Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 17

How Finding Your “Why” Can Improve Everything (and 3 main mistakes we commit in searching for our burning desire)

One picture is better than thousands of words, and one short and punchy video is better than 1,000 pictures. So watch this video of Michael Jr. where he not only explains, but demonstrates what a difference it makes having your “why.”

I hope now you are convinced about the importance of motivation that stands behind your actions. Unfortunately, theoretical knowledge is not enough. You must discover this burning desire of yours and actually use it to make a difference.

The three biggest mistakes I discovered in that regard are:

1. Ignorance.

People simply don’t look for their “why” because they have no idea how impactful that can be. They mistakenly think that life with “why” and without it is approximately the same.

They don’t have appropriate role models in their social surroundings to prove them wrong. If they see someone famous or successful that is very driven, they attribute this to success and fame, and they never, ever would’ve thought they could possess a similar driving force.

2. Low Self-Esteem.

Very often, people don’t look for their own “why” because they don’t believe they are capable of acting with such power.

“I’m not someone special.”

“I don’t know what really motivates me.”

“I’m too shy to act so boldly.”

In the end, all such excuses come down to “I’m not good enough,” which is a sure sign of a low self-esteem. Those folks simply don’t look for their “why” because they don’t believe in themselves or that they could be of any service. They are low creatures, so why even bother to look for their “why?” There cannot be something powerful enough to morph them from cocoons into butterflies!

However, low self-esteem is learned and reversible. No child is born with low self-esteem. And when you really must do something, suddenly your self-esteem stops being an obstacle. If your spouse or kid is mortally sick or wounded, you don’t sit and tell yourself that you are not good enough to help them. You take bold action and don’t even think about your self-worth in such situations!

In fact, low self-esteem is a deceit of your subconscious that keeps you in a dormant state. If you knock off every single chance of changing your life without even trying, do you know how simple you make the life of your subconscious? You spend your time in your semi-hibernation state, and you don’t exercise even an ounce of energy into improving your life or changing it.

And your brain is just fine with it. Changing one’s life is a tedious process, and very tiresome. Waking up early, working on your own projects on the side, staying up late, learning new skills, meeting new people or developing new habits – this is all so much energy! It’s much easier to say to yourself that you are not good enough and keep sitting on your hands.

3. Downplaying Your “Why.”

Yesterday, we grilled our mastermind partner on a call. He was hesitant about mingling his daughter’s story into his speeches. We all told him, unanimously, that he absolutely must do that. We’ve seen how he lit himself up whenever he talked about her, how passion crept into his voice, and how all his body posture had shifted.

His daughter was his “why” and, in the same matter the singer from Junior’s video sang much better with his why, in the same matter Jared better delivers his talks when he is animated by his daughter’s story.

But he came up with bizarre stories of why he shouldn’t do that! He said that people would not be interested. We said that it is to the contrary – using his daughter’s story sparks attention like nothing else.

He said it would not be relevant to the subject. And then he provided like a dozen examples of how he can weave her story into practically any topic he covers. We only rolled our eyes in exasperation.

Then we talked about how he presents his story when people ask him how he has gotten into what he is doing. It all started from his daughter having only a 60% chance of survival before she was even born, but he talks about how he has worked with millennials for the last decade, blah, blah, blah… Bo-ring!

On the other hand, telling a full story of his daughter attracts attention like a powerful magnet.

At that moment, I realized I repeat his mistake to the T. When I talk about my transformation, I start from reading “The Slight Edge“ and how I established my small habits and they made a difference… Bo-ring!

I should have talked about how miserable and frustrated I was with my life. How I couldn’t see a way out and had no goal, aim or sense of meaning in my life. This is where people are nodding in consent. Who among us was not living a life of quiet desperation at one time or another?

I don’t even want to dwell on reasons behind playing your “why” down (false modesty, low self-esteem again, thinking in terms of your ego instead of value provided to others…). The point is: DON’T do that. You are doing yourself and people you interact with a gross disservice.

When you are moved by a powerful “why,” you are at your best. You inspire others to take action and change their lives. When you try to provide the list of credentials, you only bore them to death. You don’t want to be a murderer, do you?

How Do You Find Your WHY?

In the question above lies the answer. You have to search for it. It won’t materialize itself in front of you. Experiencing a sudden enlightenment that will clarify everything in your life is possible, but unlikely, like winning the main prize in the lottery. It’s not wise to bet your whole life on it, is it?

