Goals for June 2017

[Ryuzaki]

This should be each of us in June as the summer rolls in...
​

But undoubtedly it's not. We're not relaxing because there's work to be done. We're not relaxing nor working in our private yacht because we can't afford it.

Why?
​

I'd say there are three answers that cover everyone:

• We haven't worked hard and efficient enough up to this point.
• We suffered set backs and are trying to recover our trajectory.
• We're too hungry to relax yet, even if we can afford it.

The first reason is our fault altogether. No excuses are necessary and they shouldn't be tolerated. Maybe you've surpassed that realm of the mind-game of business and you were well on your way but a few missteps put you into the camp of the 2nd reason. You'll get where you want to be if you hang in there and learn from the mistakes.

And hopefully you're already a member of the group of the 3rd reason. Regardless of profits and checking accounts and investments, you can be that in the mind. That's where it all starts. It can't be real in the physical world if it's not real in your head first.

So Which Is It?
​

If you wasted time in 2017 up until today (somewhat guilty myself), the only way to rectify the situation is to double down in June and every day forward. If you met hardship and hurdles, they're simply testing your resolve to see if you're worthy to wear a crown. If you're already frothing at the mouth, hammering at your keyboard, picking up the phone, and closing deals and converting consumers... all hail the goer.

Every Day is a Chance to Turn It All Around

​

As for me, I'm about to review my May 2017 Goals, take a look at my Overall 2017 Goals again so I'm not veering off the track, and then I'm recommitting and doubling down all June with some fresh goals right here. Shit is not a game any more.

 

[Sutra]

My June goals are thus:

1. Increase ROI of newsletter subs by creating automated workflows targeted to user activity
2. Continue putting out more content, both info and reviews
3. Install Crazy Egg to increase conversions on current review articles
4. Saved the best for last...PUT IN MY TERMINATION NOTICE. FUUUUUCK YEAH! Tomorrow I will give my boss 3 months notice. Not 2 weeks, hah. He'll need to find someone to replace me which is impossible in 2 weeks. I don't want to fuck him over. So I'll give him 3 months, which will still be hard for him. But I gots to go. Last day will be Aug 31. The time has arrived. Holy shit.

 

[Kay]

*inhales deeply*

Ahhh!!!!!

Can you smell that, folks?

The scent of a new month, a new month.

We're almost midway through the year and guess what?

I'm still a pussy!

I got to know about IM back in 2012, and from that time till now, I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to show for it -- nothing!

I was a chicken, have been a chicken, and I'm still a chicken!

But ...

I'm tired of being a chicken.

I'm tired of being a broke folk.

For the first time in what? 5 years? I think I finally actually want this.

Like really really WANT this.

So I'm laying out concrete goals for a month for the first since I was born. -- First time ever!

And I'm promising the reasonable part of me that I'd do everything within my power to ensure I hit a minimum of 90% of these.

Fuck it!

I want a 100.

Goals For June '17​

For me, this month would solely be about building self-discipline.

I've already got a site that manages to do ~ 100k uniques per month (it's shitty traffic) so I would be doubling down on that site.

Although, the site has no clear strategy, and the traffic is point blank useless for Adsense (CPC of ~ $0.04) I'm just going to be using the site to build self-discipline over the next 30 days. If good things come out of this from the site (read: better revenue) fine. If my bottom line remains flat after the 30 days, no problem.

What's important right now is I make reasonable plans and stick to them for a period of time.

Finally here are the goals ...

1. Consistently write an article every fucking day for this site throughout the month of June

I've blocked out the hours between 4am - 6am-ish to do this every day. From my observation, I believe I can produce ~1000 consumable words in that two hours (writing, proofreading, editing & publishing). Already published yesterday's & today's.

2. Exercise (body weight) and meditate every day for ~30 minutes.

Specifically, this is what this ritual would look like ...

• Meditate for 5 - 7 minutes
• 1-minute elbow plank (3 reps)
• 30 Diamond pushups (3 reps)
• 30 Squats (3 reps)

Then ...

3. Spend 4 hours on weekends (Saturdays & Sundays) learning to code

For this, I'm sticking with Python and using Downey's Think Python.

The timing for learning to code would be between 8 am and 12 pm.

Finally ...

4. Read a book for ~45 minutes before bed every day.

I'm currently on Greene's Seduction (24 Laws of Persuasion). If done before June runs out, I'd move on to Pressfield's "Do The Work" or "War of Art".

