Well, it’s over. Agency life is officially finished for me. I’m onto other challenges.

After growing from an SEO specialist to the senior specialist, up to becoming the Head of Digital (Products) for a large agency, and after 3 years of blood, sweat and way too many tears, I’ve left the agency behind and begun working in-house for a small business in southeast Melbourne.

Three years of agency is quite a lot for anyone. During my time, we helped literally thousands of Australian businesses through all sorts of digital marketing: SEO, SEM, social, content, web development, and lately, even email marketing.

Recently I accepted a role client-side with a home security company, Ultimate Shutter. I have been given a small installation business, ecommerce website for roller shutters and lead generation site to manage. Marketing these three sites across any & all channels will make up the bulk of my work life.

What are the Pros of Going Client-Side?

Well, this is where “quality of life” will always win. I control my own day. I am treated like an adult capable of doing my job. I, get this, have my own office with windows and a door. Talk about productivity boosts!

What else is great? I’m the main marketing voice internally. This extends to the website, all marketing channels, our brand voice & social media, etc. What that means is I’m responsible for my own success/failure and I’m responsible for the business. What I’m doing is important and matters to everyone in the business.

I love that I can work on hard problems without interruption. It’s great when I close the door, close my eyes and have time to think of the solution to implement before I actually have to implement it. The hours are also a pro. I work shorter hours and closer to home. No more leaving at 6:30 am to get home at 7:30 pm … I leave at 7:45 am to get home at 5:25 pm and my managing director is practically chasing me out of the office at closing time. He wants to go home, too, so he locks up behind me almost as soon as I’ve left.

So What Are The Cons of Client-Side?

Man, I miss people sometimes! At the agency I was surrounded by 150 of my closest friends. And when I say “interruption” sometimes I mean “it’s nice to have friends who care & need me around.” Agency life can be crazy but it’s crazy with other people. In-house marketing for an SMB is a very lonely prospect. If I talk to four different people in the day it’s been a great day.

Another con is definitely the knowledge base. I had a fantastic set of technical colleagues and I miss being able to Skype one of them with my 2 second question. I miss having access to developers, SEM pros, sales team and people who make me think outside the box. The box is now my whole life – what I know and what I can learn is the absolute extent of what this business can do.

It may sound crazy but I sometimes miss the intensity of agency life. The rush of doing something great was often accompanied by cheers & congratulations by peers who clearly understood what you managed to accomplish. Success client-side is a quiet high five to yourself and you move on. Nobody else really knows what you’re doing or trying to do so you just admit it was a good win and keep going.

So What’s Better?

There is no one clear answer to that. I will say this: if I were 25 and had the same skills, I would live somewhere within 15 min walk of the agency and go out with everyone in the evenings. I would absolutely LOVE that job. Busy, crazy, intense, whatever. And the things that bother me about it wouldn’t bother me because what 25 year-old doesn’t need to be told what to do AND how to do it sometimes? I’d appreciate the help a lot more.

But old me? Work-life balance may be a myth but 13 hour days are not as nice as 9 hour days. Getting yelled at by someone half your age is never as much fun as having a professional conversation with a peer about things you want to improve. Old me wants to have family time, weekends where I don’t think about work and a high quality of life. Unfortunately, I just don’t have boundless energy to deal with non-work things.

Agency life, at least in mine, was millennial life. All the pros, all the cons. Working in-house is a more “adult” life. I have an office job. I do it and go home to my lovely wife. I go home and work on our side project, Nom Nom Smoothies. I use the extra time to lift weights or do some cardio. Lately, I’ve been watching the Olympics. I wouldn’t have seen 10% of what I did if I was still in agency life.

So that’s my story. I loved agency life for years. Then it stopped working for me.

So for now, I’m going client-side.

This post I’m Going Client-Side by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

How long does it take you to blog?

Does that feel like the right question? I tried to answer it and felt like maybe it wasn’t.

Writing Time – Does It Matter?

