Joel Comm's Blog, page 31

How to Become a Published Author in 2016

As the author of 12 physically published books, I am a HUGE proponent of the power that comes from being published. I had the opportunity to spend an hour with David Hancock, founder of Morgan James Publishing. We discussed many issues related to the book industry and how a content creator can go about getting a book published and distributed in the coming year.

What A Realtor with a Snow Shovel Taught Me About Hustle

When I was growing up, The Hustle was a dance made famous by Van McCoy. Today, hustle means a different kind of moving, as it relates to building your business. It means you are willing to do whatever you need in order to break through your barriers and make things happen. I recently had a surprise encounter with an entrepreneur with hustle and had to share it with you. While much of the country is experiencing a winter heat wave, Mother Nature decided to unleash a snowstorm on Northern Colorado. Recognizing that 8 inches or more in my driveway meant that my Mustang wasn’t going anywhere that day, I turned on some holiday music and sat down at my computer to work. I thought it might be fun to share the falling snow with my followers, so I started a live video stream using the Facebook Mentions app. I placed my phone in my window facing the street and turned up the volume on Sinatra singing the Christmas classics. About 25 minutes into the broadcast, I decided to go out front and build a snowman for my viewers. However, when I stepped into the snow I realized it wasn’t sticky enough to build anything. I noticed a guy shoveling the sidewalk across the street and we waved to each other. He asked if I wanted my walk shoveled. I said I would love that, anticipating that I would pay for it. He told me he was a realtor in the Denver area and that since he couldn’t really show homes today, he was shoveling sidewalks for people just to meet people. He asked if he could shovel my walk for free, and in exchange he would leave his business cards with me, hoping that I might have a referral for someone needing to buy or sell a home in the area. Now THAT is what hustle looks like! I told him that I was blown away by his marketing prowess and I briefly interviewed him on the live stream. One of my viewers found his realtor website and found it wanting. So he sent him an email with an invitation to fix up his site at no cost. And THAT is what I call paying it forward! Talking to the realtor, Chris Smith of Keller Williams in Golden, I learned what hustle means to him. It means that when you can’t conduct activity that brings in revenue, you build relationships by finding a need and meeting it. Hustle means you do what others aren’t willing to do because you want what others don’t have. And hustle means you demonstrate you care by doing something nice for others without expecting anything in return. Chris Smith didn’t know he was going to encounter a social media author and speaker who happened to be live streaming to hundreds of Facebook followers when he asked if I wanted my sidewalk shoveled at no cost. A perfect example of what hustle looks like. Click here to see the live video stream where I encountered Chris and view the archived footage on my Facebook page. Around 24 minutes in, you can see me speaking with him as he is shoveling across the street. At 33 minutes I share the story of what had just happened. At 37:30 I brought him on camera to introduce him to my audience. And after that you can see him making good on his promise to clean up my sidewalk. What unique ways have you seen others hustle?

Top 5 Reasons to Hug Your Haters with Jay Baer – Episode #33

In episode #33 of the Top 5 Scope, I interview New York Times Best-Selling author Jay Baer. We discuss his new book and reveal how to deliver superior customer service. It’s the Top 5 Ways to Hug Your Haters!

Top 5 Christmas Movies – Episode #32

Prior to Christmas 2015, I was feeling quite festive. While looking through options for holiday films, I decided to select my favorites. In episode #32 of the Top 5 Scope I share my top five Christmas movies. What are YOUR favorites?

Top 5 Books You Need to Read Now – Episode #31

People send me books all the time. The fact is that I just don’t have enough time to read them all! But I’ve hand-picked five from my stack which I believe are must-reads. Episode #31 of The Top 5 Scope is the Top Five Books You Need to Read Now! Enjoy.