Enlightenment-like “why” doesn’t need search. It’s obvious and, from what we can conclude from the stories of people inspired this way, it is so strong that it’s enough for the rest of one’s life. Once you find it, you need only to follow it.

Search and You Will Find

But for the overwhelming majority, finding a personal “why” is a matter of work. First, you should know yourself better. I encourage you to habitualize self-analysis. Meditation is a great start. It will make you more aware about your internal states and thinking patterns.

In my experience, the real game-changer is journaling. Every morning, I ask myself one question about my life and give myself about 10-15 minutes to answer it to the best of my abilities. This practice gave me the same level of self-awareness that meditation provides and, obviously, a lot of answers about myself.

I discovered my fears, reasons of procrastination, ways to be more effective, things I could do on a daily basis to improve my marriage or relations with my kids, my dreams and goals and what I could do on a daily basis to inch closer to them… and my “why.”

The first step of getting to know yourself is necessary. Your “why” must be intimately yours to fill what you do with power. If you don’t know yourself enough, you can succumb to someone else’s “why” that sounds popular, worthy or cool. This is a recipe for disaster. You won’t be at your best. Your enthusiasm will be forced, false. People will feel that. Deep down in your heart, you will feel that.

Narrowing down your “why” is an iterative process.

When I had been starting my transformation over 5 years ago, my life was dull. I had no authentic goals nor perspectives. I verily thought that my life would be looking the same for the next few decades, and this thought depressed me to no end. I needed something new and big. During a few weeks of intensive self-analysis I found, to my surprise, that I wanted to be a writer.

That was exciting. That was different. And it was a chance to change the direction of my life. I wanted to be a writer. This “why” pushed me through months of learning the craft and daily writing, through months when my books were selling only a hundred or couple hundred copies, through slow months that came after months of success, which was incredibly frustrating.

This “why” wasn’t dull or false. I experienced that my writing can have exactly the kind of impact I craved. I can affect people’s lives through space and time. Readers all over the world benefitted from my books and articles. Quite often, they found my piece months or years after I published it, and it made a huge impact on them.

However, just being a writer is no longer enough for me. Contrary to appearances, writing books is one of the lowest paid jobs in the world. I broke into the top #15,000 best-earning authors in the world, but it took me years of hard work that brought me to the brink of burnout more times that I care to count.

And I still earn less than $30,000 a year from my royalties. It’s a nice side income, but hardly something you could afford to support a family from. I spent my whole time writing, editing and chasing more marketing venues.

Now, I have a different “why,” and writing is the wrong vehicle to get there. I want to help people. I want to better the fate of the sick, tormented, hungry and poor. I don’t write romances or science fiction, so I would never be able to earn enough to fulfill this need of my heart via writing alone.

To find your “why” start looking for it inside your heart, not in the outside world. Habitualize self-knowledge. Be bold in your search. No one else will see your personal notes or come into your head and make fun of your lofty motivations. Do it for yourself.

Be prepared for change. Your “why” will grow as you grow.

The post How Finding Your “Why” Can Improve Everything (and 3 main mistakes we commit in searching for our burning desire) appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Forty Eighth Income Report – March 2017 ($1604.97)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

March 2017 was a good month. First of all, just at the end of February, the royalties from December (Kindle) / January (CreateSpace) came. Here is an entry from my journal to illustrate what it meant:

179% of my salary, a nice bonus. I smiled when I recalled my director telling me I should hustle more if I want to get a 10% salary raise.

In the middle of 2016, I had a conversation with my director about my eventual salary raise. She told me to hustle more because she couldn’t justify my raise with my current attitude at that time.

My attitude got much worse after the conversation

The Single Most Overused Sentence in Self-Help Books

(And what you can do to really use this sentence to your advantage).

Don’t get me wrong. Personal development books (by the way, I hate the term “self-help”) do work. In fact, I changed my life because such a book caused a shift in my perspective on success and life.

However, they don’t work very often. And this one overused sentence is a reason for that:

“Ask Yourself a Question…”

I don’t suggest you shouldn’t ask yourself questions, because the book should provide all the solutions for you on a golden plate. Yep, you should do the work. If you want someone else to do the heavy lifting for you, pay hundreds of bucks for coaching or thousands of bucks for consultations, not a few bucks for the “self-help” book.

