Archive | March, 2021

“The Guide to Oysters” was the first ad advertising expert David Ogilvy wrote for his own agency. In the full-page ad, details on different oysters, where they come from and how they are prepared are given, along with photos of each.

It’s a highly informative article; the kind people might rip out of a magazine for future reference. Oh yes, and in the bottom right corner, Guinness Beer is touted as the ideal drink to have with oysters. You guessed it… the ad wasn’t for oysters at all but rather for the beer.

Sneaky, huh?

No doubt you’re already creating “how-to” content for your readers and sending it out in emails, posting in your blog, social media and so forth. And at the end of your content you might promote a related product, too. For example, you tell how to use a certain method to get traffic. Then you offer a product that teaches 20 more traffic methods.

But what if… now think about this, because it’s a bit of a mind shift…

What if your content told how to USE the product you are promoting? You take that same traffic product, regardless of whether it’s your product or an affiliate product, and you write a post on how to use it to achieve a goal.

I have a friend who does exactly this and it’s made all the difference in his business. Before he started using this method, people would thank him for his great content but never buy the product he was promoting. After he started doing this, people started buying. It was frankly kinda spooky how well this worked.

Me, I was skeptical. But numbers don’t lie.

Before this method, my friend worked a full time job. 4 months after he made the change, my friend quit his job and now does online marketing 20 hours a week and surfs, scuba dives and climbs the rest of the week. I promised him I wouldn’t reveal his name or niche, but let’s go back to our traffic example and I’ll give you an idea of how this works.

Let’s say the product you’re promoting is a course on how to do Facebook Advertising, and the headline for your latest post is something like, “How to Get 50 Buyers a Day for Your Product Using Facebook Ads”. In your post you basically outline some info (not all the info, of course) on how it’s done. But here’s the thing… more than once you reference the product you’re selling as being a key part of the Facebook Ad process.

Jumping into the middle of our imaginary article: “When you get to Step 3, just reference the tool on page 43 of the “Super Traffic Course” and you’ll know immediately which ad is more likely to get the best results.” Or something like that… please note I’m doing this off the top of my head.

“If you don’t have the Super Traffic Course yet – seriously? What are you waiting for? – you can grab it here. Or you can spend a few hours gathering the same info that you’ll find on page 43… not the best use of your time, perhaps, but trial and error will eventually see you through if you stick to it. Once you’ve used the tool of page 43 and you have your numbers, you’ll know exactly which ad to run first as well as the best time to run it. Now the next step is to…”

Using this method requires two things:

First, you need a shift in your thinking. Odds are you’ve always written something like, “Tip 1, Tip 2, Tip 3, oh by the way, buy this product.” But now the product is actually an integral part of the content. You are teaching them as though they ALREADY OWN the product, which does something wonderful to your reader – it makes them THINK as though they already own it.

Except… they don’t.

So now they feel like an insider but still on the outside. Darn it, they’re missing something really awesome!

It creates a cognitive dissonance in them that can be easily resolved by… TA-DA! Purchasing the product, of course. This is soooo sneaky, isn’t it? Ha! I love it.

The mind shift on your part is the first thing you need. The second thing is some well executed balancing which will come with practice. You want to give enough info to make the post helpful even if they haven’t purchased the product. Your posts should stand on their own. But they shouldn’t give away all the secrets of the product – not even close.

You’re creating intrigue and a sense of missing out for those who don’t own the product while simultaneously giving good info they can use. See? A balancing act. And all the while you are also making it completely clear that owning the product will make the process easier, faster and in this case more profitable.

My friend says this was the hardest part to learn. He had to figure out how much info to give, what to withhold and how to seamlessly promote the product within the article. He also said the first time he tried was a hot mess, but he kept at it and within a week it was easy and within two weeks it was second nature.

It’s simply a matter of learning a new way to frame what you’re writing.

His posts aren’t super long, either. They’re usually just 500-1,500 words, depending on how much he covers. And then he promotes his posts extensively and shamelessly through social media as well as to his ever-growing list.

Million Dollar Side Point: Half of his posts actually reference and promote free lead magnets he’s giving away to build his email lists. He has lists in a dozen sub-niches to his main niche, and those lists are growing FAST. He especially promotes these posts on social media. And he reposts these posts every month or two and again promotes them on social media as if they are brand new. His rate of list building using this simple technique is blowing my mind right now.

I think I may have ‘buried the lead’ with that last paragraph, so if you’ve read this far, congrats. You now have a secret to list building that others missed!

