Use the Writer's Pivot When Stalled

It happens to me every day: I try something that doesn't work.

--program stalled. For example, I've mentioned using Refollow every day. It's a great tool but sometimes the program doesn't work or gets stalled. I have to return to it later in the day and see if it will work (and often it does so it is worth coming back to it again after several hours).

--phone call unreturned. As an acquisitions editor, I have convinced my colleagues to issue a contract for a book at Morgan James Publishing. I've not heard from some authors about their decision. Some authors take time and explore other options before they sign with Morgan James.

--emails unanswered.  I send email which does not get a response from another publishing colleague or an author. Some emails get stuck in a SPAM folder. Other times the person is busy and doesn't answer or many other reasons.

--pitches ignored. Some of my pitches to editors and others are not answered. Maybe it is a pitch to speak at an event or teach a workshop or write an article.

--lots of other similar things. With these various examples, I hope you get the idea what I'm talking about here. It happens to everyone. 

When something goes wrong, how do you respond? Do you have a game plan to keep going? I call this shift of action using the “writer pivot.” It's an intentional shift of direction into a new area where you can have success and get something accomplished.

Maybe you are promoting a product, and that effort is not working. My encouragement is for you to shift into something that will work.
There are several important action steps in this process.

1. Take your own responsibility. Many details are outside of my control. I can't control how others will react or respond. What I can control is my own response. I encourage you to understand this aspect and take your own responsibility. Basically you control what you can, then let the rest go and shift into something else.

2. No matter what happens in the process, keep moving forward. This often is an act of the will and requires persistence and  perseverance—excellent qualities for everyone in this business.

3. When one type of writing is not working, I encourage you to try a different type of writing. maybe you need to create an information product or a membership course. If you are a book writer, then maybe write some magazine articles. There are many different options in the writing world. I explore some of these options in my free first chapter of Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams (follow this link to download).

Don't go into stall but use the writer's pivot.

How do you react when something isn't working? Let me know in the comments below.

Tweetable:

When you are stalled, use the writer's pivot. Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

 

Move Beyond The Book

I love books and have written many books over the years. I'm working at my third publishing house as an acquisitions editor working with hundreds of authors on their books. Yes the book is important and every author has to be passionate about their books and telling others about it. Yet in this article, I want to ask a different question: How can you move beyond the book?

In November, I spent several days with over 40 Morgan James authors in Nashville. Most of these authors were launching their book and we celebrated the launch with interviews on the red carpet and special time together. After this celebration, Morgan James organized a second day of marketing training for our authors. I don't know another publisher making this type of effort to train and encourage authors with their books. The marketing training was open to any of our authors—not just the ones launching their books. Morgan James did three of these events last year, three this year and three more are scheduled for next year. 
There is great synergy at these events where authors swap books (to review each other's books) and much more.

Whether you have published your book with a well-known publisher or self-published, you have accomplished something amazing in getting your book into the market. Now the real work begins of telling people about your book. Your on-going marketing efforts are important to tell others about your book. The key piece many authors miss in this process is: your book has made you an authority on your topic. Every author has to use their book to open new doors of opportunity.

Because you have published a book, others will want to hear you speak As you speak on the topic, people learn about you and hopefully purchase your book. I encourage you to approach event organizers and open up opportunities to speak on your topic. It's always best to begin in your local area with Rotary or Kiwanis or other such groups looking for speakers. Sometimes these are free opportunities where you sell books in the back of the room. Other times they will pay a fee. The key is to use your creativity to pitch yourself and book these opportunities. They are definitely out there.

Can you use your book as a springboard to create other information products that you sell online? If you want to know more details, I recommend you listen to this free interview I did with Bob Bly and look at the free Ebook with it.

Can you use your book and create an online course or membership site where you deliver content instruction and insights for your audience? I have a risk-free Simple Membership System product to give you much more detail and insight. Notice my 30 day no questions asked love it or return it guarantee.

Can you use your book to launch a personal coaching program? Your book has made you an authority and now use that influence to begin another aspect of your writing life—coaching. You will have a limited number of people but it can also create a regular stream of income for your business.

The overall key for any author is to create multiple streams of income. This article only gives a few of the possibilities. As an acquisitions editor, I repeatedly see authors focus on their royalties (or they tell me about their lack of royalties). There are many dynamics in play with a publisher receiving and paying these royalties such as the slow rate that bookstores pay publishers—which is something many authors forget. In my view, the royalty focus is the wrong focus. As an author, you can't control your royalty payment. If it comes, terrific. There are many element I mentioned in this article that you as an author can control. Seize those elements for your focus and work on them. It will yield a far greater financial result.