For all goals outlined here, I'd be sticking with the Pomodoro technique to keep me on track.

Another thing, I printed out a Google calendar for the month of June to record my progress daily.

There, goals.

When I (successfully) get this over with, I'd take a step back and do what @CCater has been emphasizing on for the past decade ... have a strategy!

Remember Kay, self-discipline.

I'm tired of being an A-hole!

 

[propipper]

I prefer this over yachts but to each his own.

I, too, need to get back on track. I wanted to push out a new service but we got swamped with our main business but now is the time to kick it into high gear on my new project as this is something we could really capitalize on. So, now is the time from now until the end of the year for me to get on it. The end of the year is also a great finish line with it potentially really seeing a big bump during the holiday season.

I'm pretty happy with my SEO so far so strictly focusing on traffic leaks and social.

Goals For Next 6 Months

• Establish our company as the top resource in this particular field (in all aspects)
• Continue to build and grow on our current business

Goals For June

• Implement a system in place for long-term success with regards to social media - ie. create and establish an editorial calendar system that I can use to keep putting out good, useful content.
• Create and implement a plan on all the different social media platforms we utilize and stay consistent.
• Complete our email autoresponder
• Set a weekly goal for outreach to influencers and affiliates. This will be in addition to my weekly goals of outreach for guest posts, links, etc. I did this in the beginning of the year and was pretty consistent at it until about March/April when we really started picking up so I need to just get this done each week.

 

[Concept]

This month is about serious action and pulling the trigger on this new website. Time to make my first $ from this site. Actions this month:

• Get the site up to at least 12 pieces of solid kickass content. (8 more to go - get this done in the first two weeks)
• Set up all affiliates (Amazon and some others) - Week 3
• Set up email Opt-in - Week 3
• Tidy up site ready for launch - get feedback from friends who are target market but also savvy businessmen - Week 3
• Create and implement email sales funnel. - Week 3
• Tidy up Pinterest profile (@Kevin had some great tips in a recent post) - Week 3
• Start applying to group boards - Week 3
• Pull the trigger on Pinterest promotion - Week 4
• Start first round of Skyscraper Outreach - Week 4
• Generally, promote the crap out of it to get that initial traffic rolling in. - Week 4

 

[Sutra]

1. Increase ROI of newsletter subs by creating automated workflows targeted to user activity
2. Continue putting out more content, both info and reviews
3. Install Crazy Egg to increase conversions on current review articles
4. Saved the best for last...PUT IN MY TERMINATION NOTICE. FUUUUUCK YEAH! Tomorrow I will give my boss 3 months notice. Not 2 weeks, hah. He'll need to find someone to replace me which is impossible in 2 weeks. I don't want to fuck him over. So I'll give him 3 months, which will still be hard for him. But I gots to go. Last day will be Aug 31. The time has arrived. Holy shit.

Boombabayah. Done. Put in my notice today. Last day is Aug 31. Just purchased my flight tickets to Thailand. Leave Sept 4. Ahhhh yeah. Soon enough, no more sleeping in a fucking closet for me, hahah.

I was tripping out last night before going to bed, looking down at my covers and pillow on the filthy floor, squished between the boxes in the closet. It hit me. I had been sleeping in a fucking broom closet for 1.5 years. Before that, sleeping in my car, before that sleeping in my 8 year old brothers bed for a year.

2.5 years of working 7 days a week almost every week.

I was thinking back to how far I've come and how green I was when I started (even though I thought I knew what I was doing). The key was just pushing. Pushing. Pushing.

That hockey stick growth that people talk about, I'm finally at that point.

Fuck. It's crazy. I'm here. But I'm not there. Because there is still tons of shit to do. Of course, this is life.

Let's do this.

 

[infotech]

• 40 New Posts
• Increase traffic to ~100 daily
  
• 3 digit income

 

[built]

- Complete another newbie guide
- Design and code head silo page
- Keyword research for 5 smaller articles
- Set up and implement a daily schedule

----

Did nothing. Been so angry at myself and parents that its ruining everything around me. I need to get my mind right, I need to fix my indecisiveness. Times moving no matter what, and soon its gonna be too late for me. Then what? I sit with all these regrets.