Bottom Line: Write “how-to” content that works in conjunction with the product you are selling (or the list building lead magnet you’re giving away). These posts work as covert sales letters that set you up as the authority, teach useful skills AND sell the product or the opt-in.

I know it might be different from what you’ve done before. And the first time or two you write content like this, it might seem weird, awkward or strange. But done correctly, it can also be super profitable.

In the 70’s they did an experiment to see if the same college students who turned in their assignments on time also had clean socks. (No joke – they seriously did this.)

The hypothesis was that people who got their schoolwork done would be the same people who got their personal chores done as well. But the results were the opposite of what they expected.

Students who turned assignments in on time were terrible about keeping up with their laundry, and students who kept up with laundry turned in their assignments late. What has happening?

Researchers later realized that we only have a certain amount of attention and willpower we can pay during any one day. If we first pay that attention and willpower to doing laundry, we feel depleted before getting homework done. If we do the homework first, we tend to put off doing laundry for another day or even another week.

In a second experiment, people were left alone in a room with cookies. Some of them were allowed to eat the cookies while others weren’t. Both groups were then given an extremely difficult puzzle to solve.

Those who were allowed to eat the cookies along with a control group who never saw any cookies spent an average of 20 minutes working on the puzzle. But those who had to practice willpower by not eating the cookies only spent 8 minutes working on the puzzle because they’d already spent much of their willpower.

If you go to a mall and give people simple math problems to solve, those who have spent a long time shopping will give up on the simple math problem much faster than those who just walked into the mall and haven’t been shopping yet.

Understanding what these experiments mean for you can completely change how you plan your work and how much you can accomplish in a day and in your life. Each of us has a finite amount of willpower each day, and it gets depleted as we use it. And here’s another surprise: We use the SAME stock of willpower for ALL tasks, regardless of what they are or how important or unimportant they might be.

We don’t have laundry willpower, homework willpower, cookie willpower and math willpower… we just have one amount of universal willpower that we are given each morning when we wake up.

If you think you lack willpower to exercise after work, it’s more likely that you used up all of your willpower at work and have none left. Exercising before work will solve your problem.

If you decide to go grocery shopping before you get your work done, you’ll use up your willpower making hundreds of little decisions on what to buy and what not to buy. That’s why when you get home from the store you might find yourself wasting time on the internet or television, because you have no more willpower for doing real work.

If you do your creative work first thing when you get up in the morning instead of putting it off to the end of the day, you’re going to get a lot more accomplished.

There are ways you can conserve your willpower and attention so that you have more of it for your important work. For example, you can prepare the same foods for each meal so that you don’t have to decide each day what to make. Better still, you can pay someone to prepare a week’s worth of meals for you. If you don’t understand how willpower works, this may seem like an expensive option. But when you eliminate the attention, decision making and willpower needed to shop for and prepare 21 meals a week and instead use it on your work, you will likely make far more money than you spend on the meals.

Much like Steve Jobs, you can wear the same style of clothes each day so that you don’t have to decide what to wear. Steve Jobs would grab a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck each day without expending any of his attention and willpower on what to wear.

Don’t check your email in the morning. Reading a hundred subject lines, replying to 30 emails, writing 5 emails… this all adds up to a tremendous amount of decision making, attention and willpower that could be better spent doing the work that makes you money.

Any unimportant tasks that you can eliminate or delegate will reduce the number of decisions you have to make and the amount of willpower you expend each day, leaving more willpower and attention for your main focus. You’ve no doubt heard this technique of prioritization referenced as the “highest use of your time.”

A $5,000 an hour professional does not spend 5 hours a week cleaning her home. Why would she, when she can hire someone at $20 an hour to do that for her? She is still able to earn $4,980 an hour employing the maid while doing her own work. But if she spends 5 hours cleaning her own home, she has lost $25,000 in revenue. Or to put it another way, she spends $25,000 a week cleaning her home, which is ridiculous at best and incredibly stupid at worst.

Here are the only three takeaways you need to revolutionize your life and double or even triple how much you accomplish:

1: Eliminate every little job and decision you can, freeing up willpower and attention for what is important. Get someone to clean your house, cook your meals, run errands and so forth. Get rid of anything that takes time and attention but doesn’t provide you with a good return for your time. This might mean eliminating obligations such as being on a committee for a non-priority cause, quitting a hobby that doesn’t give you satisfaction, simplifying your home and belongings, simplifying your wardrobe and so forth.