Business blog posts generally fall into two categories: how-to (technique) and informational (who, what, why, where & when?)  These are just a few of the top how-to articles on Inbound at the moment:

How To Convert Blog Traffic Into Customers With CTAs: The Complete Guide 

5 Call To Action Tips to Increase Your Conversions and Sales!

And a few informational topics:

Revisiting “Navigational,” “Informational,” & “Transactional” Searches in a Post-PageRank World

Ask Inbound: What is your favorite editor when writing a blog post?

Informational blogs can be daily news and a quick “did you see this” or link round up. One of Seth Godin’s latest blog posts is 63 words. Another is 74. Are these useless, valueless blog posts or simply insightful bits of wisdom inserted into the reader’s day? The two posts have a combined 1500 Facebook likes and almost 1000 Linkedin shares. They have a lot of Twitter engagement as well. In fact, Seth’s most popular blog in the last 3 months has just 370 words. His second most popular has 43. That’s just over 400 words to generate 4000 likes & over 2000 shares directly on his page. This is counting the ones directly from his blog.

So clearly you don’t need to write 4000 words to matter.

Seth’s blog succeeds because he has built the brand of Seth Godin and he’s been consistent. Seth has blogged very, very consistently and built a strong audience through his writing, public speaking and knowledge of business. He doesn’t write detailed “how to” articles because that isn’t what his blog is meant to be.

Factors in Writing Time

After you decide whether writing long, detailed articles is even right for your blog, how long will it take?

Outlining: Are you organized? The more frequently you write the better you will get at it. You will require less planning and just say what you need to say. You won’t need an 800-word outline because a simple outline will accomplish the task.

Writing Speed: How fast do you type? You can have the best idea in the world. You can write like it’s your job because maybe it is. But if you type half as fast as the next guy, it’s going to take you longer to write the post.

Images & Graphics: Do you source images from a site like Pixabay or draw your own in Illustrator? I can tell you that downloading images from Pixabay to use in your blog post will take you about 40 seconds. illustrating a complicated idea may take you 4 hours or more. (Going back to Seth’s blog – he doesn’t even use images. But we consider them must-have, right?)

Formatting: Are you a WordPress expert? Do you use the WordPress cheat sheet? If you write in Word, how long will it take you to convert your text into a blog post? Does your blog have a consistent style? I use H2 tags as subheadings. I use bold text as sub-sub-headings. I already know that before I start formatting so I don’t have to think about how I want my posts to look.

What Are Your Goals? Who Is Your Audience?

I started answering this question on Inbound before I realized my answer was a blog post itself. My initial response was “it depends on what you want to achieve.”

Goals: Are you trying to get readers to sign up for your mailing list? Do you want to get them to buy your latest product or download your ebook? The same type of content that establishes you as a thought leader is not the same content that drives a quick sign up to your list.

Audience: I write this blog for marketers but I write my agency blog for small business owners and those who have very little experience with marketing. If I wrote a 4000-word epic skyscraping, monster blog post about The Definitive Guide to SEO Tools and I linked 150 tools and discussed each one, guess how many small business owners would read it or even click more than 1 or 2 links?

Small business owners are generally too busy to read 4000 words. They read our blog to simplify marketing so they don’t have to learn complicated, in-depth processes. I can write epic posts but they aren’t interested, won’t read them and definitely won’t share them.

Conclusion

You shouldn’t try to be Seth Godin. That role in this life is already taken. Creative content doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be complex. It just has to be unique to your audience, your tone of voice and your goals.

It takes as long as it takes to write a blog post. When your blog has 500+ posts, consider optimizing every visit and every word that comes from it. Until then, it really doesn’t make as much difference as you think. Write because you have something to say about something that is important to you.

This blog took exactly 53 minutes to create from start to finish. My process was: sketch outline, quick draft, find a few images, add text to one image, write blog post inside of WordPress formatting as I went, add images, categorize, check Yoast title & meta description and press publish. I normally use WP Image Inject so it could’ve gone faster. Sometimes I shoot my own photos so it could have gone slower, too.

This post How Long Does It Take You to Blog? by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

This shit’s chess, it ain’t checkers! – Alonzo in Training Day

I love that quote. What I mean to say with it is “this is marketing – it’s always hard and confusing. It’s a lot harder than, say, washing laundry. That’s just how it goes.”