Every author needs to continually work at building their platform and expanding their influence. If you want or need to know more about building an author platform, get my free ebook on the topic. You can do it but it will take effort and initiative on your part. From my experience, it is not a simple one-two-three process but the journey is different for every author. Keep at it and if I can help you, just reach out to me and let me know what you need.

How are you moving beyond the book? Let me know in the comments below.

Tweetable:

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When Hitting a Roadblock, Experiment

For my social media efforts, I've written about using a tool called Refollow. Every day for the last several years, I've been increasing my followers using this tool. It takes me less than five minutes to follow 800 new followers.

It's significant that the people I'm following are not just anyone. They are followers in my target readers of publishing or writing. This targeting is a huge part (plus my continued valuable content in my tweets) as to why my followers continue to grow.

Sometimes when I use refollow, it will suddenly stop and I will get the message that I've reached the maximum followers which twitter allows and this will reset tomorrow.  Often in the past when I receive this rare message, I will close the window for refollow and use it again the next day.

I've learned through experimentation that if I wait for at least 30 minutes, I can return to refollow and select more people to follow and it will begin to work again. Just giving it this break from use, the tool will restart and I will be able to follow more people—so I can reach my selected limit of 800 new people a day.

Recently a reader wrote asking what to do because they had followed the maximum number of people which twitter allowed. My question in response: are these new people you have followed responding and following you back? If not, then you need to use a free tool like Manage Flitter to unfollow those people. Then you can replace the people you have unfollowed with new followers.  Manage Flitter is a valuable tool to remove people who are not responding. Then you can add new ones.

Some people wonder how I've written the volume of books or magazine articles or even these articles on The Writing Life (over 1200). The answer whether increasing your twitter followers, writing your next book or book proposal or magazine article, is simple: do it consistently every day. Many people want to write a bestseller or rocket to the top of some ranking yet they are not putting in this regular consistent effort.

I've been using Refollow for several years and I reap results from that effort all the time. Some people contact me about marketing their book or finding a literary agent or getting published or any number of other things. I faithfully respond to their questions, send them to valuable resources and help them. In response, they sign up for my email list, buy my products and books and publish their books with Morgan James or take my membership course on book proposals, receive these articles on the Writing Life, tell their friends about my work and much more.

The key point is to keep experimenting, trying new things and growing.  Each of us run into roadblocks—like Refollow hearing from twitter that I've followed the maximum people for today. Through experimenting, I found a way around the limit.

Each of us have challenges and roadblocks, do you accept the roadblock or find a creative solution around it?

Cast a Big Vision

Editor’s Note: This article is the fifth in the Content into Consistent Income Series. Here are the links to the other articles: Use Your Content in a New Way, How to Keep Them Coming Back, Set It and Forget It and Be More Than a One-Hit Wonder.

If you’ve followed the Content into Consistent Income Series, then you already know that there’s a truckload of profits waiting for you on the backend of your site. That is, you can make extra money by offering more products and even more expensive complimentary products to your members.

Now, one option is to be an affiliate for related products and services. The better option is to create these products yourself. That way, you keep 100% of your profits.

Here’s what I suggest: While you’re planning your first membership site, you should also simultaneously plan what complimentary products you’ll sell on the backend. And one way to make money on the backend is by creating a family of related sites and linking them together.

Let me give you an example from my friend and mentor Jimmy D. Brown. He runs the following two membership sites:

• InfoProductPipeline.com – this site teaches to create an entire empire of information products that you can offer for $17, $47, $97, $997, $1,497 and even more.

• Traffic-Fuel.com – This site teaches how to get completely free traffic to any website.

You can see why linking these sites together (cross-selling them on the backend) works. Any marketer needs to learn how to create content, so they join Contentnaire™.

Every marketers – even if they create their own products – will want to drive free traffic to those products so they will join Traffic-Fuel to learn how to get bigger paychecks.

Tip: The advantage of creating a family of sites goes beyond merely having something to sell on the backend. A family of sites also helps you develop your brand and grow your brand recognition. And that means more sales, more customers and more profits.