2: Start your day doing the most important thing, followed by the second most important and so forth. This might mean you first exercise, then perform the highest value work task, then the second highest value work task, etc.

3: While we didn’t cover this, it is important to find something you completely enjoy that is totally unrelated to what you normally do. In other words, get a hobby you thoroughly love and spend a little time on it at the end of the day. This will take you out of the work realm, reduce stress, give you satisfaction and make it easier to get up tomorrow and jump right into your most important task of the day.

Don’t even second guess when I tell you that an abundance of typos on your sales page will create doubt in your prospect… They’ll suspect you have no clue what you’re doing.

Further, they may suspect you’re a fly-by-nighter, someone who threw a site up to grab sales and then disappear like vapor in a storm.

Yes, we all make typos – including and maybe especially me. But I take great pains NOT to make them on sales pages, for good reason.

Recently I was intrigued by an email promising to build a news site that would generate an income for me. Okay, I know what you’re thinking already. Yeah. Right. Sure it will.

But what the heck… I clicked the link, scrolled down a bit, and here’s the first paragraph I read:

Last Trending News
Your News Dashboard Bring To You The Last News to Easly Click and Post. You Can Pin The The News With One More Click To Make Your Posts Unique.

How many errors did you find in this tiny bit of copy?

I found 6 or 7, depending on how you count them.

It should read…

Latest Trending News
Your News Dashboard Brings To You The Latest News to Easily Click and Post. You Can Pin The News With One More Click To Make Your Posts Unique.

Even then the writing is terrible.

Yes, English is obviously their second language. But they couldn’t spare a hundred bucks to get someone to check their copy for them?

Sale lost.

Lesson learned: Typos in sales letters can and will lower your conversion rates. Go the extra mile to avoid them, and always have at least one additional set of careful eyes look over your pages before going live.

When I first heard this one I dismissed it as something that couldn’t possibly make all that much money. I was wrong.

Here’s what a friend of mine (we’ll call her Beth) is doing with Amazon to currently clear several hundred dollars a day and quite possibly reach the 6 figure mark this year.

She is, in a nutshell, buying and selling books.

But Beth’s not haunting thrift stores or yard sales to do this. In fact, she never leaves home. She has two methods she uses that go hand in hand, sometimes clearing over $100 PER BOOK.

Beth’s first method takes advantage of the fact that most Amazon shoppers want to use their Prime account to get free, fast shipping. Because of this, they will often pay far more for an item than they need to.

She looks for new and used books (HINT: Textbooks work really well for this!) that have a large Prime price tag and a much smaller price if you buy it directly from the seller. For example, she showed me a textbook that is selling for $170 on Prime, and for $12 plus $3.99 shipping directly from the cheapest seller.

There were actually a couple dozen copies selling for $50 or less. She buys up all of the cheaper copies, ships them to Amazon and then sells them through Amazon Prime for much larger prices.

I know, this sounds like needles in haystacks, but she has gotten really good at finding these deals. She wouldn’t divulge her search technique, except to say that she perfected it one rainy afternoon when she had nothing else to do.

She also searches other book sites beyond Amazon, and she says that some of her very best deals come from purchasing books from other sites and then selling them on Amazon.

That’s the first half of her business. The second half is weirder still.

If you’ve ever looked closely at Amazon book listings, you’ve seen that little box on the right of some listings that say, “Do you have one to sell?” Amazon will pay you to send them books that they can then sell. But here’s what’s so weird…

There are times when you can buy used books from Amazon sellers for a lot less than Amazon is willing to PAY for the books. And when you tell Amazon you have a book to sell, they lock the price for 25 days. This gives you time to receive the book you purchased and send it on to Amazon. If the price Amazon is willing to pay goes UP in this period, you cancel the price you were going to receive and get the new, higher one.

You can buy more than one copy of a book and trade it in. You can also find cheaper books on other book sites and then sell those to Amazon. You can also find other websites that will sometimes (often?) pay more than Amazon.

Here’s another weird fact: Every book site that buys books pays you in cash except for Amazon. They pay in gift cards. That seems like a flaw in the system, right? But Beth uses these gift cards to buy more cheap books that can be resold at higher prices, making even more profit. Gift cards may also save you on taxes but you didn’t hear that from me. Consult your tax person.

Beth handles the books herself – both incoming and outgoing – by purchasing a scale and a thermal postage printing machine that makes everything simple and easy. But I understand there are also third-party process centers that will handle the books for you for a fee. This includes both receiving the books from individual sellers and packaging them up to send to the book websites of your choosing.

