Try Something New Today To Care For Yourself

In yesterday’s blog post, I shared ways to get started with self-care. Creating habits and adding activities to your calendar help increase your chances of sticking with your new routine. Another way to keep things interesting is to treat yourself to things you’ve always wanted to do. Adding new and novel experiences to your self-care routine is like giving yourself a little gift every day. It’s a great way to stay motivated to do things to care for yourself. 

 

Pamper Yourself

 

Taking physical care of yourself in a pampering way makes us feel good. Pampering is a go-to for many people when it comes to their self-care routine. Think of something you’ve never done before. It doesn’t have to be expensive. A small act of indulgence can have the same effect as an extravagant one. Maybe consider scheduling a manicure if you’ve never had one. A bubble bath with candles can be soothing if this is something you don’t do very often. If your budget will allow, a spa day with a friend could rejuvenate your body and spirit. 

 

Celebrate Today

 

Most of us don’t buy ourselves presents very often or even give ourselves little treats. You can change that starting now. Think of something within your budget you’ve been wanting for a while now. Then give yourself permission to buy it. Maybe it’s that snazzy pair of shoes you’ve had your eye on or the cell phone upgrade that would make your life easier. Giving yourself one gift, no matter how small, can be a boost to your self-worth. 

 

Enjoy the Little Things

 

Self-care really doesn’t have to be on a grand scale. The tiniest gestures can be the most meaningful. Indulging in small free or low-cost treats allows you to spoil yourself more often. What are some little things you’ve never done for yourself that you can start adding to your life today? Have you ever bought yourself flowers? Give it a try. You’ll get a boost every time you see that beautiful bouquet on your table or desk. Think of your favorite food item, the one you have on special occasions. Why not make one day a week a little more special by trying a new version of it? For example, commit yourself to tasting a new truffle each week at your favorite cholate shop. Get creative with it.

 

Adding new experiences to your self-care routine keeps things interesting and can also help make them more meaningful. Novelty will also expand your world and enrich your life. Plus, it’s just fun!

Start & End Your Day With A Little Self Care

Like any new habit, adding self-care into your life can seem kind of tricky. You probably wonder how you’ll manage to find time to do anything extra for yourself, let alone how you’ll actually remember to do these things. One of the best ways to get started is to build your activities into predictable parts of your day. In order to make something a habit, it has to happen regularly. Keep reading, and I’ll show you some tricks to making self-care a routine part of your life. 

 

Make It Personal

 

The first thing that will help you in creating your self-care rituals is to choose activities that are meaningful to you and that you enjoy. This is your practice, so you want to be sure it’s customized in order to get the most out of it. Consider making a list of things that help you to feel relaxed, peaceful, excited or happy. These activities should be able to be done in a short amount of time and easily fit into your life without special equipment or tools. At least as you begin your practice, the things you choose to do should be as simple as possible. 

 

Fit It In

 

You should add your self-care rituals to the most convenient parts of your day. Choose times that are already somewhat flexible so that incorporating something new into that space will be less stressful. Many people go with morning or evening routines, right when they wake up and before going to sleep each night. Getting up fifteen minutes earlier than usual and setting aside a window during the usual night-time schedule are usually things most folks can do. However, maybe designating your daily lunch break as your self-care time might work better for you. Consider activities like writing a gratitude journal entry before bed, listening to music while having your morning coffee or going for a short walk over your lunch hour. Trial and error may be required, but find a moment to call your own every day. 

 

Be Flexible

 

It’s best to come up with a routine that works for you and stick to it. Committing to a particular schedule will help you to create a habit and ensures that you get the self-care you need. However, try to cut yourself some slack. Some days are more hectic than others. You may not be able to fit in your anticipated self-care activity, and that’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day, and you can try again. Soon, you’ll find yourself wanting to take part in these rituals, and getting back on track will be easy. 

 

Getting into the practice of regular self-care doesn’t have to be difficult. Making a few adjustments to your existing schedule can free up some space in your day. Choose things that will refresh you and that are simple in nature will make getting started a breeze. 

Why Self-Care Matters & Super Simple Ways To Treat Yourself

You’ve probably heard the term “self-care” used a lot lately. It’s become a popular buzzword in the media and in personal development circles. However, you still may be unclear on what it means. While the concept does involve taking care of yourself, it actually goes much deeper. Read on to learn what self-care is, why it matters and how to get started doing it. 