Too many small business owners dip their toe into just one marketing channel. If that works, great. If not they forget it and move onto the next channel. In my experience, most start with blogging. They’ve been told to blog so they do even if they have no idea how and nothing to say. This usually becomes boring as they repeat the same material over & over.

By the time they’re bored of blogging, Google sends them a $100 credit to try Adwords. This is a disaster as they have no Adwords experience. The budding entrepreneur fails to know what a negative keyword is, nevermind adding a list to their campaign. Once this bombs, they feel like “nothing” is working.

At that point many go onto a forum or Facebook group, ask about marketing and inevitably they are either told to “do social” or read the Beginner’s Guide to SEO from Moz.

Within 6 months the now-struggling business owner has a choice: really dive into marketing and learn it or hire someone to do their marketing. (This scenario isn’t all that uncommon. It’s how I started doing marketing myself and plenty of my photo friends did the exact same thing.)

Generating your first leads – Discovery & Awareness

Every business owner has a few ideas where they will generate leads. Maybe you are well-networked. Maybe you ran Adwords campaigns for a different business. Or maybe you have a huge social media following and get an exceptional response.

Without diving too much into the basics of business, all it takes to generate a lead is one person to have interest in solving the problem you can solve for them. If you open a dental office and someone in your town needs a dentist, you have a potential lead.

The first hurdle is then discovery. How do you get discovered? The first step is to go where your leads already are. Some questions are naturally made for Google. “local dentist Melbourne” is definitely one of that type. So maybe you choose SEO or Adwords for this business.

Most people won’t follow their dentist on a Facebook page for two years before they come in for a first appointment.  However, don’t entirely discount Facebook for local business as referrals in local groups are an excellent way of gaining new business. Natural participation in these groups as a result of living in that area is an easy way to network in your community.

Generating more leads – Social Media & Blogging

So you are grabbing the low hanging fruit. You’re generating local leads, referrals, some word of mouth from your immediate friends & family. You are growing this fledgling business through a small local Facebook group but it’s time to take it national.

Let’s say as an example that you sell podcasting microphones. You are not going to sell thousands of those to your local community so you need a much wider audience.

One way to generate leads is to tap into your raison d’etre (reason for living.)  In this case, maybe you sell podcasting mics because you are a podcaster yourself and you remember how hard it was to find a great mic for the right price. How did you do your own research? Google, most likely. So you can generate leads by setting up a blog, reviewing mics you’ve used and adding links to them in your store. Add great content about each mic with detailed information. If you solve the problem, you will get a new lead/sale.

Also, if you grow your social media following by participating in relevant conversations on Facebook groups, Twitter, or by posting podcasting photos to Instagram or Pinterest, you can post links to your new blog post and generate even more interest in the mics in your store.

Similarly, if you’re a musician selling guitars, use your passion. Use your reason for opening a music store as a selling point. You are the expert so write, create and socialise your way to new leads.

Even More Lead Generation – Email Marketing

Now people are coming to your website through Google, social media, referrals & word of mouth, Facebook groups, your blog & podcast, and even your Instagram of last week’s gig.

Start building a mailing list in a very simple way. Sign up to a service like Mailchimp.  Create one list, get the embed code for a simple form and put your code on every blog post and every page of your website at the bottom.

Building your list is the most valuable long-term action you can take if you don’t run a seasonal, new-customer business. Wedding photographers and DJs can skip the email list building. Next year’s brides won’t be on the list. That musician example we used? Definitely needs a list.  Why? Your store has mics right? You probably also have pop filters, amps and pre-amps, right? What happens when they need those accessories and oh look, you just dropped a relevant email in their inbox this morning? #leads #sales #allthemoney

Most marketers will tell you the “money’s in the list.” Once you build a solid foundation of people who trust, know and like you then selling more over time becomes much easier.

A final lead generation technique

We’ve hit the big guns: SEO, content & blogging, social media, email lists, referrals/word of mouth. What could possibly be left?