In fact, purchasing and reading a book suggests that you prefer to work out your problems alone. No shame in that; many small issues in life are totally manageable on your own.

So, where does the damage come from? Why is this sentence overused to the point of abuse?

Expert’s Blind Spot

I write personal development books. I know plenty of other authors in that genre. We are not a common flock.

Most of us are self-made, and we are especially skillful in areas that most people really suck: mindset, self-analysis, motivation, willpower and managing our emotional states. Oh yes, at one point every personal development author was at the same starting position as his readers – confused at best, and a clueless mess at worst. But they painstakingly built themselves from the ground level (and some, like me, from the below-ground level) to the point where those skills are as natural to them as breathing.

But asking self-analysis questions is not natural for the majority of the population.

Even if a reader takes a break to actually do the exercises prescribed by an author (which only a very few do), the results of such exercises will rarely convert into any lasting effect. Overwhelmed by life, a reader will simply forgot about his insightful answers. They will fade away with time.

Authors are sadly ignorant about this fact, and they pack their books with exercise after exercise and a question after question. Eventually, they assume that their readers are an above-average bunch, and they possess the art of governing one’s mind effectively.

That’s why, most of the time, the biggest benefit of reading “self-help” books is that you are not indulging yourself with much more harmful activities, like watching TV or taking drugs. They occupy your time, and something useful (research says we retain about 4% of what we read one time) always will stick in your mind.

What Can You Do to Make this “Magic Sentence” Work for You?

Develop a habit of mindfulness. The exact method you’ll employ is of little importance. The crucial part is to make your mindfulness habitual. I call it “mindfulness” because it’s the most popular term, but what I mean is the state of mind that allows you to ask yourself questions. What is more, those are different questions than usual.

Your subconscious bombards you with questions all the time. And most of those questions are crap: “Why does it always happen to me?” or “Why am I a failure?”

They aren’t tools for gathering information, but rather clubs used to beat you down.

Developing your new habit, you should follow the framework: design it consciously, do it every day, identify yourself with a habit (“I am a person who…”), track it, build a streak (do it every day and maintain a visual reminder of how long your streak is). If necessary, start very small, so doing your new habit every day should not be a problem. Consistency of your routine is more important than initial results.

Here comes several specific activities to build such mindfulness habits:

1. Journaling.

This is, by far, my favorite method. 6 days a week, I ask myself an insightful question and answer it on paper. On the 7th day, I read and review my entries. I dedicate 10-15 minutes in my morning for this. I’ve been doing it since 26th of May, 2013. That’s a lot of repetitions and a lot of questions answered.

Not only did I get over a thousand answers, I also developed a mindfulness habit. I don’t go lightly over new questions in my life. This practice hammered into me a deep work kind of approach to answering personal development questions. I don’t brush them aside. In fact, when I get an interesting question, I note it down in my journal and answer in one of my morning sessions.

2. Meditation.

Meditation is very easy to start in small doses (2 minutes or less). You don’t need any accessories for it, and you can do it practically everywhere and in any moment.

It gives you a picture of your mental world like no other activity. Apart from journaling, of course

Forty Seventh Income Report – February 2017 ($2501.38)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

February 2017 was slow and uneventful. I kept writing the usual mishmash – Quora answers, blog posts, email broadcasts to my ever-growing list; articles and guest posts when I got inspiration to write them, and my novel written on Sundays for the sake of keeping a writing streak intact. One thing I focused more on were my income reports. I decided to catch up with them and close the time gap between their publication and the events they described.



In the end, I want to keep about a 3-month delay to keep things fresh, but reliable at the same time. In self-publishing, the cost side is easy to figure out; costs are immediate.

The income side is trickier. Money from your Kindle sales can arrive up to three months after the sale took place. The same is true with other streams of income. For example, there is an inevitable delay between an affiliate sale and commission.
Taxes

In 2016, I hired an accounting firm to help me report my royalties income to the tax office. They did an OK job, but they charged me an arm and leg for that. By “OK,” I mean they prepared methodology and an Excel sheet that summarized it for all 12 or so countries I had theoretically got royalties from. “Theoretically,” because in the end, I got all the money from Amazon.

Anyway, they not only made several calculation errors, but they also made a mistake in some tax regulations. A few months later, my tax office guided me on how to fix them.