5 Steps to Accomplishing Your #1 Goal

Guest post by John Lee Dumas Accomplishing goals can sometimes seem like the most unattainable, frustrating thing on earth. We know exactly what we want, so why can’t we make it happen? It’s quite simple to set goals – even though most of us take the shortcut and don’t make them S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) – and perhaps that’s the first mistake we make. But to make matters worse, (and this is why accomplishing goals can sometimes seem so unattainable and frustrating), we follow up our first mistake with several more… a lot of humming and hawing around things like: Creating a plan to follow; Making sure we have checkpoints in place; Reviewing our progress along the way; and Holding ourselves accountable. After interviewing over 1,200 successful entrepreneurs, I’ve realized there is one thing every single one of them has in common: they know how to set and accomplish goals. So I set out to create a resource to help those who aren’t currently setting and accomplishing goals make it happen. It’s called The Freedom Journal, and it guides you to accomplishing your #1 goal in 100 days. Here’s how it works, in 5 steps. 1. Set your S.M.A.R.T. goal No more shortcuts. In order to accomplish your goal, you have to know exactly what it is you’re after. Setting a S.M.A.R.T. goal not only helps you get really clear on the ‘what’, it also helps you figure out what the ‘how’ is going entail. Specific: you know exactly what it is you’re after Measurable: you have a metric to help you track progress Attainable: you know that with a plan in place you can get there Relevant: it makes sense in relation to where you’re at Time-bound: you have a deadline 2. Create a plan Now that you have a S.M.A.R.T. goal, it’s time to put a plan in place to help you accomplish it. Let’s say you’re a veterinarian who is passionate about helping dog owners keep their dogs healthy, and your S.M.A.R.T. goal is to: Write a book on how to be a great dog walker (Specific & Relevant) that’s at least 100 pages long (Measurable) and that you’re going to publish on Amazon in 100 days (Attainable & Time-bound). Now in order to write a 100 page book in 100 days, it seems like you can just commit to writing 1 page a day, and then you’ll be good, right? Not quite. There are a lot of other smaller steps that need to take, and milestones you’ll need to accomplish, in order to actually get this book published. But because our goal is S.M.A.R.T., we know exactly what’s involved. So, next steps is to create a list of all the things we’ll need to know / have in place in order to accomplish our goal: Research other dog walking books to see what might be missing; Learn how to publish a book on Amazon; Hire a designer to help with the book cover; Create an outline of the book (intro, chapters, conclusion); Create a launch plan to help market the book; and so on… Now that you have all the steps written out, creating a plan involves putting them in a logical order, and setting a timeline for yourself for each step. An example: by day 10, I will have completed my book outline and found a designer. 3. Set checkpoints Now we have our S.M.A.R.T. goal and we have a plan in place; next up: we need to set checkpoints. Depending on your deadline, these checkpoints might be 10 days apart, or they might be 2 weeks apart. I like to use 10-day sprints as my checkpoints because 10 days is definitely enough time for me to complete a specific step, and it’s not so far in the future that I might lose sight of where I’m at. Each time I come up to a checkpoint, I’m going to look at my notes, confirm whether or not I’ve hit my micro-goal (just one step on my journey to accomplishing my BIG goal), and adjust my plan moving forward if needed. For example, if my goal on day 10 was to have completed my book outline and found a designer, and I’ve completed my book outline but I still haven’t found a designer, then I need to account for that time in my next 10-day sprint. 4. Review progress, reflect Checkpoints are also a great time to review your progress and reflect on the work you’ve done thus far. Three important questions to ask yourself during your review & reflect period are: Am I where I should be right now, progres-wise? What am I doing that’s working well? What am I doing that’s not working well? The first question is going to help you determine if you need to speed up your timeline in order to hit your deadline, or if you’re on pace. Example: not having found a designer by day 10 like you had planned means that you’ll need to account for that time during your next sprint. The second question will help you double down on the actions and steps you’re taking that are helping you make progress towards your big goal. The third question is going to help you determine where you need to pivot. If something isn’t working, then stop doing it and find a better way that is going to help you make progress towards reaching your big goal. No plan is perfect, and so it’s important to stop and review your progress and reflect on your actions to ensure you continue moving forward towards your big goal. 5. Accountability It’s the last step here, but it’s something that has to be happening every single day you’re working towards accomplishing your goal, starting on day 1. Lucky for us, accountability is built in to each step before it: Your S.M.A.R.T. goal is a constant reference point for you, making it easy to check back on exactly what you […]