That $100 Adwords credit you get from Google. At some point in your entrepreneurial life you are going to want to hire an agency to do Adwords for you or you are going to want to slowly learn it yourself with some testing. We will go through many of those steps together. We will cover as much as possible so you can jump in and feel comfortable. But I left this until last because unless you know what you are doing, this is the fastest way to lose money in marketing.

I am planning a long run-through of how you could use that first $100 Adwords spend so for now hold onto it!

Final thoughts

The secret to truly generating more leads than your business can handle is optimising all of these tactics and then moving onto even more. Test three new ideas and keep the one that works best. Test another three and do the same. The more you are constantly testing new ideas, the more successful you will be.

When I owned my photo studio I tried everything I could imagine. We left “free engagement session” business cards with jewelers. They gave them out because it looks good to give away something of value for free. We gave them out because 75% booked their wedding packages with us after their photoshoot. We ran one of the largest studios in New York and that one unusual tactic alone could’ve kept most of our team busy for the year.

So don’t sleep on unusual and interesting ideas. Give away 1000 business cards. Do tradeshows and networking nights. Leave interesting, relevant comments on your potential customer’s blog. Write guest blogs. Post content on LinkedIn and promote it to your social circles. Do live shows and give away prizes in exchange for a mailing list. Keep experimenting & keep inventing.

Finally, subscribe to our list below. You’re obviously interested in marketing if you read this whole post. We’re interested in helping you learn more and understand this dance.

This post Generate WAY More Business Leads by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence. – Lisa M. Amos

I have a friend, Jordan, who’s really going through the struggle at the moment. He’s a new entrepreneur and he’s experiencing the growing pains of having a new, untested, unproven business. Uptake is a bit slower than he’d like. Sales are well behind where he assumes he should be and would like to be.

We speak frequently and I know he’s working hard and putting his whole into his business. He wants to succeed but doesn’t quite see the way there yet.

Life Is a Highway – Which Off Ramp Is Yours?

Imagine life as a long stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere. Every 25 miles there’s an off-ramp to a destination. Some of these are labelled, others are unmarked. Your journey through life has two unavoidable choices:

• Keep going on the highway as far as it will take you.
• Take one of the exits and try a different road, hoping it leads somewhere better.

If you keep going on your current path, will you succeed? That depends on the goal, right? You’ll get somewhere in the future and it’s further ahead than you are now. But will that be the road to success, profit and happiness? That’s harder to predict.

I was on the Pro Photography highway. I took this road for almost a decade and it brought me places I never thought I’d be. I have made thousands of friends along the way, been to Vegas to present at a major conference and learned most of my business skills sitting in the Borders café reading books until it felt like they would kick me out.

Along the way I realized I didn’t really want to go where that road was leading. I could see the struggles pro photographers are currently having with iPhones and iPads at weddings, instant-gratification society and the possibility of having a career that may disappear from under me.

I took an exit ramp onto the SEO Expressway. As I drove on my new highway, I passed through Entrepreneurship, Affiliate Marketing, SEO Agency and Corporate Politics. I didn’t want to call any of those home permanently so I will continue on Marketing Consultant Drive until I find somewhere nice to spend more time.

Jordan Shoots … But Does He Score?

If you only ever chase the quick wins, the easy drives, the fast money you are going to fail more than succeed. Someone once posed a question: if you were starting your studio again today would you rather be the best businessperson on the block and a poor photographer or a poor businessperson and the best photographer in town?

This is an exceptionally easy question to me. The best businessperson can sell, grow their business and if needed, hire someone better as a photographer or even pay someone to teach them. They will have revenue and profits and 10 years from now still be in business. A great photographer who doesn’t understand money, taxes, profit margin or accounting is the definition of a “starving artist.”

Similarly, talent is not as impressive as passion and persistence. If you have more talent than someone else but give up easily, a few setbacks will knock you down. Meanwhile, someone less talented but with more passion will keep fighting. We call this “Win Like Stupid” named after a great article by a giant metal dinosaur.

I admire Jordan for his persistence with his new business. He’s giving it a lot of time, effort and money to make this work. Will it?

Honestly I’m not sure it matters. Jordan has an incredible passion for marketing and business. Maybe he will turn this into one of the great successes of his career or maybe it’s just 1 of the 3.8 failures he will suffer before his final success.

