Goal Girl’s Blog

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

The virtuoso tenor stands behind the curtain, tux strait, handkerchief ready, the confidence born of years of preparation for this moment.

The curtain rises. The tenor steps forward, and blinks in shock at the disco ball,dancing poodles and kindergarten chorus singing “The Wheels on The Bus” to the accompanyment of rhythm sticks and triangles.

Do you think that our accomplished opera virtuoso can do his best work under these circumstances?

To maximize the probability of success, control your environment as far as possible. If your goal involves weight loss, hanging out in coffee shops where there are trays of almond croissant and choco-chocolate-chip muffins is probably not going to make your task any easier. I wonder if there are any gym cantinas that have free wireless? No? Can you afford a card with a service plan? If not, maybe you should limit your “hanging out time” and go for a walk. If you have to feel productive while you exercise, download some podcasts on your topic of interest. Or better yet, get a headset with a mic and record your own podcast/peptalk.

If your goal is to grow your content for your blog/article writing campaign/squidoo lenses/hub pages, etcetera, you have to create an environment conducive to writing. You should set an expectation with those who share your home, that at a certain time every day, you are not to be disturbed. Unless you are doing research (and really, research time should be a seperate time allocation), disconnect from the internet to avoid distractions. Gather your tools in one spot so you don’t have to search all over the house for them when it’s time to write. Get a word processing application with a visible word count… this will let give you a visible cue that you are making progress. Set a target word count. If you get to that point and the creative juices are flowing, keep going, but put something on the screen. Don’t edit when you write; do that later! Treat writing like sculpting… chip away what is not part of your article, but you have build the stone first in the case of writing.

Your goal is to learn Spanish? Then go hang out with some folks who speak the language and who are willing to help you! Don’t study the language in a library where you can’t really repeat the words and phrases, because language is as much a physical skill as a mental skill, and requires physical practice. You’re more likely to be successful at it if you actually put your mouth around the words, and actually hear native speakers using the words in context.

So don’t try to swim on a basketball court and don’t fish for shark in a drainage ditch. Really sit and list what environmental elements are likely to contribute or detract from your progressing toward your goal. Maximize the first, minimize the second.

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.

Thought you all would like to know that the new Amazon Kindle 2 is due to ship later this month!   Ok, I resisted the first go ’round, but with the increased storage, Amazon paying the cost of wireless connectivity, and better display… I’m putting my order in right after I finish this post…

The last release sold out very quickly and the waiting list was very long, so here’s your chance to pre-order early starting today ($359):

Here is what Amazon says about the new release of it’s Kindle ebook reader:

New Features & Enhancements
Slim & Lightweight: Just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces
Books in under 60 seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required

Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for crisp images and text; even reads well in bright sunlight

Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging

More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books

Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns

Read-to-Me: Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud.

No Wireless Bills: No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill.

Large Selection: Over 230,000 books, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs available

Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

I’ve installed a WP plugin which removes the “nofollow” attribute. What does this mean? If you include a link in your comments on this blog, Google will follow them back to whatever page you are linking to. The more links back to your blog, lens, landing page, etcetera, the more Google loves your pages. It’s just my way of saying thank you for posting thoughtful, insiteful, discussion-provoking comments on http://ThatGoalGirl.com/blog/ Because this will encourage some spammers to comment, I also moderate comments on this blog!

If you are in the mood to reciprocate, please blogroll me or otherwise link to this blog.

Cheers,
-M

Setting goals is find and dandy, but what if the goal conflicts with your values or life-purpose?  What if the goal is something that sounds good, is socially acceptable, but really doesn’t light your passions?

You want to get a tan.  Your friend Mike is a marine biologist, and he has a great tan.  So your goal should be to become a marine biologist, right?   Nope.   You slept through biology class in high school; it bored you to tears.  And you get sea sick. And you are deathly allergic to shellfish.  And the last time you tried to get a tan, you got a terrible case of sun-poisoning!  In your case, although the goal of becoming a marine biologist might get you the tan you crave, that goal is not a good fit for your preferences and limitations.

How can you choose the “right goals” for you?   The first step is to get to know yourself better:

• What are your values?
• What are your passions?
• What are your strengths?
• What is your life’s purpose?

The second step is to build a goal that you can believe is possible.  Now I’m not saying dumb down your goal until it’s something so miniscule that it’s not going to stretch you at all (e.g. “I’m going add $5 a month to my savings account”).   But if you can not honestly believe that you can learn to speak fluent Swahili by this time next month, no matter how much you meditate on that, it’s not very likely that you will accomplish that goal.   So pare that down until it’s just within the realm of belief, but still forces you outside of your comfort zone, for example “I’m going to learn to read and write 200 new Swahili words by March 1st.”    I am a firm believer in the intention-manifestation model of goal achievement.    Steve Pavlina wrote a good treatment on this several years ago. It’s impossible to form a firm intention if you don’t believe the manifestation (the goal!) is possible.   You’ll become your own obstacle.  You will subconsciously sabotage your efforts… ‘oh well, I can’t really fly an airplane, so why should I study for my flight school exams?’

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!