 

About Self-Care

 

Self-care covers a lot of areas with regard to caring for yourself. It involves nurturing your body, mind and spirit. It focuses on building yourself up so that your internal resources don’t become depleted. Essentially, self-care is being as good to yourself as you would be to someone you care about. It requires you to show yourself some compassion and encourages you to be vulnerable with others, asking for help you when you need it. What doesn’t fall under the umbrella of self-care are self-destructive coping mechanisms such as using drugs, drinking, gambling or retail therapy. These things only make you feel good in the short-term. 

 

The Benefits of Self-Care

 

There are lots of benefits to practicing self-care. Embracing this concept can be difficult for those who’ve always placed emphasis on the welfare of others. However, giving all your energy to those around you without filling your own back up leaves you depleted and empty. That’s no way to live. Instead, spending time and effort on yourself rejuvenates and energizes you. Taking time to indulge in your own interests demonstrates your worth, leading to improved self-esteem and a more positive outlook on the world. It teaches you a lot about yourself and provides you with insight into what you need to be the best version of yourself. Self-care helps you better cope with stress and to prioritize what’s important to you. You’ll be better able to take care of others when you also take time to meet your own needs. 

 

Examples of Self-Care

 

There are countless ways to add self-care into your routine. The key is to choose activities that are most enjoyable to you and provide you with the most benefits. Going for a walk in nature is great for those who enjoy the outdoors. Other forms of exercise like yoga, running or going to the gym work well, too. Spending time with friends can be rejuvenating, but so can saying no. Allowing yourself to decline invitations or favors when you’re feeling run-down is a big part of caring for yourself. Treating yourself to a favorite, affordable indulgence like a movie, manicure or ice cream cone are all good examples. As is taking a bath or meditating. These are just a few of the ways you can easily incorporate self-care into your life. 

 

Now you know what self-care is and what it’s important. You’ve also got some ideas of how to get started, so you’re well on your way to adding this useful practice to your life. 

How To Engineer Explosive Growth By Stacking Your Efforts

We’re coming to the end of our seven-day challenge to use business planning to create explosive growth in traffic, customers, and most importantly income. Much of what we’ve discussed so far has been actionable steps like writing down your goals as well as mindset pieces like the one about stepping out of your comfort zone. Today is all about putting everything we’ve discussed so far and combining it into something that can give you that explosive growth you want. 

 

You see when you use the basic concept of exponential growth to your advantage, it doesn’t take very much progress in any one area to see big results. We briefly touched on this idea back on day three when we talked about increasing traffic, subscribers, and customers to add to our bottom line. Today we expand on this whole idea in a few different ways and tie it all back into setting goals and business planning in general. 

 

The idea is to make progress on your goals and stack them in a way that gives you leverage. Here’s an example. Let’s say your first goal is to grow your current part time income by $500 a month so you can quit your day job. Following the example in the previous blog post, you come up with a way to get that done by growing your traffic, subscribers, and customers. Since you were able to then quit your day job, you have more time and energy to put into growing your business. You set more ambitious goals and add another $2,000 to your bottom line. Instead of taking everything out in profit, you decide to continue to work on this whole leverage idea. 

 

You set aside $100 a month to play around with Facebook ads to see if you can turn that into a profitable income stream. You take another $200 to start outsourcing some of the ongoing tasks that hold you back. You hire your first VA and now you’re really making progress. This in turn gets the attention of a fellow online entrepreneur in a related niche who wants to work on a project together. Do you see how this works? 

 

One goal builds on the next and they all work together to generate exponential growth. Of course, this is just one little example. This can work in a myriad of different ways and will of course differ from one business to the next. My point is this… 

 

If you start to think strategically and keep one eye on your next few moves, you can start to stack your efforts and engineer that explosive growth in a lot less time than you may think. Try it! 

Real Growth Requires You To Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Can you think back on a time of real growth, be it in business, in your personal life, or anywhere else? More than likely, you had to step out of your comfort zone for that growth to happen. Yes, we can make progress by doing what we’ve always done. But it will be slow and more importantly, by staying within your comfort zone, you are limiting your potential growth. It’s when we step out of that zone, try something new, take a bit of a risk, and allow for personal and professional growth that we start to see big changes for the better. 