How to Stop Failing

With capital raised, numbers crunched and launch date set, entrepreneurs can be absolutely certain of one thing. There is NO certainty! Indeed, following your dream to bring your product or service to the world is a risky venture. The annals of businessdom have many spectacular stories of great success. But there are far more stories of dreams that were broken on their way to market. Let’s face it. Entrepreneurship is a risky venture from the word “go.” But that’s because innovators and visionaries are willing to put their money, time and talents where their mouths are to show the world a better way. But sometimes something happens along the way. A competitor manages to squeeze you out. Favorite distributors raise prices or just go out of business. A bad hire finds you in legal hot water. Investors demand action, which actually damages the business. There are just so many ways to fail! But failure isn’t a necessarily a bad thing. After all, if Steve Jobs had not crashed and burned Apple back in the eighties, he would never have had an opportunity for the greatest second act in business history. The truth is that unless you are the perfect person and your team is made up of perfect people living in a perfect world, odds are you are going to experience some degree of failure. I’ve discovered some profound things about failure on my 25-year entrepreneurial journey. First, while many enjoy touting only successes and appearing as though they are flawless, I find it empowering to share my failures with others. I’d rather work with someone who has been in the trenches and discovered ways to NOT accomplish something. The mistakes I’ve made have become insightful learning experiences for me. And as a consultant, my failures often benefit my clients. Just as I don’t want my children to make the same mistakes as me (they can discover their own!), I don’t want to see others in business go down the wrong road. Second, all successes and failures are building blocks towards the next thing. If we see all our experiences, no matter how painful, as another step on our journey, every outcome becomes meaningful. Failure is not just red numbers on a profit and loss statement. An unsuccessful business venture is a fine-tuning process that can provide clarity for those willing to examine what went wrong. But perhaps the most important thing I’ve discovered came a few years back, as I shuttered the doors on a mobile marketing platform I had sunk six figures into out of my own pocket. After having attempted to market the platform as a B2B play, I then tried to raise capital. With no one tossing cash my way, I then sought to sell the business as a package. And when there were no nibbles, I attempted to salvage something by selling the code that had taken many months to make operational. All the while, I continued to pay for services needed to maintain the business. While there still may have been hope of turning things around, the business had become an albatross. I didn’t want to shut it down–it felt like I was giving up. But something interesting happened when I finally decided to pull the plug on the business. Instead of feeling as though I had failed, I experienced a wonderful release of a burden. Rather than see the financial losses I had sustained by closing the business, I instead felt relief that empowered me to immediately move on to the next thing. In other words, I felt like I stopped failing the moment I stopped paying for it. Please stop and read that again, because I believe it is truly the key that unlocked the ability to move forward with my next big idea. Failure doesn’t have to be the end of the road. It can be course correction or, even better, jet fuel to take you to the next level. Originally posted on Inc.com

3 Facebook Features that Need to Go Away Now

From its humble beginnings as a network for college students, Facebook has become the behemoth of the social media world. Feature-rich with posts, comments, likes, shares, photos, videos, groups, pages and events, it boasts approximately 1 billion users each day. In spite of being tagged in photos that we don’t appear in and tolerating some of our friends more inane posts, the majority of us still derive great value from our feeds, especially if we have gone to the trouble to curate them. Yet, there are some Facebook features that cause the most faithful of us to ask, “Why, in the name of bacon does this still exist?” Following are three Facebook features that, if they disappeared tomorrow, would have many of us bowing down before Mark Zuckerberg. 1) The Poke Far less prominent than it used to be, the Poke is a feature (if you can call it that) that has long worn out its welcome. Zuckerberg once stated in a webinar, “When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.” Perhaps it is my inner curmudgeon speaking, but to me it means, “I’m too lazy to send you a message, so I’ll just annoy you instead.” Seriously, if you want to say hello, just send me a message. Even an emoji or a sticker of Snoopy says more than a Poke. 2) Being added to a group without permission Facebook’s privacy control settings have a pretty steep learning curve. It can take a good long while to understand the ins and outs of who can see what, do what, tag whom or post where. Is it for everyone to consume, or should I make my posts available to friends, friends of friends or just me? Why is there not a setting for “only my animals can see this”? With all those controls in place, you still have no say in whether or not a friend can add you to a group. You can go to any group you want and with one click teleport your friends into the group with you. There is no asking for permission. It just happens. It seems like it would be simple for Facebook to add a “don’t add me to any groups without my permission” feature. They could just replace it with a “____ has invited you to be part of a group called ‘Left-handed spaniel lovers who are from New York but now live in Alabama.” At least then we’d have a choice. 3) Messenger asking to turn on notifications Don’t get me wrong. I love Messenger. It helps me stay connected and in touch with friends and family better than text messaging. But why the app INSIST that I turn on notifications every time I launch it? Whatever happened to “no means no!” Our current choices are “go to settings” or “remind me later,” which actually comes off like “comply now or we’ll keep bugging you until you do.” If I wanted notifications turned on, I would turn them. I don’t, so please leave me alone. I enjoy Facebook’s continual innovation as it seeks to reinforce its dominance as a one-stop solution for our social media needs. But if it could perform a little cleanup on aisle three it might discover a happier user base. Do you agree with me on these features? What other changes would you like to see made to Facebook? Originally posted on Inc.com

Top 5 iFart Media Mentions – Episode #30

It’s been 5 years since I last updated the iFart app. Now, with the launch of iFart Second Wind, I took the opportunity to share the Top 5 iFart Media Mentions in Episode #30 of The Top 5 Scope. Let the fun begin!

Top 5 Projects for 2016 – Episode #29

I’ve begun planning for 2016 and decided to share a little bit with my followers. Episode #29 features my top five projects for 2016.