Now let me give you a few examples of how you can create a family of membership sites around a related niche (or even around a singular topic):

• Let’s suppose you run a health site on the topic of lowering one’s blood pressure. You might also create sites around similar problems, such as lowering cholesterol levels and leading a heart-healthy lifestyle.

• Maybe you run a training site that teaches people how to housetrain their new puppy and teach him basic manners (sit, stay, etc). You might create another site focused on getting rid of problem behaviors such as jumping, biting, digging and similar. Your third site might be for those who want to teach their dogs tricks. You might even create another sites centered around dog agility.

• You run a homeschooling site that focuses on delivering lesson plans and ideas for math. You can create a family of sites on other topics such as science, English and history. Or, you can offer homeschooling lessons by grade (e.g., 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade, etc).

When you’re building your first membership site, ask yourself: What ELSE do my customers want?

Do your market research to find out what other products they’re currently buying. Then create a family of sites around related topics. It’s the quick and easy way to tap into the backend profits… on autopilot!

Are you ready to get started? I wrote this series of articles to show you how to start your own membership site. I invite you to check out the details and start your own site through the Simple Membership System. You can have a big vision for your writing and it begins with one small action step.

Be More Than a “One-Hit Wonder”

Editor’s Note: This article is the fourth in the Content into Consistent Income Series. Here are the links to the other articles: Use Your Content in a New Way, How to Keep Them Coming Back and Set It and Forget It.

Many authors are focused on a single book idea. They craft a book proposal and pitch it over and over. Yet if you think about the publisher’s perspective, they are looking for authors with multiple book ideas or more than a “one-hit wonder.”

In this Content Into Consistent Income Series, I’ve been talking about the merits of a membership site. I’m going to use a personal example of how you can become more than a one-hit wonder with your topic.

About eight years ago as a frustrated acquisitions editor, I wrote Book Proposals That Sell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. This book continues to help writers and has 100 Five Star reviews on Amazon. I sell the Ebook version. Yet I knew I could do more with this important topic to writers. At any moment, there are millions of proposals and manuscripts in circulation in the offices of publishers and literary agents. Unfortunately many of them are poorly crafted and have no understanding of the importance of the pitch. You have seconds to catch the interest—and it involves work and understanding the audience for your pitch (an editor or an agent).

I took my experience and some of the content in Book Proposals That Sell and repurposed it into a membership course called Write A Book Proposal. My book is different from the course because the book is a series of secrets or insights about proposals where the course is much more step-by-step creation of an excellent book proposal—yet each one is focused on the same topic.

Can you take your book or something that you regularly teach or speak about and repurpose your content into a membership course? The membership course can be a critical element in what some people call your backend and position you in the market as more than a "One-Hit Wonder."

When you first thought about opening a membership site, you probably spent at least a little time crunching the numbers.

Example: You did calculations like this: If you have 200 members each paying you $50 a month, that’s $10,000 per month. Or if you open multiple membership sites, charge $27, and get 500 members, that’s $13,500 per month. Or maybe your goal was 1000 members across one or more sites each paying $19 per month, which puts $19,000 in your pocket.

Chances are, however, you stopped calculating when you figured out that final front-end figure. But here’s the thing: That “final” figure only tells half the story. If you’re only taking into consideration your front end profits, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

You see, some of the easiest money you’ll ever make is by selling more products and even more expensive products to your existing customers on the backend.

Consider this: If you put up a good sales letter for your membership site, you may convert anywhere from 2% to 5% of your visitors. So if 100 people walk through your virtual door, two to five of them will become members.

Now let’s say you have 100 members paying you $20 per month (that’s $2000 per month). These 100 members are going to be open to your other offers, meaning you’ll likely convert in the double digits. So perhaps you offer these 1000 members a $50 ebook – you may find 20% (20 members) taking advantage of the offer, which puts an extra $1000 in your pocket.

With just one offer you boosted your income by 50%, simply by selling a product to your existing customers! Now imagine if you did this with 500 customers… 1000 customers… or more. You can see the possibilities!

Now in order to tap into these backend profits, you need to offer something that complements but does not compete with your membership site. One of the best ways to do this is to recommend related products from within each lesson. That is, you tell your members where to get more information on a topic that you’re not covering in depth.

Examples:

• Let’s suppose your membership site teaches people how to create and market their own products. And let’s suppose you get to the topic of search engine marketing. You may go into depth on the topic of SEO, but refer your members to another product in order to learn more about PPC marketing.