 

Let’s say you goal is to grow your reach and get out in front of a larger audience. What you’ve done so far, and what feels comfortable is writing a blog post a week and then sharing it on social media. Yes, some readers will find you. Yes, if you double or triple your efforts, publishing more posts per week and sharing more often across all your social media accounts, you will see some growth and engagement. But you’re staying in your comfort zone. 

 

What if instead, you used the time you would have spent writing another blog post or two per week and promoting it on Facebook, you took the time to write a guest blog post for someone else’s blog with a bigger reach. What if you sat down and recorded a fun and informational video that you can then share on YouTube, imbed in a blog post, and of course share via your favorite social media outlets. What if you used the time to set up and tested a Facebook ad that continually sends new leads into your funnel. If those things are new to you, that may seem like a pretty scary proposition. But getting uncomfortable and doing it anyway can have some huge rewards. 

 

Writing and submitting the guest blog post can give you a lot of added exposure by allowing you to get in front of an established audience. It also gives you the change to start a relationship with a follow blogger that may lead to all sorts of other opportunities and collaborations. 

 

Recording a series of videos gives you the opportunity to reach a completely different subset of your target audience. There are plenty of people who prefer video content to written posts and articles. There are people who spend hours each day watching YouTube videos who would never stumble across you and your blog otherwise. 

 

Spending money on paid ads can sound like a scary proposition, but once you crack it and find something that converts well for you, you will get a steady stream of new leads in front of you without any added work. 

 

There’s something else I want to mention, just in case I don’t have you convinced yet that getting out of your comfort zone is something you should be doing regularly. You won’t stay uncomfortable for very long. After recording those first few videos, submitting a couple of blog posts, and spending those first few dollars on ads, you start to get comfortable with the processes. Before you know it, they become second nature and yet another tool in your virtual tool belt. Once that happens, you know it’s time to explore some other marketing strategies and ideas. 

Why You Have To Write Your Business Goals Down

Throughout this short little series on setting business goals, I’ve mentioned the importance of writing said goals down. That isn’t just because it’s easy to forget. There’s a lot more to it and there are some very important reasons why you have to write them down. I though in today’s blog post, I’d share my thoughts on this and hopefully inspire you to write down your own goals going forward. By the way, this works for any type of goal, not just the business ones. 

 

The simple act of setting a goal, even if it’s just in your mind, doubles your chances of success. That’s a pretty big deal in itself, isn’t it? If you take it a step further, and actually write those goals down, you’re 10 times as likely to succeed. Read that last line again please. That’s right…you can increase your chances of making it by 1,000%. That’s mind-blowing. 

 

There are a few different mental and psychological processes going on here that start to give us a glimpse into why it is so important and effective to write our goals down. The first is that it’s a lot easier to remember something that we’ve written down. You’ve experienced this first hand with your grocery list. When you make a mental list of 10 or 15 things, you’re likely to forget about half of them when you get to the store. If you write out the list on the other hand, and then end up forgetting it on the counter, you will remember the vast majority of the items you needed. This is explained through the fact that information has to be moved from one area of the brain to another to turn it from thoughts into written words on a page. A process called encoding is also involved. All of this helps you retain and store the information better. It’s the reason we’re asked to take notes during lectures in college. 

 

Last but not least, when you write down your goals, you have something you can review regularly. This adds another layer of cognitive processing and increases your chances of success even further. Sadly, only a very small percentage of people make the time to regularly review and evaluate their goals. The ones that do are some of the most successful and highest achieving people out there. In other words, it’s something we should do as well. 

 

To recap, start by setting smart goals. Write them down in as much detail as possible. Set aside some time to review them regularly. This could be weekly, or even daily. Give it a try for this coming quarter. Set yourself a goal. Be specific. This could be something like finally creating that first paid product or adding an extra $500 to your bottom line. Decide by when you’ll reach your goal and how you plan to get there. Write it all down and look at it every morning. This will help you stay on track and make time in your busy day to work on making progress towards your goal. 

How To Work Backwards To Set Your Business Goals

Today I want to share my thinking process for setting smart business goals with you. I like to work backwards from a financial goal to daily to-do lists. Here’s how that works. It always starts with a money goal. It helps if that goal has a meaning beyond the dollar figure. For example, let’s say that I want to buy a new car. The payment is around $400. To account for things like taxes and just to be safe, I’ll bump the goal up to $600. In other words, I need to add an extra $600 (or more… more is always better) to my monthly bottom line. Once that’s done and I am seeing that level of income on a regular basis, I’m ready to order my new car. 