So this year, I outsourced the job of calculating my taxes to my son. At the beginning of February, we went through his report. He made fewer mistakes than the accounting firm.

Lessons:

1. When you have the right processes, even a kid can do the job.

I don’t regret hiring the accounting firm in the previous year because they provided me with that Excel sheet that served as a baseline for my son.

2. Tax regulations are purposefully complicated.

Small business owners fear tax authorities like a plague, so they go to lawyers and accountants for help. The complexity of regulations serves only those service providers. They can charge premium price for their “magic formulas.” But even they don’t know all the ins and outs, so outsourcing doesn’t make you safer, but leaves you poorer.

You need to take responsibility for your taxes, because no one else will.

3. Set aside money for your taxes.

I’m so glad I did just that. Till 2017, every year I got a hefty tax return because of relatively low income and family tax preferences. This year was the first time I had to pay the back tax. However, in 2016, I was willfully setting aside some percentage of my royalties exactly for this purpose. It was no problem for me.

Backend

I’m a one-man army. I have no backend for my business. No leads, funnels, system and processes. It takes time to build them up, and I had enough in my lap to be fully scheduled.

But.

I was corresponding via email with one of my readers. He asked me if I provide personal consultations. I could, why not? I called him one Saturday morning, and we chatted for about an hour. I told him about Coach.me’s accountability coaching, and he was eager to jump in. I also explained to him my philosophy of Pay What It’s Worth, and he agreed on that as well.

The consultation and the first couple of weeks of PWIW coaching provided me with $375. Now, half a year later this client is still with me, and he has made some impressive progress.

I sell hundreds of copies of my books a month. I need to put info about consultations and coaching in the back matter, I think. :/

Moving my blog

In the first week of February 2017, I was busy establishing my blog on a new server. I had to park my domains there, configure email accounts, install WordPress, and all that technical stuff.

I can say only good things about Bluehost’s support. Their interface was clear and relatively simple, and the one time I couldn’t figure out the problem, they were very responsive and solved the problem during a single call.

Coaching and Amazon Ads

Apart from getting my first PWIW client, the certification on Coach.me brought an additional trickle of new clients. My income reflected that; my coaching fees grew by 15% month to month.

I created only three new AMS ads, including one for my speed reading book that used keywords from already-running campaigns from other books. I spent only a few hours researching keywords for those campaigns.

Side Projects

I continued dabbling with small neglected activities destroyed by procrastination.

I finally included reviews of my readers on my permafree books’ pages in “Editorial Reviews” sections. I contacted my friend who designed Directed by Purpose‘s cover, and we worked slowly on a new version of Making Business Connections… cover. Its sales tanked a bit, and I hoped to put some new life into the book.

A Record Month

Income-wise, it was my best month ever. A few things contributed to this: the PWIW coaching client, Kindle royalties from December that was a very good sales month, and paperback royalties from January when the pricing trick still worked. Besides, January 2017 was even better sales-wise than December 2016.

My Kindle results were especially impressive. They jumped from $500 to $1,500 between November and December. I attribute it in great part to the fact that I pulled out my books from KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited program. It appears that most people who borrow “para-free” nonfiction books via Kindle Unlimited don’t read those books. Thus, compensation for the pages read (KENPs) was nowhere near the compensations Amazon gave for borrows in the past.

After I added several AMS ads campaigns in November and pulled out my books from Amazon’s programs, my sales doubled overnight. It didn’t hurt that I could put three more books on ads because Amazon revoked the requirement that all advertised books must be in KDP Select program. Those books were dead, and my ads put new life into them. They were responsible for 30% of my increased December Kindle revenue.



I know you are eager to get to the actual numbers. Here they are:

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €1413.6 ($1498.41)

CreateSpace royalties: €2508.12 ($2658.61)

Coach.me fees: $194.46

Draft2Digital royalties: $23.89

Audiobooks royalties: $11.53

PWIW personal coaching: $375

Total: $4761.9

Costs:

$36.9, View From the Top Community fee

$29, Aweber fee

$265, Business on Purpose mastermind

$333.3, royalties split with co-author

$1052.87, Amazon ads

$160, RA’s (RA = Real Assistant; my son

Forty Sixth Income Report – January 2017 ($2672.37)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

I dedicated the beginning of January 2017 to summarizing my goals from the previous year and setting goals for the new year.

They were quite similar to my goals from previous years. However, this time my family and prayer took first place.

