school of fish going the direction you want to go can also reap benefits. This is especially true at the beginning of your quest when you are in more of a student mode than a teaching mode. Associating yourself somehow with some big fish who’re going where you are going (or have already been there) and know the way can greatly flatten the learning curve. Sometimes the collective energy of a group of like-minded-people can contribute to your own passion (just be careful that you are only borrowing their passion and knowledge, don’t let the herd make decisions for you).

How do you find a “big fish”? First of all, go where they go. Twitter is a great place for this. Do a Twitter search to find out who is talking about your topic of interest. Then search on that person to see who is talking about them. If someone is being retweeted or discussed on a frequent basis, then a lot of folks are finding value in what they are saying. Unfortunately, not everyone you admire in the real world has mastered Twitter. I’ve had to unfollow a couple of ‘real world’ gurus whose books and lectures I loved, because they used bots to spam Twitter and provided nothing of value to me. Not naming names. If you happen to follow them, you’ll see for yourself!

You can also search blogs for people who have authority in your area of interest. Google’s Blog search or the Do-Follow Blog Directory are good places to start. If a blog really addresses topics pertinent to your goal, join the discussion. Make comments that add value. Ask questions.

Often finding someone knowledgeable in your area will also lead you to a group of like-minded people. I liked what Jodie Petals had to say about making Squidoo lenses, so I read more of her lenses and started following her on Twitter. That lead me to Jennifer Ledbetter, aka “PotPieGirl’s” One Week Marketing, a content marketing strategy. Eventually this lead me to join Wealthy Affiliate, which is a great place to pick the brains of good folks like Travis Sagos, Jennifer and Jodie.

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!

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.