 

Once I know how much money I have to make, I can start to think about different ways to do just that. I could find more customers for one or several of my existing products. For example, if I have a $10 eBook, I would have to make an extra 60 sales per month. From there I can work backwards. If I know that on average one out of 10 email subscribers buy the book within the first month of signing up, I need to add 600 new subscribers to my list, which in turn takes 4,000 new visitors to my site. If that’s my plan, I know that my daily to-do list needs to include plenty of action steps to ramp up my traffic by an extra 4,000 people per month. 

 

Of course that’s not my only option. I could also create another information product or eBook each month and sell it to both my existing and new subscribers. I could create a higher priced item so I need to make a lot fewer monthly sales to reach my $600 goal. For example, if I create a nice $100 product, it would only take 6 sales per month to pay for the car. 

 

Since the car payment will be an ongoing thing, it also makes sense to look into recurring payments. This could be my own membership, or I could look into affiliate offers with recurring commissions. Depending on your market, there’s a lot out there that you can promote. For me, one option could be to create some content around content marketing and promote a PLR Membership like this one form [affiliate link to either biz or self-help membership]. It’s a $67 per month subscription with a 50% commission. That means I can expect over $30 in commissions each month. Let’s say it’s 30 to keep the math simple. I only need 20 members to pay for my car. Once I reach that number, I only need to add the occasional new member to balance out cancellations. Getting one or two more members in each month going forward should more than cover that. 

 

Now I have a concrete goal to work towards which is convincing 20 people to sign up for the membership. My daily tasks will include things like creating content that includes an offer to the PLR membership, a short report about using PLR to build a targeted sub lists of people interested in using PLR in general. Then I start driving traffic to the content and the opt-in offer and start mailing regularly about the PLR membership. I may even craft a short autoresponder sequence to create an evergreen funnel. 

 

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I could approach other writers to see if they would be interested in writing some guest blog posts, answering some questions for an interview style post, or even do a webinar, all of which would of course promote the membership. By thinking outside the box and putting in some time and effort initially, it won’t take me long to get those 20 signups that pay for my new car payment. Because I really want that new car, I’m going to be motivated to get it done and grow my business by those extra $600 per month. In fact, chances are great that I’ll overshoot the goal by several hundred dollars and it’s something I can continue to grow month after month. 

Increasing Traffic, Subscribers & Customers To Boost Your Bottom Line

To grow your income, you need more customers. That in turn means you need more people to sign up for your list. Where do these new subscribers come from? You get them by increasing the traffic to your site. Some of the things you want to do and track then are: 

 

• Get more traffic from various different sources. This should always be a priority and something you work on regularly. Track your growth as you move along and keep an eye out for fresh new ideas to boost your traffic. 

• Your next focus should be getting more subscribers. As you start to get more traffic, your list will start to grow, but don’t stop there. Tweak your opt in-forms to increase conversion. Create a new lead magnet to get the attention of a different sub-group of your target audience. Set up a few dedicated opt-in pages and start driving traffic to them. Do what you can to continually grow your list and pick up speed in the process. 

• The third piece of the puzzle and where things get really interesting is turning those subscribers into customers. You want them to spend money with you either by buying your products and services, or through your affiliate links. Offer more products. Raise your prices. Find more attractive offers you can promote as an affiliate. Work on your funnels. There’s a lot you can do to grow your bottom line once you have traffic and subscribers figured out. 

 

The real power of this approach becomes apparent when you start to look at how these three things work in synergy. By getting more and higher quality traffic, while improving your opt-in rates, and creating higher prices products with sales funnels that convert well, you can quickly make a huge difference in your bottom line. Each of these elements alone will help, but by combining them, you will start to see exponential growth. 

 

Let me illustrate this with an example. Let’s say you start out with 100 new visitors per day. 10 percent of them sign up for your mailing list, which comes out to 10 new subscribers each day. One of these people buys one of your products at $10. 

 

Now let’s see you double your traffic. With nothing else changing, you go from making $10 per day to $20. But what if you can also improve your opt-in forms and get to a 20% conversion. You also create a few more products and each of your customers ends up spending 3 times as much as before. When we add all that up you go from making $10 per day to 40 new subscribers each day which means 4 new customers. If each of them spends $30 shopping around in your shop, you end up making $120. That’s a pretty big bump from $10 while still only requiring you to double your traffic. Pretty impressive, isn’t it? 