And there you have it: A weird little arbitrage book business that almost anyone can do. The downsides as I see it are you need money up front to get started because you’ll be purchasing books. The more money you have, the faster you can build your business.

Also, if you’re selling books to individuals, you will have to sometimes wait to make the sales. That’s fun, though, because you never know how many sales you might wake up to each morning.

If you’re interested in this, start with books you know sell for high prices such as textbooks and branch out from there. It could be a great way to make your mortgage payment each month, or possibly even build a full-time five or six figure income.

You send out an email to your list promoting your webinar replay. Of course, you might not call it a webinar replay because some people don’t want to sit through a recording that lasts for an hour or two.

They like what they read in the email.

They click over to the page with the replay.

They like the copy on that page… “This is interesting! Maybe I want to buy this… hmmm… let me click on this video…”

“ARGHHH!”

“Two hours long??”

“No way.”

They close the page.

And you just lost them.

Whoops.

What happened?

They liked what you said in the email. They really liked what you said on the page. But when they clicked the video and saw how long it was going to be, they abandoned ship.

How can you fix this?

A couple of thoughts…

First, tell them what they’re going DISCOVER in the video. Sell the video, not the product. Let them know the video is chock full of awesome, usable information. Invoke a strong sense of curiosity as well as the feeling they will miss out if they don’t watch it.

You might think of this step like a movie trailer… showing just enough of all the best bits to pull them to the screen and make them drool for more.

Second, don’t make the video two hours long.

Or even one hour long.

Make it about 10 minutes in length.

“Wait! I can’t sell my program in 10 minutes!”

You don’t have to because you’re going to use more than one video.

Here’s the key…

In the first video, hit the ground running and immediately give them something great such as a huge benefit and what they need to do to achieve it. Leave out the step-by-step instructions of how to do it because you’ll teach that in the paid course.

Then tell them what you’re going to reveal next…

And here you can either use a script that automatically brings up the second video, or if you’re not that fancy, give them the link.

The end of the first video sells them on watching the second video. The end of the second video sells them on watching the third video. They are binge watching your videos, something they are accustomed to thanks to streaming services like Netflix.

In each video, gently let them know that as great as this information is, paid members get the mother lode of life-changing or business-changing info. Using this method has a couple of advantages…

You are hyper aware that every second of video needs to either convey great info or sell them on watching the next video. You don’t allow yourself the business-killing luxury of being boring.

And the viewer gets pulled in bit by bit, much like a seduction. Done right, there’s no way they want to miss what’s in the next video. Throughout the process, viewers are being courted into purchasing your product.

Give it a try… I bet your conversions will increase dramatically.

When teaching and selling via video, nearly all of us could do just a little bit better. We could be a little bit more interesting, a little bit more enthusiastic, a little bit more entertaining and a little bit more charismatic.

It’s not easy to narrate a long slide show or to face the camera for a length of time and hold attention. Most of us are not professional presenters or announcers and we haven’t been trained in how to hold an audiences’ attention.

But there is one trick I stumbled upon that can instantly improve almost anyone’s delivery, and it’s this:

Speed up your performance just a little bit.

You can do this one of two ways:

Either edit your audio/video to remove any ‘umms’, ‘ahhs’, ‘let-me-see’s and so forth. Remove them entirely. Long pauses? Remove them. Anything that doesn’t move the story forward? Rambling? Needlessly repeating yourself? Remove it. If you don’t want to edit your video, get someone to do it for you.

The second thing is to speed it up. Just a little. You don’t want to sound like a chipmunk. But if you slightly increase the speed of delivery, either by speaking faster or speeding up the video, it can make a remarkable difference.

Play around with this and see what happens.

One last thing… smile. Regardless of whether they can see you in the video or just hear you, they will know when you are smiling. Laughter is great, too.

There are times in our lives where we are compelled to stop and take a look at ourselves and ask the question: Who am I?

Obviously there are several follow up questions to that one, most often: Am I happy? Or What do I want now? But really all the follow-up questions we might ask are simply extensions of the first: Who am I?

We might ask that question on the eve of graduation from high school, or university, just before we start that first job, as we enter that first or last relationship, begin a family, buy a house, or start a business.

How do you answer that question? What would you identify yourself as?

Each of us is unique in the world, but we also each try to conform to a type. A mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a professional, an employee, an employer, an entrepreneur. You tell yourself that you are the role you are in.