Final Thoughts

As Jordan works on his business I’m reminded that business success can take many forms. One of those forms is as a lesson. Whether or not this particular business succeeds, Jordan will take many priceless lessons with him as he continues his drive. Only he will know whether he’s happy when he arrives at a later destination but for now, he pushes forward.

Success can come from talent but it can equally be found in passion, patience and persistence. Find what you have inside that can take you as far as you want to go.

Have you had failures before? What did you do about them? Are you pushing on to new challenges? Comment below and as always, don’t forget to subscribe.

This post Jordan Shoots But Does He Score? by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan. – Larry Winget

By now you should have read the first and second parts of this goal setting series. As a reminder:

• Part 1 – Anything But Not Everything.
• Part 2 – Dreams with Deadlines

Today we are going to finish off with “What happens when you don’t have a plan?”

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

I could’ve easily used this quote as the introduction to today’s post. We are now entering the second week of January and if you don’t have your goals written, deadlines attached and the motivation to get the year started what is it going to take?

When I was younger there was an anti-drug commercial I remember. It showed kids running, studying, all the good things as they recited their dreams. “I want to be a track star when I grow up!” “I want to be a ballerina.”

The key line in the commercial was a voiceover by an adult saying “nobody ever says I want to be a junkie when I grow up.”

What do you think your end result will be if you don’t plan? Can you name one famous athlete who never ran late laps or practiced after their teammates left the gym? They’re famous for hard work and having a goal.

Broke, Fat, Lazy, Stupid

The reality of achievement and success is simple: 1) set a goal, 2) make plans that result in you achieving that goal, 3) get to work on those plans.

Everything worth achieving in life has those essential parts to it. Sure, luck is sometimes involved in life. Sure, coincidence or accident changes some people’s lives. If you do manage to “win the Powerball” and plan to retire to a beach then you can probably ignore a good deal of my advice.

Otherwise, the opposite of broke is rich. The opposite of fat & lazy is fit & active. The opposite of stupid is smart, or in the case of reading this blog for information, the opposite is “educated.”

If you want to be rich, fit, healthy, active, smart, educated, intelligent, successful, and inspired then you need to do the opposite of what people do who are broke, fat, lazy & stupid.

Do they 1) set goals? Not often. Many people who are broke just complain and figure out ways to make other people give them things in life.

Do they 2) make plans that result in achieving those goals? No, of course not. They’re playing Xbox or smoking weed.

Do they 3) get to work? Of course not. They don’t want to grind because the grind isn’t easy, it’s not lazy.

Final Thoughts

After this post, we’re going to be done with goal-setting for a little while. Once you set goals you don’t need to revisit and change them up. Create your plan to get there and get to work.

If you want more than you’ve ever had you are going to need to do more than you’ve ever done. You won’t get it by being lazy. You won’t get it by being passive. You definitely won’t get it by staying under-educated.

2016 still has all the potential in the world to be the best year you’ve ever had. Subscribe below so you don’t miss any of our future posts because for now, I want you to leave. I want you to either finish writing your goals and creating plans or I want you to get to work. Subscribe & grind, people!

This post Setting Goals 3: Broke, Fat, Lazy & Stupid by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napolean Hill

In Part 1 of Setting Goals & Milestones we spoke about choices and goal-setting. You can’t do everything so you need to make hard choices about which dreams to follow. Once you know which dreams are important, let’s put a deadline on those dreams.

Setting a Goal Deadline

Way to often our goals are written “bucket list” style. That means we want to accomplish something or go somewhere before we die. While those type of life goals are important, it’s far more important to your immediate success and happiness to have goals with deadlines.

Let’s take an example I commonly use: weight loss. If you say “I want to lose 50 pounds” – that’s a great goal. But it doesn’t have a timeline or a deadline. If you lose 1 pound a year for the next 50 years, you’ll achieve that goal. But your quality of life will not be nearly the same as if you lost 1 pound per week for the next year and lived 49 years with a healthier lifestyle. In fact, only one of those two options will likely give you another 50 years to live.