Writing

I wrote a few blog posts, including the two about goals. I kept writing Quora answers and broadcasts to my email list.



So nothing groundbreaking. But I got one surprise: when at the end of the month I summed up my word count, I discovered that I beat my previous writing record by exactly 1 word! I wrote 35,212 words in January 2017.

Networking and Coaching

My friend and host of an amazing podcast, Engel Jones, tried to start a community around the idea of regularly conversing with different people. I helped him with that a bit. In the end the project failed, but I made several conversations with interesting people from all over the world.



I got again one or two new coaching clients. I finally obtained Coach.me digital certification. My coaching profile was finished to a T.

Various Things

I consciously decided to focus on my family and step back even further away from publishing.

I finally had time to tackle a few minor projects.

I updated a landing page of my main email list. I finally included information, that I’m sending weekly updates to my subscribers.

I cleaned my inbox and kept it that way for most of January 2017.

I inquired of my friend who designed a cover of Directed by Purpose if he would be interested in creating a new cover for Making Business Connections…

I opened an account on NoiseTrade, another platform for sharing my free works in exchange for email address.

Blog Hacked

My blog got hacked. I painstakingly cleaned the blog file by file. Then I changed passwords and updated all my security measures.

All to no avail.

My blog had been attacked again.

This kind of attack was possible only in two cases: someone knew my credentials or my hosting provider was hopeless in maintaining security.

I started working with them again on restoring my blog, but in parallel, I bought hosting from Bluehost and started the procedure of migrating my websites to their servers.

By the way, I warn everybody against iPage hosting. They are either criminals who hack your blog to blackmail you into buying additional services, or they are criminally stupid and leave their servers wide open for hackers.

Royalties

I earned loads of money in December.

I earned even more in January. I sold over 1,000 Kindle copies with no promo whatsoever.



The amounts I earned were starting to affect my wife’s mindset.

We created a code. Every time my royalties crossed $100 a day, I was reporting “boredom” – it was so predictable that it was boring. She even declared that if I kept earning such sums from my side hustle, she would reconsider quitting her full-time job (which she simply hated).

That was a big shift in her thinking. I was positively surprised.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €464.25 ($496.74)

CreateSpace royalties: €3421.66 ($3661.18)

Coach.me fees: $168.61

Draft2Digital royalties: $10.42

Affiliate income: $98.5

Total: $4435.45

Costs:

$36.9, View From the Top Community fee

$58, Aweber fee

$20, InstaFreebie fee

$265, Business on Purpose mastermind

$253.51, royalties split with co-author

$998.82, Amazon ads

$81.5, RA’s (RA = Real Assistant; my son

4 Simple & Effective Ways to Conquer Your Fears

Fear seems to be a constant companion for every human being. We quickly learn to fear physical pain and almost as quickly, we start to be afraid of social pain: loneliness, ostracism or banishment.

However, 95% of our fears are not sensible. We fear them for the sake of being afraid. They serve no real purpose other than occupying our minds.

You can call the small fears worries, but it doesn’t change the mechanism. You still dwell on something that will never happen, and it robs you of your current moment. You could’ve enjoyed this moment or utilized it to create a better future for you.

Instead, you fret, worry and fear.

The Eerie Characteristic of Mind

When it comes to what can go wrong, human imagination is inexhaustible. You can fret over trivia – why your spouse looked at you with anger in the morning, or if you paid that due bill for electricity. And you can imagine the wildest scenarios, murder and mayhem, bankruptcy and starvation, all with the same serious attitude.

But when it comes to imagining positive scenarios, we are hopeless. Many people can imagine fairytales when they think about abundance: fancy summer houses, trips to exotic countries, expensive cars, wild sex, drugs & rock ‘n roll. However, all of those stories have a taste of something unattainable, something straight from a Hollywood movie that cannot really materialize in our lives.

Imagining small daily successes that will improve your daily life? It doesn’t come as naturally as vivid scenarios of even the smallest fears coming true.

So, how to avoid this default option?

1. Name Your Fears.

Admit what scares you. Make an inventory of all your fears, or simply focus on those recurring on a daily basis. Those are the funniest, by the way. If you worry about losing your work every day, but you’ve kept it for the last couple of years, doesn’t it strike you as an oddity?

The truth will set you free. Say aloud what scares you. Don’t allow it to lurk only in your subconscious mind.