Whatever you think fits you most comfortably is what you conform to. That is what you think you owe to yourself and others to be. And of course, you want to be that to the best of your ability.

In the case of building an online business, we are entrepreneurs.

So let us look at that word and honor what it really means to fit into that role. Our goal isn’t the financial gains, since for the entrepreneur that is simply a scorecard. Our role is to gain independence and freedom, to follow our passions and to dream bigger than a normal 9-5 job would allow you to.

It is to see gaps in the market that others don’t and to not be afraid to take risks and leaps in investment. Being an entrepreneur is often to follow your gut feelings and to want more: to see the bigger picture.

You have to be who you are in this world, in accordance with how you define yourself no matter what, and as always – remember that money is not the only goal – the journey is!

What happens when you combine the latest scientific evidence with everyday simple habits? You start to feel like you can do, be and accomplish anything.

First, a little background to set the stage…

According to Dr. Andrew Huberman, neuromodulators such as dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and others modulate and enhance the activity of particular brain circuits and suppress the activity of others. For example, when dopamine is released, it makes certain brain areas work better and others work less. Dopamine improves energy and motivation and causes us to focus on things outside ourselves. It enhances our well-being inside while putting us in an outward, goal-orientated mode.

Dopamine works with epinephrine in the brain and adrenaline in the body. When dopamine is released, epinephrine tends to be released, too. And when epinephrine is released, dopamine may or may not be released. This is important because epinephrine is involved in generating a sense of agitation, urgency, desire and willingness to move. You’re feeling like, “Let’s get up and do this!”

You’ve got energy but you’ve also got agitation. If dopamine is present with epinephrine, you’ve got the perfect combination for getting things done. But if you’ve got epinephrine without dopamine, now you feel agitation and stress without motivation. Dopamine is released when something good happens and it’s also released in anticipation of things that make us excited such as reaching a milestone in our goal.

Then there are the serotonin and oxytocin systems that work together not for goal achievement, but to make you feel good for where you are and what you have in the moment. When the serotonin system is engaged, we feel rewards for what we have in our immediate environment or for what we already possess.

Think about when you hug your family members or your pet at the end of the day. You think about how much you love them and that hug and those thoughts release serotonin. Serotonin gives you ‘here and now’ rewards for what is good in your life right now, whereas dopamine makes you feel good about the rewards that are out there in the world waiting for you.

The serotonin system can be accessed anytime by feeling love and gratitude. It promotes quiescence and calm and gives the warm soothing feeling that you’re good with everything that you have. If you think in terms of primitive man, then dopamine sends people out to hunt, forage and take risks; while serotonin brings them back home again where they feel warm and safe with their family.

Serotonin and oxytocin, along with dopamine and epinephrine, have to be balanced. Certain “A” type personalities who run 24/7 on dopamine and epinephrine burn out. They become not just unhappy but miserable because they can no longer access serotonin and oxytocin. That’s why there has to be a balance.

The question is, how do you align your serotonin, dopamine and epinephrine reward mechanisms in a way that allows you to get as much work done as quickly as possible and with as little stress as possible? That’s where it gets tricky if you don’t know what I’m about to reveal.

These 17.5 simple habits you can perform every day will enable you to enhance the effect of these neuromodulators and become almost super-human in your ability to get things done. I know that 17.5 seems like a big number, but you’ll see that most of these things are simply little tweaks to your day that can make a big difference in how you feel and perform.

These are habits to incorporate into your everyday living that will make you not just more productive, but also happier, have less stress with more energy and generally feel better about yourself and life. Tall order for a few new habits, right? But this is scientifically proven, so let’s dive in:

1: Get enough sleep. If possible, be in bed no later than midnight. Get up at the same time every morning. Reduce or eliminate overhead lights in the evening before going to bed. Make your bedroom as dark as possible.

2: When you get up, move your body and get some sun in your eyes. You don’t have to do your full-blown exercise regimen, but at least do something like yoga, jumping rope or walking for 15 minutes right after getting out of bed.

If possible, get this movement outdoors where you can get some sunshine into your eyes, telling your body it’s a new day and time to release dopamine. Moving for fifteen minutes is going to get the norepinephrine system primed because you have the adrenal glands which sit above your kidneys and they kick out norepinephrine and cortisol and get your system awake.

3: Have real, tangible, written goals. Not, “I’m going to make more money.” That’s too vague. “I’m going to increase my income by $2,000 a month by June 12th” is a better goal.