When you set a deadline you are creating a fictional but important line in the sand that tells you where you should be. Sometimes you’re guessing, like when you estimate business revenue. “I’d like to be at $250k by Dec 31st.”  If you are in your first few years, guessing those type of revenue numbers is sometimes impossible. You can’t see the future. If you were preparing a live video platform last year and Meerkat and Periscope beat you to the market and took all your media coverage, you probably wouldn’t have hit your target numbers. But if you ARE Meerkat, you likely blew expectations out of the water. So a goal may not be accurate but it should be set with your best intentions and closest estimations.

Deadline Reality: Breaking Up Goals

There are two ways goals can motivate you – from the start and at the end. Goals motivate you at the start because you are chasing your dream. You have a figure in mind that it would be “really nice” to achieve but it’s so far away that over the course of the year you may lose your path.

Set a realistic but challenging deadline. You may be able to lose 50 pounds in a year but you can’t lose 250. You may be able to double revenues from last year but you are unlikely in most cases to grow them by 100x.

If you find you often hit your goals, try stretching further. If you find you never hit them, give yourself more realistic targets. Don’t forget to break your goals up into smaller timeframes as well. Don’t just set a target for the year. What are the intermediate goals that help push you along?  $250k for the year?  Well you may want to do 60k per quarter with a strong push at the end. Or you may think 50/60/70/80k per quarter is more realistic as growth kicks in.

Closing in on Goal Deadlines

The second way goals help is to pull you toward the finish line. When you get to the last quarter and need $65k to hit that $250k target, you’re going to feel more motivated to put up big numbers and smash through your finish line. Similarly, when runners finish a race they can often accelerate in the last 1-2 miles and finish strong.

In this way, having a deadline will help you. If you ask a professional runner of any level to go “run as fast as they can” they’re going to ask about the distance. You will pace yourself extremely different for a 100m dash compared with a marathon. You should do the same with your business. Pace yourself for a sprint and set sprint goals but pace yourself for a marathon for the long-term goals. There’s no point trying to go out and sell a year’s worth of merchandise tomorrow if your business doesn’t work in that type of volume.

If you pace yourself for a sprint but run a marathon, you’re going to burn out. Imagine Usain Bolt running his best 100m dash and trying to follow that up with 26 more miles. Burn out is very bad for your goals and you don’t want to get there. So set the appropriate pace. (Going back to my workout example – many new gymgoers in this new year will go from zero days a week to seven days a week at the gym. They’ll quickly burn out and by February, only the regulars will still be there. It happens every year.)

Similarly, if you pace yourself too slow, you won’t achieve much. If you set off on a leisurely jog but the race is only 100 meters, you’re going to have lots of energy left at the end but you won’t really hit any challenging goals. This is similar to my 50 pounds in 50 years example, above.

Conclusion

Last time I told you that you’d have to make hard choices. This time I said you need to put timelines on those choices/goals. Next time we’re going to talk about NOT setting goals or planning for the year ahead.

We’re one week into the new year. Hope you’re enjoying the new posts & don’t forget to subscribe below!

This post Setting Goals 2: Dreams with Deadlines by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

You can do anything but not everything. – David Allen

We’re going to look at goals and goal setting in three posts. This one, the first, will focus on choices. The second will focus on time and the final post on the motivation for goal setting and goal accomplishment.

Ready to dive in?

You can do anything

With the proper motivation, timeline and effort you can achieve nearly anything. We have seen teenagers circumnavigate the globe in solo boat expeditions. A man jumped to Earth from the edge of the atmosphere and landed safely. Men have broken the 4 minute mile and the 10-second 100 meter dash. Unrealistic and “miracle” events 100 years ago are commonplace today with cell phones, microwaves and 3d movies.

As you start to set goals for the year you shouldn’t feel like you’re creating a to do list. Goals are not something to check off in September when you hit them 3 months early. It doesn’t define who you are if you do or do not accomplish your goals this year. You should expect that the goals are somehow, sometime achievable but as you create your goals, forget the checklist. “Want to make $100k” – if you did $95,000 last year isn’t really a goal. Your business should grow and small percentage growth is not going to help you achieve bigger things. Did you do 100k last year? Set the goal at 150 or 200k. Set it at 400k if you think that’s plausible.