You Have To Know Where You’re At Right Now To Measure Growth & Figure Out What You Should Be Working On

Are you ready to take your online business to the next level and watch some explosive growth unfold over the coming months? Great. Before you start to plot and plan what you want to do to make that happen, it’s important to stop and look at where you’re at right now. 

 

Business planning for future success is all about data. You can work most efficiently and spend your time and money most effectively if you know exactly where you are starting from. By recording data, you can start to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what trends are starting to play out. And it all starts with recording where you’re at right now. 

 

Let’s take a look at some of the things you want to record. First though, you should decide how you want to record this information.  You can write it down by hand in a notebook, open up a word document to do it digitally, or use a spreadsheet. I prefer a spreadsheet because I have the option to have it calculate fun additional information like weekly and monthly averages and even map it all out in graphics to help me get a clearer picture. 

 

Traffic – To grow you need to expand your reach. That means getting more traffic, but also engaging the people that come to your site by encouraging them to click around and read more. Good things to keep track of are total visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, and of course where the traffic is coming from. 

 

List / Subscribers – Your next goal is always to get these people on your list. Here you want to track total number of subscribers, conversion rates for each of your opt-in forms and pages, open rates for your emails, and also unsubscribes. As you start to collect and review this data regularly, you’ll get a much better picture of your subscribers. 

 

Customers – Subscribers are great, customers are better. Start by keeping track of how many total customers you have and how many purchases per day, week, and month. Other good numbers to look at are total lifetime value of your average customer, repeat purchases, and refund rates. 

 

Income & Expenses – Last but not least, look at your bottom line. This is your typical accounting data. You want to keep track of your income as well as your expenses. With those two sets of numbers, you can easily calculate your overall profit. I find it helpful to look at profit for the month, but track income on a daily basis. 

 

Yes, you can look at most of this data in various different places like Google Analytics, your shopping cart, and your autoresponder service for example, but it’s important to have it all in one place. This makes it much easier to connect the dots and see the relationships between the different sets of numbers. 

 

Now that you have your initial data collection set up, make it a habit to update the numbers regularly so you can see what’s working, what isn’t, and how much you’re growing as you move through the coming months and years. 

Why Business Planning Is The Secret To Success For The Coming Year

Do you set aside time regularly to plan what you want to do in your business? If it’s not something you currently do, I strongly encourage you to embrace it for the remainder of this year as well as the one coming up. Setting aside time at the end of the year, to plan out what I want to do and more importantly what growth I want to achieve in the coming year has been crucial to my own success. Over the next seven days, I want to share some of what I’ve learned and what I’ve found helpful with you. 

 

Let’s start off by taking a look at why business planning is “the secret” to success. There are a few different factors that come into play here. The first is efficiency. When you go in with a clear plan, you can focus on what’s most important. Instead of spending time trying to figure out what you should be working on, what pieces of the puzzle are missing from your product funnel, or what you need to do to break through to the next income level, you know exactly what needs to come next. 

As we’ll explore in a future blog post, with a clear goal in mind and a plan for the year, it becomes easy to walk backwards to create effective and efficient daily to-do lists. Work on what needs to get done each day and you will reach your goals. 

 

Next, setting a big goal for yourself helps you think outside the box. If you don’t believe me, try it. Decide on a big income goal for the coming month. Write it down. Keep it in front of you. Then get to work and start to notice what happens next. You start to think of things that didn’t occur to you before. You come up with creative ways to get more traffic. You decide to run a fun promo that adds dollars to your bank account. The same happens when an important deadline comes up unexpectedly. Think back on that time in college when finals rolled around, or the last time your in-laws told you they would stop by later in the day. You got very creative about studying and cleaning respectively. 

 

Last but not least, let’s talk about the subconscious. So far, we’ve been focused on what we are actively doing to make progress by making a plan, setting goals and following through. There’s another dimension to all this and that’s what’s going on in our subconscious mind. While we are busy plowing through our to-do list, cooking dinner for the family, and even sleeping, our subconscious mind is working towards those goals as well.

 

In short, planning and setting goals is important because it helps you grow faster. That means you end up with more money for yourself and your loved ones while spending less time slaving away at your desk.