• Your general “how to adopt a child” site might refer members to specific sites or products if they want to adopt children from specific countries, such as Guatemala or China.

• You might refer your dog obedience and training members to a “trick training” book (since you’re not covering that topic in the site).

• Your weight-loss site might refer people to an ebook that covers weight loss supplements, herbs and vitamins in depth.

Another way to make money on the backend is by recommending that your members buy a specific tool in order to complete a task.

Examples:

• During the lesson on SEO (search engine optimization), you may recommend that your readers purchase a WordTracker.com subscription.

• You’re teaching people how to do build and profit from a mailing list. You recommend Aweber.com.

• You’re teaching people how to repaint a classic muscle car. You recommend a specific store (using your affiliate link) where people can pick up the sanding and painting supplies.

• Your golf site might point people towards buying a specific set of clubs.

There’s a fortune that lays hidden in the backend of your membership site.

You can tap into this fortune by regularly making related, complimentary offers to your existing members!

I’ve written this article to show you the potential for the Simple Membership System. Get yours today and begin building your backend so you are not a one-hit wonder. Finally watch for my final article in this Content into Consistent Income Series where I explain how to create a family of sites.

You Can Set It and Forget It

Editor’s Note: This article is the third in the Content into Consistent Income Series. Here are the links to the first article (Use Your Content in a New Way) and second one (How to Keep Them Coming Back).

Quick, what is it about a running a membership site that makes you NOT want to run one? If you’re like most marketers, the idea of being chained to your computer week after week delivering content is a major downside.

When you first got online, you probably had dreams of living the “Internet lifestyle.” You couldn’t wait to get away from the daily grind and job responsibilities. And yet if you run a membership site, it can feel like a job. You can’t see yourself running off to play on some exotic beach when you need to upload content at least once a week or more.

One alternative is to outsource this task. That is, you hire someone else to upload the content every week when you’re not available. But outsourcing comes with it’s own problems – namely, you need to have 100% trust your freelancer to upload the content on time.

So if you haven’t yet developed a relationship with a freelancer, you probably won’t feel comfortable leaving your business (and your customers’ satisfaction) in a stranger’s hands.

Now before you toss aside the idea of ever having a vacation while running a membership site, let me give you two game-changing words: Autoresponder delivery.

You see, with a traditional membership site (like a Private Label Rights (PLR) site), all members get the exact same content. So the person who just joined today is going to get the same content this month as the person who’s been a member for a year. Next month, everyone gets the same content again.

Obviously, this doesn’t make sense if you’re running a training site. That is, you want everyone to start with lesson #1 and get the lessons in order. So the person who joins today gets lesson #1. Meanwhile, the longtime member may be getting lesson #50.

The solution? A true “set it and forget it” model, which you can achieve by delivering all the content using an autoresponder.

Here’s how it works…

1. You create content for your entire course. So if you have a yearlong course with weekly lessons, you’d create 52 lessons. If you have a three month course with weekly lessons, you’d create 12 lessons.

2. Load your course into your autoresponder. Next, you need to get an autoresponder through a service like Aweber.com or GetResponse.com. Simply load up your messages into your autoresponder. Set the first lesson to go out immediately after the customer joins the course. Set each subsequent message to go out on a weekly basis.

3. Create a sales letter. Now create your sales letter and insert your order button (from a payment processor that accepts recurring billing, such as PayPal).

4. Drive traffic to your site. Here you can use all the usual methods of driving traffic, such as affiliate and joint venture partners, content marketing, pay per click marketing, social media marketing and similar.

5. Play golf (or whatever). Now the members roll in and your autoresponder takes care of the rest, leaving you free to do what you want!

Just imagine: You could set up multiple autoresponder-based, fixed-term membership sites. Just set one up, drive traffic and move on to setting up the next one. Rinse and repeat until you’re making as much money as you want! You can learn the full story on how to establish your own membership site with the Simple Membership System.

In my next article in this Content into Consistent Income Series, I’m going to show you how to create a backend offer. Watch for it in a few days.

As you can tell, I believe there is huge potential for every reader through the Simple Membership System. It gives you the ability to set it up and forget it.

How to Keep Them Coming Back

In my first article in the Content into Consistent Income series, you’ll notice that I gave an example of a 12 week course. That was no accident.

You see, most people who think of “membership sites” think of content that’s delivered weekly or monthly… indefinitely. Members pay month after month and the owners deliver month after month.