You can do anything …

But not everything

You’re going to need to start figuring out what you will remove from your life this year.

If you do tomorrow what you did today you’ll get
tomorrow what you got today. – Benjamin Franklin

Old Ben Franklin had it right. You can’t repeat last year’s mistakes and achieve your goals this year. So you have to make choices.

• Do you want to lose 20 pounds? Give up ice cream, pizza or Coke.
• Do you want to write more blog posts? Give up TV or video games.
• Do you want to double your sales? Give up 30 minutes of your hour lunch break. Research productivity and use it.

You can run a marathon but it means giving up gardening.

You can run your company from out of the state but it means delegating some control.

You can have this but it means no that. You can have everything in Column A but that negates everything in Column B.

Hitting Goals This Year

You can’t have everything. You must make choices. You must sacrifice things you don’t care about for things you care about more. Too often we sacrifice things we want for things we don’t want. What kind of choice is that?! How smart is that? “I want to be fit and I want pizza. If I give up this piece of pizza I won’t be fit, so I’m going to eat this pizza.”  STOP THAT.

Be logical. Plan for your long term self-interest; stop giving into your immediate wants. You aren’t eight years old. It’s 2016. Or as we like to call it “Grow up time.”

So what’s it going to be? Sleep or sales? Watching the game or learning about profit margins?

Look, I’m all in on 2016. If you aren’t meant for this blog, that’s fine. Google something else and good luck.

But if you are looking for the Express Train to success, let’s go.  Opt in below.

This post Setting Goals and Milestones for the Year #1 by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

Just because someone stumbles and loses their path,
doesn’t mean they’re lost forever. – Charles Xavier

Last year I turned 40. I worked for the last 25 years of my life – from Dunkin Donuts cashier to student work at the college library and then online. I ran a successful photo studio, worked in affiliate marketing and sold photos online. I’ve had two marketing agencies and worked for one of the largest in Australia. I am a workaholic who often spends 16 hours a day working.

For the last 3 months I haven’t done almost anything. I haven’t been able to concentrate on work, focus on writing or marketing, I have lost track of much of my reading and just let things happen around me.

How I Stumbled & Lost My Path

It doesn’t take much for even the hardest working person to lose their way. For me, it took an injury. Actually, it took 4 injuries and 1 life-threatening illness.

First, I sprained my foot very badly. It has never really healed properly. Then I ran a half marathon without proper training and had a compression injury in my back. Those things hurt but eventually the pain subsided. Then I was struck with a kidney infection that nearly killed me. I missed almost two weeks of work. I was in bed shaking, feverish, just feeling like I was going to die.

After a while I recovered from the infection and things were going well. Work was improving and I was promoted twice very quickly at the agency. Then my wife and I bought a house. As we packed up for our big move, I lifted a box the wrong way and herniated a disc in my back. That injury was the worst up until that point. It hasn’t gone away and lasted well over a year so far. The surgery they suggest is risky and has no guarantee of success.

But still, I worked. I had to quit my job with the agency before I really wanted to be done. But I worked. I worked hard from home. I’ve built my own marketing agency site and will continue with that. But work always came easily. So I kept working.

Then, I popped my quad muscle. And I quit.

I quit my physical recovery. I quit working almost at all. I quit waking up before noon. I quit because my body kept quitting on me. I couldn’t take it and I just felt old and done. I stopped returning phone calls. I didn’t text friends back. I just couldn’t think about going forward when all I knew was pain. I was (and am) in pain every day for almost 5 years.

Lying on the floor, collapsed on my injured quad, with the worst pain of my life, I quit.

Getting Back On Track

Yesterday I published my first work online in almost 4 months.

I texted back a former colleague who wanted to do some work together. I opened some of my work documents for the first time in months. My team was doing a bit of work behind the scenes but even half of them have left me so I need to start again, fresh. Some of my closest allies as I’ve built my agency are gone for other reasons.

What changed? The same thing that always changes when you make decisions. You start. You keep going.

I made a choice to stop … My injuries were an excuse, the same as people make when they eat the wrong foods, drink too much, or laze away a weekend.

