You know how it is….

You’re staring at your computer screen trying to decide what subject to write about

or what to write about that subject.

You write a sentence

then rewrite it

then delete it and start in a new direction

An hour later you’ve written a paragraph

if you’re lucky and you aren’t happy with what you wrote

Trust me I’ve been there and still struggle with it.

Here’s what I do to help myself get over this:

Videos

I do videos – I know my topics and answer questions all the time when I’m speaking. For whatever reason I’ve always overthought the answers when I write them. My workaround is to do short videos and have them transcribed. It saves me a lot of time.  I even figured out how to automate the process when I was my Motivation4Today passion project.

Don’t Look

I write without looking at the screen – since I never learned how to touch type this is actually how I normally do it J But I don’t allow myself to read or edit until I’ve written the entire document. Some people will even turn off their monitors, I haven’t gone that far, but some people swear by it.

Constantly Searching

I write down ideas all of the time – there’s nothing worse than not having any idea what you’re going to blog about. So I’m always looking ideas. If I hear a quote I like in a movie I write it down.

My girlfriend looks at me like I am crazy when I pause a movie and grab my journal or jump onto my laptop to write a post. That’s what happened with this one here when I was watching Denzel Washington in The Equalizer

Always Take Notes

Related to the above – If I find something interesting I take notes. It can be an interesting article, or a webinar, something I find in my house, something someone said or even a funny situation. One of my favorites was finding one of my journals from the early 90s and reviewing my goals – it made for a great blog post.

Know Your Reader

Make sure you understand your reader / customer profile – you’re reading this on my personal blog so the articles on here aren’t as connected as I do for clients like Avitus Group or on LinkedIn for example.

Hit Publish

Don’t be afraid to publish even if you don’t think you are done.

Ask yourself a question “if I don’t write anything….how many people will read it”

That’s right NO ONE.

It’s far better to get something out for people to read and don’t spend too much time worrying about typos.

Trust me someone will point them out for you.  Plus you can always edit your posts – they aren’t permanent

Those are my thoughts and this is my first post in Bradley’s 30 day Blog Challenge so stay tuned you’ll be seeing a lot more of these from me.

– so remember better

Sloppy success is much better than perfect mediocrity

Have an Awesome Day

Doug

I’m a huge fan of the Denzel Washington movies “Man on Fire” and “The Equalizer”

Both movies tell the story of a man who sees himself as a protector.

In the first movie he’s the bodyguard for a 9 year girl of security for a businessman  working in the US embassy in Mexico.

In “The Equalizer” he’s retired, living under an alias and working at a home depot type of place in the lumber department.

He’s a humble, but scary man and they show both sides of him.

I’ll write another post explaining my fascination with the first one, but tonight I watched the second film “The Equalizer”

In this film one of the things he does is go to a local 24 hour diner and read at night.

One night while he is reading a young Russian girl who’s a prostitute starts talking to him.

She asks him why he’s reading there every night. He explains that his late wife was actually the reader and she was reading the 100 greatest books.  After she passed away he felt he should do the same so they would have something to talk abuot when he saw her next.

She then asked how many he had read so far and he said 91.

The prostitute said what will you do when you finish reading all 100.

He said, Take singing lessons, open a  donut shop …I haven’t decided yet.  Which she said in her world she didn’t have a choice – He then said then change your world.

Then Change Your World

That’s the profound piece that I took away from that interaction.

It struck me enough that I pulled out my laptop .

Too often we catch ourselves hung up on what we can’t do and why we cannot do it without realizing that we can change our world.

As Jim Rohn likes to say “you’re not a tree”  you can get up and move to a better world.

Especially with the internet today everything we want to lean is available either free or for a very reasonable cost. We don’t need to spend $20k a year to get a college degree we just need to decide that we want to learn and go for it.

I have a friend who decided this year that she wanted to pursue modelling again. Something she gave up pursuing when she started to have kids a couple of decades ago. She was nervous to start,  but she’s going for it and the world is opening up for her.

It’s amazing how the world is willing to provide when we are willing to let ourselves truly decide to go for it. In my past I’ve done audacious things and I think it’s time I start doing them again.

Too often we just need to decide on our big audacious goal and go for it.

We need to believe in ourselves and not be held back by our own limiting beliefs.

We aren’t trees and we can change our world.

Now  get out there and change your world

Have you thought about using a newsletter to help promote your offline business? If not, this is an idea that you really want to take a closer look at because:

For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. (Experian)

A newsletter is basically a short email magazine that provides your customers with helpful information. Of course, you want to promote your products within this newsletter, but as more of a soft sell where you are educating and/or entertaining your customers.

You want to provide your newsletter free of charge and have customers sign up to receive it. This can be done directly at the checkout counter. As they pay for their product you can suggest that they sign up for your Newsletter. You would then simply add their name and email address into your database.

Let’s look at an example. Say you are a local vet, you can provide a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter that provides tips on pet care. These tips can be related to seasonal care information. Then at the end of the newsletter you could suggest a product that would help with this. Or you may just want to add a reminder about the importance of using heartworm medications for your dog, for example.

The best way to deliver your newsletter is by using a company that specializes in this. This method of marketing is often referred to by using an Autoresponder. You sign up with the service and can then create a list of customers for your newsletter. When you are ready to send it out you do this directly from within your account. Some of the top services for this are Aweber, GetResponse and Mailchimp.

44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. (Convinceandconvert.com)

Other ideas for content for your newsletter include promoting local events, sharing employee’s birthday’s and business anniversaries. Again, with the vet example, you could get customers to send in their pet photo and you highlight one or two pets each month in your newsletter.

Include a calendar of local events, provide a list of places to see and other related local information. It also never hurts to help promote or suggest other small businesses in your area. Or you might want to include a short review on a local restaurant your visited or where you got your haircut.

Running a newsletter is a great way to stay connected to your customers. You can provide them with additional information, let them know about new specials or new products and more. This mailing list can easily become a good income source when managed correctly.