 

[Joe]

- Complete another newbie guide
- Design and code head silo page
- Keyword research for 5 smaller articles
- Set up and implement a daily schedule

----

Did nothing. Been so angry at myself and parents that its ruining everything around me. I need to get my mind right, I need to fix my indecisiveness. Times moving no matter what, and soon its gonna be too late for me. Then what? I sit with all these regrets.

I've never succeeded with daily schedules. I've probably written up half a dozen in my adult life and completely forgotten about the next day. At best I can stick to "something during the day, something during the evening, eat food when I'm hungry". Anything else just breaks flow.

I keep myself accountable by strictly logging my hours with a punch-card app. On the decisiveness, I like Henry Ford's method: "make decisions quickly, change them slowly". You may end up going forward a bit more zig-zagged than you want, but you're still going forward instead of just burning hours nit-picking on the perfect heading.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I think all other projects will be sitting this month and seeing how they do with new/old links.

Main Project:

• Keep my 1st author on his snail's pace on this new niche. He'd be fired if any of this was urgent, but with patience I'm getting his expertise published, so it's worth it. Editing his posts is a nightmare though. He's 100% resistant to listening to directives. He's fired once he's done with the list I sent him.
• Keep ordering and publishing from my 2nd author on the new niche. He's doing all of the commercial pages and doing them well. Editing his posts is keeping me busy because he's moving fast enough. It's a good thing.
• Keep filling any other down time with me going granular on the old niches, because it's allowing me to publish fast, rank for more, and create relevancy nets around my old commercial posts. I'm locking them in place and hopefully moving them up a bit over time. Moving from #3 to #2 or #1 is a huge money difference, obviously.

Those are the immediate goals but ultimately I'm going to back off a bit and move back into some hardcore marketing and link acquisition to move the needle some more. That probably won't be this month, although I should be making time for it so it can incrementally be helping along the way.

 

[Cash Builder]

Continuing with building links this month, so not many goals.

• Obtain 20 links through outreach
• Reach 200 referring domains (currently 175)
• make $50 in commissions

 

[Rosca]

I've been hitting 2017 pretty hard. But I think this month is going to be a great one for everyone here.

Here are my goals:

Get Physically Fit
So far I've had a lot of fun going to the gym. And while I'm, skinny, I'm really starting to see results. So I plan to use my addiction to attempt to gain at least 5 more natural pounds while also working out to pack the muscle. It's summer time and my body is already on point for the beach.

So far heres my typical exercises:
3 X 5 (One leg push ups)
3 X 8 (Lat Pulldowns)
3 X 8 (Leg Extensions)
3 X 10 Bridges

I'm up to learn more!

Get Money via IM:
Not describing what I do, but I can say that I have two projects that are giving me income. I want to close in on these projects and go as far as I can with them. Long story short, I want to glo up in the IM game. Which is something I can definitely see.

Stay Focused:
This seems like a easy task but its really not man. I want to stay focused on getting the important certifications and skills needed to become a better IM guy. By the end of June, I want to see the skills that I focused on (CSS,HTML) actually start to take off.

 

[ssura]

Continue on improving what's working + one new traffic source:

• Posting in FaceBook groups has been doing well for me. Getting traffic and making some $ too. I feel like I can continue to increase this and improve it.
• I'm looking into other places for traffic. Shopify gave me a $100 coupon for AdWords, so I'll at least be using that to see what it's like. If that doesn't go to well, I'll continue with traffic leaks.

Revenue

• I made $20~ last month, so this month I want to try to hit $100.

 

[Vert]

These are my goals for June:

Main project:

• Increase traffic by 10%.
• Increase revenue by 10%.
• Get 3 guest posts.
• Get 3 links on thematic websites.

Others:

• Start learning Python.

 

[GrindingTo10K]

Coming in late as we're a week into June already, but here are my June goals:

• Add 4 pages of 400+ words per page to mini-niche aged domain site
• Add 4 pages of 500+ words to bigger aged domain
• Write 3000 words per day for JV sites
• Write 3000 words per day for my authority site
• Help JV partner design and add functionality to JV sites
• Create a process for manual outreach/link acquisition

 

[Vert]

The month is not over yet, but I will review my goals for June:

Main project:

• Increase traffic by 10%. Done.
• Increase revenue by 10%. Done.
• Get 3 guest posts. Done.
• Get 3 links on thematic websites. Done.