4: Have a goal for what you will accomplish before noon. The dopamine system works best when you pick a goal and have a target you want to hit. This is why it’s so crucial to identify what you’re going to accomplish before noon or even in the first hour or two of your day.

5: When anything other than your goal leaps to mind in those first hours of the day, push it aside and stay focused on your goal. Why is it crucial that you not get distracted? Because if you stay focused, you’re going to get the dopamine reward.

Moving forward might feel a little tough if you didn’t get enough sleep but if you can reach that goal then you’re going to feel a dopamine release. This in turn will make it easier to accomplish your next goal of the day, as well as improving your ability to focus on singular goals.

6: Stay off of social media in the morning. You can also get your dopamine by flipping through Facebook or Instagram but this won’t help you to achieve your goals.

You want dopamine. You’re going to get dopamine. But the method you choose will determine if you get stuff done or if you waste your time. Identify what you want to accomplish in those first hours and then laser focus on that.

7: Make accomplishing an early morning goal a daily habit. By getting something done right after you wake up that NEEDS to be done, and by doing this nearly every single day, you are priming your dopamine system to work with you in goal achievement.

8: Exercise daily. Physical movement is a key component of achieving any large goal. Stress will stop you from moving forward on your goals, and the best way to combat stress is to exercise.

When there’s even a low level of stress in the system, exercise will quiet the activity of the threat detection center (amygdala) in the brain and allow you to be more creative and get more done.

9: Write out your daily goals the night before. When some people wake up, they are raring to go. But for others, they feel groggy and it takes them time to transition out of sleep and clear their head. That’s another reason why the fifteen minutes of movement is helpful when you first get out of bed. This amplifies the epinephrine and dopamine system.

And having your goals already written means you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do that day; you simply get busy and do it.

10: Try morning fasting. Not eating when you first get up will stimulate the release of norepinephrine. It also slightly increases the amount of dopamine because it puts you in a kind of anticipation of a goal, which in this case is food.

There’s this ancient mechanism whereby when our blood glucose is low even though we might be a little hungry and a little bit agitated, it tends to focus us on things outside ourselves. And because we need something outside of ourselves, we’re less content to just sit on the couch.

Contrast this with how you feel after eating a big meal. All you want to do then is sit down and relax. This is why by not eating in the first hours you’re awake, you’ll likely get more done.

11: Overcome stress by focusing on an immediate goal. If stress is stopping you from acting, you can get focused by setting your sights on an immediate goal and a horizon that you know you can accomplish.

It can even be a trivial goal, like you’re going to make coffee, sit at the computer, open a file and read 3 pages. Fixating on the large goal can be paralyzing but focusing on what you can accomplish right now is incredibly freeing and helpful in releasing dopamine.

Even accomplishing a tiny goal couples the neural circuits for focus with the neural circuits for goal directed behavior with the neural circuits for energy and agitation. You’re getting those aligned and they’re coherent.

Conversely, when you look at the news and Instagram and your email and Reddit, your neurochemical systems are split. They’re incoherent. And it’s no wonder that by noon you haven’t accomplished much.

12: Chunk your efforts. You have something called ultradian cycles, not to be confused with circadian cycles, where the brain works well for a time and then needs a break. For many people this is 90 minutes.

You might set a timer for 90 minutes and then take a break to do something entirely different such as a bit of exercise, reading something unrelated or whatever you choose to rest your brain. Some people prefer the pomodoro technique which is bouts of just 20 minutes, but if you’re like most people you can effectively work longer than that.

13: Write down your pop-ups. When distractions pop into your mind “I should check email” or “I need to put soap on the shopping list” just write it down on a pad you keep next to your work. This frees your mind to continue focusing on the project at hand while training it that mind chatter can be dismissed rather than acted upon.

14: Get a second dose of sunlight. Cortisol and norepinephrine naturally start dropping through the afternoon, which is why it’s a good idea to get a little bit of sunlight towards the afternoon hours. This might also be a good time to get your exercise, too.

15: Abstain from caffeine later in the day. Unless you need to pull an all-nighter, it’s best to stay away from caffeine starting mid-afternoon. Caffeine later in the day will negatively impact your dopamine and norepinephrine system.

16: Eat complex carbs later in the day. There’s a naturally occurring amino acid called l-tryptophan that’s present in turkey and in complex carbohydrates like pasta, rice and things like that. L-tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin, which is why many people find it useful to eat the majority of their complex carbohydrates late in the day to promote the secretion of L-tryptophan and help them transition to more relaxation and sleep.