This works fairly well if you’re running a PLR (Private Label Rights) membership site or something similar. Many of you will not even know what I’m talking about here so it’s not the type of site that writers and authors would create. The majority of you will want to create some sort of training site. Your members are going to drift away if you just give them tips and tricks indefinitely. And they might even bail out a couple months after joining, simply because there’s no end in sight.

So here’s what you do instead…

Create a fixed-term membership site. This is a site that runs for a specific period of time, such as three months, six months, twelve months… or any length of your choosing.

Tip: For best results, create a step-by-step series as described in Part 1 of this article.

Here’s why this works…

Imagine if your site went on indefinitely. Someone might join and after a couple months quit. That’s pretty normal. But if the course only stretches out for six months, psychologically the customers will feel better if they just remain a member for the entire six months. They want to see through to the end.

This is actually a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trick. Simply put, people don’t like unfinished business. That’s why they’ll even read books they don’t like or watch boring movies – once they’ve invested some time into the activity, they want to see it through to the end.

While just creating a fixed term site created this psychological commitment to your course, you can make the commitment even stronger by building anticipation for the upcoming lessons. That is, from the very first lesson you work on “selling” the other lessons. Like this:

• Build anticipation for the whole course in lesson #1. Your first lesson should include an overview of all the lessons. But don’t just write it out like a table of contents. Instead, write it like bullet points to a sales letter.

Example: “In Lesson #3 you’ll discover a simple trick that will triple your conversion rate!” In other words, arouse curiosity whenever possible.

• Build anticipation for the next lesson at the end of each lesson. At the end of each lesson you’ll want to include something like, “Stay tuned for next week’s lesson, where you’ll find out the secrets of creating cash-pulling headlines!”

• Build anticipation for future lessons and bonuses periodically. Finally, from time to time you should remind members of upcoming lessons. For example, in lesson #5 you might remind members of a particularly valuable lesson or bonus that you’re offering in lesson #9. Again, write it like a sales letter bullet, where you arouse curiosity and put forth a benefit.

The biggest challenge in running a membership site is retaining members.

With a typical membership site, your members may only stick around for two or three months. But you can quickly and easily ensure that more of your members stay around for six months, twelve months or even longer by creating a fixed-term membership site!

I’ve got complete information about how you can launch your own membership course in my Simple Membership System. Check it out today and think about how you can use your own content for such a system.

Finally watch for my next article in this Content into Consistent Income series, I’m going to show you how you can set up your membership site and forget it.

Use Your Content In a New Way

If you write on a regular basis (magazine articles, blog, or books), then you are constantly generating a steady stream of content. If you speak on a regular basis or teach on any subject, then you have a wealth of material.

This article is the first of several to give you some ideas how you can turn this material into a new source of consistent income. I’ve written in the past about repurposing your content but with your own membership site, you take remaking your content to a new level of potential. I’m suggesting you start your own membership site. In fact, I’ve developed a complete product to show you much more indepth than this short article. Here’s where you can learn about the Simple Membership System.

The first step is to select your niche and your topic.

Now think about this for a moment…

Your goal is to get members to happily pay you month after month for content. Obviously, that means you need to:

Over-deliver with quality content. You want your members to feel like they’re getting a steal for the price.

Give your members what they want. If you’re just starting your site, then look to the top-selling products in your niche to see what your target market is already paying for.

But here’s something else…

In order to get your members paying month after month, you need to be able to make them look forward to each upcoming lesson. And the best way to do that is by creating a membership site around a step-by-step process. That is, your lessons teach your members how to achieve a specific result.

You see, if you just provide tips and tricks for your members, there’s no sense of continuity. Your members don’t develop as strong of a psychological commitment to staying a member, because they won’t have a need to see the course through until the end.

Now imagine having numbered steps and lessons instead. When someone is receiving lesson 10 of a step-by-step process, they’ve made an investment of time and money into learning the process – so they are less likely to “bail” before they’ve received all the steps.

Let me give you a few examples of sites that teach a specific achievement or result using a step-by-step process:

• How to start an online business.
• How to write a sales letter.
• How to choose, train and raise a puppy.
• How to adopt a child.
• How to homeschool your child.