What Do You Want? What Are Your Goals?

What are you going to accomplish this year? What goals have you set for 2016?

Without goals, it doesn’t matter how motivated you are. You’ll run in circles accomplishing nothing much. Without goals, your passion, motivation, and effort are all wasted.

But it’s easy to set a goal. I want to lose 52 pounds this year. There, goal set. But it’s not that easy, right? Now I have to get to work. I have to walk, bike, run, swim, and work my way to my goal.

If you want to get back on your right path, make the choice. First set the goal then follow up with massive dedicated action toward your goal. That’s how you get back on path. Was 2015 your year? This one can be even better.

Let’s get to work.

This post Getting Back Up After You Stumble by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

Everybody has a dream, but not
everybody has a grind. – Eric Thomas

This year has 366 days, 1 more than last year and 1 more than next year. An extra day represents opportunity. It is a chance to spend a few more precious hours working toward your ends.

What will you do with your extra day this year?

Do you set goals? Do you have resolutions for the year? Will you use your extra day working to achieve those goals? Are you drifting through the start of the year with a lack of purpose that can only signify that you will sleep through your extra day? Did you already squander it on the first day of the year?

You have a choice this year. Do what you’ve always done and get what you’ve always gotten. Or do what you’ve never done to get something you have always wanted.

We aren’t often presented with opportunities to add time. This year you get an extra day. What will you do with yours?

How to Lose Your Extra Day

Sure, watch that movie now. Skip the content you were about to write. You can do it in 30 minutes. Don’t reply to your blog commenters. They don’t care. They will come back. Don’t worry about what’s happening in your industry, the Avengers need you. Garbage! That’s all garbage. You are going to waste not only your extra day but weeks like this.

Maybe you’re just not well after you partied the 31st into the early morning. You’re going to sleep through the first as you always do. You’ll get to work on Monday because that’s what everyone else is doing. You don’t need the extra day. Sure, you’ll get more done later when you are rested. Garbage again! You don’t need rest, you need to put your fingers on the keyboard and start typing.

If you’re an entrepreneur you’re going to spend this year wondering why the competition is beating you again. Go think about it on your couch for another hour while you play some Call of Duty. Don’t worry, everyone’s waiting on your extraordinary achievements. They’ll wait a little longer, right?

How to Use Your Extra Day

This post is going live at 11:59 pm on 1/1 for a very important reason. You need to refuse to waste your extra day no matter what time it is. You need to find your grind and get there. In the words of John Irving, you need to GET obsessed then you need to STAY obsessed. Do you want to lose weight this year? Move more and STOP. EATING. SHIT.

Playtime is over, folks. It’s 2016, the most important year of your life for the next 366 days. The grind will not wait for you. You need to stop hitting snooze and start hitting the books. The only way to use your extra day is to have goals and put in the work that moves you one step closer to those goals. That’s it. That’s the only way, sorry.

Maybe you want to write a book this year. Do you know how every book since the dawn of writing has been written? One word at a time. No matter how brilliant, eloquent or talented a writer you are every word that has ever been written down was written one word at a time. It’s simply IMPOSSIBLE for you to do more than that. JK Rowling can’t do more than that. Stephen King has never written more than one word at the same time. Every blog author from Seth Godin to Darren Rowse to me writing this article right now has done it word by word. You want to write a book? GRIND.

It’s like this: make a plan. Follow your plan. 

And make 2016 the best of your life.

#mattantonino

This post What Will You Do With Your Extra Day? by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.

Time Management?

“I can do this myself and make more money! I’ll have more free time and no boss.” A year later you don’t sleep, worry about paying the bills, and haven’t been outside in over a week.

Where did it all go wrong? Was there a day when it all fell apart?

Business owners fall behind one day at a time, become overwhelmed and often give up their dreams.  But that doesn’t have to be you.

I wrote about some of the common time management problems in running a new business as well as solutions over at Team Project Mayhem so check it out.

Read more at: Time Poor: The Day to Day Running of a New Business

This post Time Poor: The Day to Day Running of a New Business by Matt Antonino first appeared on Matt Antonino.