2. Think Them Over.

Thinking is your best option. If you don’t take a rational action, if you don’t examine your fears, take precautions or dismiss them as unrealistic, they will bounce randomly inside your skull. When you analyze your fears, you realize how irrational most of them are.

Quite often a worst-case scenario is coming back to your mind again and again. But when you name it and actually think about the slim chances it has to become true, you stop worrying about this nonsense.

3. Write Them Down.

Keeping your fears in your head, even when trying to consciously think them over, is a losing proposition. You are on the territory of your enemy there, and you need to proceed with triple caution. Your subconscious mind can get quiet after one lost battle with reasoning, but it will keep hammering you back with its fears and repeat silly arguments about the end of your world.

Take the battle where your opponent is the weakest. Write down your fears and arguments, why you really shouldn’t have been worried about 99% of them. Write down the arguments of your subconscious mind as well. When they land on paper, they look like what they are – silly ruminations of a primitive creature. They almost never have anything to do with reason. They are a pure game of raw emotions.

Once you capture your subconscious incoherent blather on paper, its attack in your mind will be much less vicious. When anxiety appears, you will be able to state, “Oh, this is that nonsense again, I’ve already discussed that with you; there is nothing to worry about.”

4. Face Them.

Often, we fear so many abstract things that it’s downright impossible to face your fears. Those are meant to be written down and dismissed. Right now, I’m fearful of going from full-time to half-time in my day job and increasing my commitment into my business. You know, the usual stuff: failure, poverty, and my wife will dump me. Maybe I’ll even start to console my nerves with alcohol and degrade into a tramp.

I have nothing to act against this fear. First, I need to transition from full-time to half-time, which is still a couple of months ahead of me. Then, I need to fail and use up all of my funds that are dedicated for the transition period. Only after a year or so, those fears may come true. That’s why reasoning, clarity and a written action plan is a much better solution to deal with this kind of elusive terror.

However, many times it’s in your power to face your fears, but you are paralyzed. You act with timidity. You avoid actions that may confront you with your fears. Your life is controlled by fear, not by you.

In that case, you should muster some courage and face them.

A Story of Dealing with Fear

My mentor told a story of a guy who was terrorized by his mother-in-law for 16 years. His mastermind convinced him that he should face her and set some boundaries. He sat down with her and explained to her that her messing with his family is affecting them very negatively. He politely and diplomatically told her to back off.

And she backed off. Her respect to that guy grew immensely. My mentor reported the guy’s disbelief at how much better his life is nowadays and his regret that he hasn’t spoken up earlier.

Dismantling Your Fear

Consider this: your fears, almost always, are not real. When you face them, you rob them of all the power. Your chicken mind realizes that the end of the world hasn’t happened. It starts to probe other possibilities, positive scenarios that can improve your life, avenues that lead to action, not paralysis. And only action can bring you results.

 

You don’t need to be a hero and face your fears heads on, like the guy my mentor told me about. This is by far the most effective method, but I fully grasp that when you were immobilized by fear for a long time, it’s hard to change yourself.

You can dismantle your fears bit by bit. You can get used to overcoming them slowly and gradually.

My Story

Once upon a time, I was fearful of one-on-one interactions with strangers. I was terrified, especially when it came to interactions with attractive women. I had butterflies in my stomach, I sweated like a pig, my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t utter a word. Approaching a woman released such a strong emotional response in my body that I literally felt sick!

After many unsuccessful attempts of striking a conversation with a stranger, I decided to scale my actions way down. First, I started to notice and observe people around me. Then, I used my imagination to converse with people in my mind. Next, I started to make eye contact. After making eye contact, I started to smile at them. Within several weeks, I was able to tell strangers “Hi” or give them some minor compliment. In several months, I overcame my shyness completely.

The Greatest Grievance

The worst thing your fears do to you is not the emotional mess you become, however huge this mess can be. It wasn’t sweating, shaking and heart pounding I experienced that created the greatest disservice.

It was inaction.

Fear paralyses you into doing nothing. When you do nothing, nothing can change. You stay stuck in the exact same situation indefinitely.

Your fears rob you of action, the only means that can bring you change, improvement and progress.

It is the main reason why we don’t progress as fast as we could. Passivity is a surefire path to failure. You attempt nothing, so you don’t get anything.

However, when you take action, everything can happen.