17: Eat low carb during the day. Since you can have complex carbs for your last meal, it’s a good idea skip them during the day to keep your energy levels and focus levels high.

17.5: If you want to, take a short afternoon nap. Many people (but not all) benefit from a short nap in the afternoon to recharge their batteries. If you find that a short nap is better for you than a long one, you might set an alarm or sleep in a semi-reclined position to prevent over-sleeping. This can also be a great time to do a little meditation, listening to something that puts you in a trance or even lulls you to sleep for a few minutes.

People who are truly effective in both their work and their home lives have found a way to toggle back and forth between these two systems and control their dopamine system rather than having it control them. If you can learn to go from full performance to full relaxation, you’ll get so much done it may shock you. Mastering the transitions between these systems gives you an outsized effect on performance and relationships in your life.

Try adding as many of these habits as you can and pretty soon when you get up in the morning you’ll find yourself automatically in forward motion and naturally and joyfully achieving more of your goals in life.

A chicken egg is a chicken egg and all chicken eggs of the world are the same, right? If that’s true, then how do you go about marketing YOUR eggs as being better or different than those other guys’ eggs?

For one thing, there is some differentiation between factory eggs, organic eggs, free range eggs, pasture-raised eggs and more. Personally, I like the pasture-raised eggs. It means the chickens get to roam outside like they’re supposed to, unlike “free range” which just means they’re free to walk around inside an overcrowded building full of chickens.

In my grocery store I have several options for pasture-raised eggs, and yet I always choose the same brand without even considering the rest. Is it because these eggs are cheaper? Nope. Is the egg carton better looking? Maybe, but that’s not why…

Marketers, this is where you might want to pay close attention…

The one and only reason I choose this particular brand of pasture-raised eggs over all the others is because in each carton they enclose a tiny 2 page newsletter. This is a single piece of paper approximately 4.25” x 3” or 10.5cm x 8cm. This miniature newsletter is called the “Vital Times” complete with Volume # and Issue #.

The headline on the issue I’m looking at right now reads, “Girls on Grass – and Gratitude.” The article is about ‘the girls’, with girls being chickens, and how they get to spend their day. Here are excerpts…

For Vital Farms hens, this year has been awesome. Sunshine? Check. Pastures? Check. Dust bathing with friends? Check, check, check. Our girls wake up ready to explore… What are we thankful for in this crazy, crazy year? It’s pretty simple. You.

You wrote thank yous – more than 5,000! – to celebrate the work of farmers and crew. You invested in our company and our vision. You inspired our front line to keep working through the long days and nights…

The newsletter goes on to praise their customers for the many things they are doing during the pandemic and then brings it back to how the customers make it possible for the ‘girls’ (chickens) to enjoy the simple pleasures.

Finally, it closes with a brief message of home and gratitude along with a photo of several chickens against a blue sky with green grass and the words “thank you”.

On the opposite side of the newsletter are…

•     A chicken cartoon in which one chicken is painting the barn wall and a second chicken asks, “Is that beige?” To which the first chicken replies, “Don’t be silly, it’s eggshell.”

Ugghh.

The lesson here is humor doesn’t have to be stellar to still be appreciated, since finding almost any chicken cartoon in your carton of eggs is better than finding none.

•     A bird of the month complete with photo and caption. This month showcases “Tiffany,” a beautiful red chicken with the caption, “Talented Tiffany dances in the shade, making the most of a beautiful day.”

Corny? Maybe.

Cute? Yes.

Fun? Absolutely.

•     100 words on why gratitude is healthy and how to start a gratitude practice. This is bringing honest to goodness real value to the customer.

•     The company’s mission statement is in a box with the first words in red all caps, “OUR MISSION is to bring ethically produced food to the table by coordinating a collection of family farms to operate with a well-defined set of agricultural practices that accentuates the humane treatment of farm animals as the central tenet.”

Too long perhaps, but it does give the customer a real sense of what this company stands for. Customers believing you share the same values they share can earn you a customer for life.

Just be sure to never do anything to go against these values, because these are also the customers who will tear you limb from limb on social media if you let them down.

Think of someone who just learned their mate is cheating on them – customers who love your brand will want a swift divorce if you’re ‘cheating’ on them by going against what you stand for.

•     And finally there is an invitation to show off your egg cooking skills while tagging the company on social media. This is an extremely ‘non-pushy’ way to bring people to social media and get some good mentions.