Now let me give you an example of what a 12-week online marketing course might look like:

Step 1: Choose a niche.
Step 2: Market research.
Step 3: Plan your sales funnel.
Step 4: Get a domain and hosting.
Step 5: Get an autoresponder.
Step 6: Write your autoresponder messages.
Step 7: Create a squeeze page.
Step 8: Product creation part 1 – research and outline.
Step 9: Product creation part 2 – create and polish.
Step 10: Create a sales letter.
Step 11: Drive traffic – free methods
Step 12: Drive traffic – paid methods.

Notice how each step builds on the previous step.

It starts with a member not even having an idea for a niche… and ends with the member driving traffic to a sales letter and making money.

In other words, if the member completes the steps as the course progresses, he or she should be able to enjoy a specific achievement or result by the end of the course.

Note: The above example is a 12-week course. Naturally, you could easily stretch this out to a year or more by creating more steps and more in-depth steps. You could go on indefinitely as long as you kept providing more advanced info as the course progressed.

One final tip…

To keep your customers happy, make sure that they are progressing and enjoying results right from the beginning.

Example: If you create a yearlong course, don’t stretch out the process for a year. Instead, give the step-by-step instructions your customers need to experience some type of results immediately (within a few weeks or month after joining) and then provide more in-depth instructions as the course progresses.

In short: Satisfy your customers’ needs for instant gratification while still providing the continuity that will keep them as a member. You’ll learn more about that in Part 2 of this series.

Create a GBHG for This Year

Do you have a Great Big Hairy Goal (GBHG) for the new year?

Whenever the calendar flips to a new year, it's an opportunity to change and make some dream of yours happen. Mark Victor Hansen often talks about the necessity of creating this GBHG. Write down your goal in a few words. Then paste it on the mirror in the bathroom or on the top of your desk or some place that you see it often.

When you see that goal what steps are you taking today to accomplish this GBHG?

One of my friends wants to publish her fiction. She has taken courses and attended writers conferences. Active in publishing, she regularly helps other writers improve their books through detailed work and critiques. From time to time, I ask this friend about her own writing and what is happening with it. Year after year, it never happens and yet I know she continues to hang on to this GBHG.

I love what my friend Bodie Thoene told me years ago about the work of writing her 600+ page manuscripts. “No little elves come out at night and type my pages,” she explained. Instead Bodie consistently writes pages and completes novels.

Maybe you've actually completed several novels or nonfiction manuscripts. It takes something else to get that material published. You have to craft an amazing pitch or book proposal. Yes, fiction authors need book proposals. You have seconds to grab the attention of the agent or editor.

If you've done the work to create this proposal or manuscript, it does absolutely no good to keep it in your computer or file drawer. You have to actively be looking for the right connection—the right editor or the right literary agent who will champion your cause and get your book into the marketplace. I'm keenly aware that it is hard work and takes consistent and regular effort.

Consistent effort is how you accomplish a GBHG. You have to take your larger goal and break it into smaller goals. Get it on your daily list of “things to do” so you move forward and accomplish your goal.

A year ago, I was speaking with a friend about how I had not accomplished one of my GBHGs. For a year, I took a course on how to create a membership course. I worked through the lessons in the course and created my game plan of what I would make and what it would look like. I even wrote the website for it. But it never happened. I was speaking with this friend about how I had never pulled it completely together to launch this project. It was in limbo where it resided only in my head and not in the public.

As I spoke to my friend, I was struck with how crazy I must have sounded. In that moment, I decided to take action and complete my course and launch it.

Taking action is not simple. It required hours of focused work yet last year I launched my Write A Book Proposal course and have had great feedback from the various students who have completed the course. The course is 12 lessons and over three months. I am continuing to market this course and encourage people to take it. I know it is helping writers around the world to have better proposals and pitches.

Last summer, I met one of my students who came to the writers' conference in Philadelphia. She came from Sydney, Australia! It opened my eyes that my online course has no geographic or time boundaries. Students can learn on their own pace and schedule anywhere in the world.

I've got my own GBHG for this year. I've written it down and I've broken the goal into smaller parts that I can easily accomplish—with consistent effort. I'm excited about the potential of my GBHG to help many people in the weeks ahead.

OK, now it's your turn. What have you been dreaming about in your heart to accomplish, yet for whatever reason not getting done? Pull out some paper or open a file on your computer and write down your GBHG. Then break it into smaller steps and create a plan for you to get it done in the weeks ahead.

We've started a new year. I believe you can get it done. I will be accomplishing my GBHG. How about you?