Others:

• Start learning Python. Done.

 

[Kay]

Wrapping June up ...

1. Write daily -- 7/30 -- 23%

After the first few days (4 actually) when the 'novelty' wore off, I was tired of pumping out crap. The remaining 3 articles published were 'cornerstones' as I have now properly (I think) developed a site structure for the site with the following [primary] inter-linking sequence ...

2. Exercise and Meditate daily -- 27 / 30 -- 90%

Over 800 squats and push ups plus almost an hour and half planking.

3. 4 hours weekends learning to code -- canceled.

I'm pretty ashamed of myself for canceling this. On the Saturday that I was supposed to kick things off, I found myself over analyzing and consuming articles on whether 'Python was a better language choice than JS' and whether 'focusing on data science was the path to take or not', at the end of a long day gallivanting around Quora, Reddit, and Hacker News, I gave up on this altogether.

*sighs*

4. Read a book for ~ 45 minutes daily. -- 28 / 30 -- 93%

To be totally honest, I am actually surprised that I was able to keep to this particular one. That Greene's book had been with me for months and in just 30 days, I consumed (and totally enjoyed) over 300 pages! Although I did not read for 45 minutes every day, I made sure I completed a section before going to bed. And oh, I'm already about 38% (according to my Kindle reader) done with Pressfield's "Do the Work".

The Wrap Up
June was not exactly what I planned out (in my head), but it wasn't that bad either. Along the lines of self-discipline which I pointed out in my parent post, a few things I'm happy about include ...

• I finally started consistently getting my ass out the bed early ... 4:30am-ish.
• I finally have a morning routine -- lime water, meditate, cook, exercise, read, kick ass.
• I successfully hacked together fully functional Genesis child theme for a pal.
• I started actually writing again.
• I started eating healthier (less junk and more fruits)
• I feel a lot better than I did at the end of May.

A win or not, I don't care, all that matters right now is I keep moving forward in a positive direction.

Edit: typos.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Kay, I'd choose a language with great documentation and adoption and go for it. Python or JS would be fine in that regard. The real thing to be learning as a beginner is Logic, not Syntax. Syntax can be picked up quickly and ultimately you'll "know" a ton of coding languages. But really what you know is the logic of how to code. Switching languages after that is easy. I'd guess that later you'll commit to one language and reach that god-level of knowing the inadequacies and secrets of it, but at the start there's no need to even worry about efficiency and all of that until you know the logic. And any scripting language will get that done.

 

[Kay]

@Kay, I'd choose a language with great documentation and adoption and go for it. Python or JS would be fine in that regard. The real thing to be learning as a beginner is Logic, not Syntax. Syntax can be picked up quickly and ultimately you'll "know" a ton of coding languages. But really what you know is the logic of how to code. Switching languages after that is easy. I'd guess that later you'll commit to one language and reach that god-level of knowing the inadequacies and secrets of it, but at the start there's no need to even worry about efficiency and all of that until you know the logic. And any scripting language will get that done.

Thanks, Ryu.

Sure thing, I'd most definitely come back to this. Once my exams for this semester are over, I'd commit to one language and focus on grasping principles (fuck syntax!).

 

[Cash Builder]

• Obtain 20 links through outreach - Fail 5 (7 pending)
• Reach 200 referring domains (currently 175) - Done 204
• make $50 in commissions - Fail $18.37

 

[Concept]

Last Months Goals

• Get the site up to at least 12 pieces of solid kickass content. (8 more to go - get this done in the first two weeks) - 6 done.
• Set up all affiliates (Amazon and some others) - Week 3 - DONE
• Set up email Opt-in - Week 3 - DONE.
• Tidy up site ready for launch - get feedback from friends who are target market but also savvy businessmen - Week 3 - DONE
• Create and implement email sales funnel. - Week 3 - Technical issues here. Still sorting out.
• Tidy up Pinterest profile (@Kevin had some great tips in a recent post) - Week 3 - DONE
• Start applying to group boards - Week 3 - DONE
• Pull the trigger on Pinterest promotion - Week 4 - NOT DONE
• Start first round of Skyscraper Outreach - Week 4 - NOT DONE
• Generally, promote the crap out of it to get that initial traffic rolling in. - Week 4 - NOT DONE

Promotion has been halted till I sort out the issue with my email system. Once it is fixed and set up. I'll started driving traffic.