Now in case you’ve forgotten why I brought up this tiny little egg newsletter in the first place, it’s for these 3 marketing lessons:

1. People love marketing they can touch. When you see something online, it’s there and then it’s gone and usually forgotten in less than a minute.

But something they can hold in their hand? It’s right there in their home or office. It’s real. In this case it’s sitting on their kitchen counter while they make breakfast, carried to the table with the coffee and read while eating. Or at least that’s how it works for me.

2. People love things that are out of the ordinary. Is any other egg producer putting newsletters in their egg cartons? I don’t think so.

3. People love companies that align with their values. When you read the mission statement above, you either agreed with it or you didn’t. If you didn’t agree, then it might not matter to you how your eggs are produced, in which case you’re likely not the right fit for a company that goes out of their way to be humane to their animals.

And if you did agree with the mission statement, you’re much more likely to reach for that same egg brand when you go back to the store because it aligns with your beliefs and values. It says something about who you are, who you want to be and the legacy you want to leave behind for this planet.

Not bad for a tiny little newsletter. Does this inspire any ideas for your own business?

Thanks to Covid-19, businesses have been pushed from the offline to the online world at record speed, making digital marketing more competitive than ever. How can you compete in 2021?

1: If you haven’t already, it’s time to get serious about putting out plenty of great content. Whether it’s one sentence on social media or an entire white paper, you need lots of content continually flooding the internet on a daily basis.

2: Change the size of your content. Instead of making super long authority-type posts of maybe 3,000 words that comprehensively cover a topic, consider going smaller. Short articles that cover just one thing well are ranking high these days, perhaps because of people’s shorter attention spans and less time to read a long article.

Consider breaking up an authority post into small ones, each with a title matching what people are searching for. For example, instead of an article that outlines in detail all the steps to take when starting an online business, break it up into a series of short articles, one on each aspect of the topic (niche selection, branding, game plan, website creation, etc.)

3: While your written content should probably be shorter, your video and audio content needs to be longer. 10-minute videos are performing better than 2, 3 or 5 minute videos in the search results.

If you think about it, it makes sense that if someone is searching for answers, they’re more likely to click on the 10-minute video than the 2-minute video. But expanding your video or audio lengths only work to a point. Videos of 20 and 30 minutes are not doing as well as the 10-minute versions. People want the whole story but they want it quickly.

4: Speed up your pages. It’s more important than ever to have pages that load quickly. When you improve your page speed you’ll also increase your rankings and traffic. There are multiple methods and tricks to decreasing page loading times. Research what’s right for your site or hire someone to do it for you.

5: It’s more important than ever to rank high on page one. Google is going to be looking for additional ways to increase their income, which will likely mean increased paid ads, changes to algorithms and who knows what else. If you rely on free traffic from Google then don’t get lazy or you’ll lose it.

6: Repurpose your content. Turn that article into a video and a podcast. Take several small articles and make them into one big one and take a big one and turn it into several small ones. Remove the best bits and use it on social media, and then package it all up for a whopping comprehensive lead magnet.

7: Update your content. Take that blog post from 6 months ago or even 6 years ago, make it fresh and republish it.

8: Do some podcasting. If the time is right, start your own. If not, be a guest on other people’s podcasts. Compared to blogging, podcasting is still wide open and far less competitive. Plus, you can convey things like emotion and passion via voice that sometimes get lost with writing.

9: Backlinks probably aren’t going to matter as much. Focus on great content built on what people are searching for. Relevancy is king.

10: You better be branding. Brands are already dominating the internet because people know them and TRUST them. It’s easier to get followers, to reach people and get sales when you have an established brand.

Conversely, people out to make a quick buck and run don’t have a brand – they’re just somebody making promises into the void.

10.5: And this is a big one: Forget the, “HELLO – BUY – GOODBYE” of yesterday where you tried to sell someone the first time they saw your offer, and if they didn’t buy, you gave up.

Instead, find ways to interact with people at least 7 times. It might be through email, push notifications, messenger bots, social media, etc. I once knew a guy who was launching a brand new business. He guest posted on a hundred blogs and appeared on 30 podcasts all in the space of 6 weeks. While no one had heard of him in the beginning, by the sixth week everyone in the niche felt like they’d known him for years. His list exploded, he got JV offers daily, bloggers and podcasters asked him back repeatedly and promoted him for free… in the online world, that’s about as close as you’ll get to overnight success.

It may sound like a lot of work, but it can really pay off big if you apply yourself. Aren’t you and your business worth it?