I made a couple of new friendships thanks to my encounters with strangers. I became more self-confident to the point that I was completely relaxed on a job interview and got a much better job (the one I’m walking away from now).

Deal with your fears. Disperse them, ridicule them or face them. Stop letting them prevent you from taking action. That is your only way to a better life.

The post 4 Simple & Effective Ways to Conquer Your Fears appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

The Slight Edge Report Year Five

This is my yearly The Slight Edge report. I post such a report every year on the anniversary of reading this awesome book.

The last year of my life was wild. I’ve had a lot of progress as well as a lot of struggle. But it’s a struggle that make us stronger.

Relationships

The leader of my mastermind has a saying: “It’s NOT just a business.”

I’ll start this year’s report with relationships, because it was what affected this year the most.



I went through the darkest moment in my marriage. “Moment,” ha! These were long, excruciating months when I felt my marriage was falling apart and I could do nothing about that. It was killing me. I had been depressed in my life before, but this was something even worse.

Let me explain. But first, a word of warning. This story is raw and not for the faint of heart. In the spirit of transparency, I will share and clarify this a bit more because I know there may be others out there going through something similar.

 

For years, my wife struggled with my pivot into a writing career. It built up a tension between us. She was extremely hesitant to support this, and I was trying to prove she was wrong.

For years, we lived in something like a delicate balance. Then my books finally took off, and my wife’s stance toward my side business noticeably softened.

However, I had hoped for something else. I had hoped for her support; harmony at home, so I could focus on writing and make our dreams come true.

I was very frustrated a year ago. My book sales dwindled to levels not seen in years. I sold fewer copies in July and August than I sold in January 2014, when I had only 4 books published.

I was also overburdened and emotionally burned out. The entrepreneur rollercoaster was brutal for me.

My volatile Amazon author rank in the first 4 years.

I still had my old life to manage: a day job, marriage, three kids and my church community.

To regain my senses, I decided to stop publishing any more books. More out of desperation than anything else, I started playing with Amazon ads. They helped more than a bit. I stabilized my Kindle sales in September, and they remained stable till December. What is more, my paperback sales suddenly skyrocketed because of ads.

I had felt an ounce of relief. I stopped subsidizing my business from my salary and started earning a side income again.

I had hoped for some appreciation from my wife but, on that front, nothing had changed. Well, it got even worse. My wife was overwhelmed with her life as well. Her day job was quite demanding physically; enough to say that she regularly worked 12-hour shifts and night shifts 2-4 times a week.

It all cumulated in an ugly scene, and I realized that we were not on the same page. It looked like we never would be. It was more than four years since my personal transformation. I did all in my power to convince her that this is the best course of action for our family, and she still didn’t approve nor support me.

I was crushed. I felt totally helpless. I saw no way out.

I remember a Monday night in December when I was spilling my heart in front of my mastermind. I did that on their insistence. I didn’t feel it would help an ounce. However, I was unable to talk about my business when my life was falling apart, so I told them about the situation and my feelings.

I really had been trying hard to be a good husband for years, but it all seemed to be in vain. The mastermind call didn’t help much.

 

When I look back, I don’t comprehend how I survived from December to April or how I stayed sane. I attribute this to the power of my habits and God’s grace.

My heart was broken, but I went through the motions every day. I went to my day job, I attended household chores, I interacted with my kids, wife and friends, I wrote. I lived my life despite the fact I saw no sense in it.

 

At the end of December, I reconsidered my goals and decided to focus on prayer and family in 2017. I cut out even more of my business activities. I stopped proofreading my Quora content altogether. I outsourced keyword research for Amazon ads to my sons. I depended on my eldest to do many repetitive tasks and smaller projects.

By the way, the tough situation in our marriage didn’t evade my kids’ attention. One of the immediate positive outputs was that I got closer to my boys and received some support from them.

Another important action I took was sharing my royalties income with my wife. I had been telling her for months, if not years, that she should let me quit my job or she could quit her job. She objected because she didn’t feel we had the financial stability for this.

In January, I received almost two of my salaries from royalties. Half of it went into my wife’s pet project fund – the renovation of our home. Since January, I was at least matching her day job salary out of royalties and telling her that was her money, and she could do with it whatever she wanted.

Focusing more on prayer didn’t hurt as well. It was my relationship with God that took me through difficulties in the relationship with my wife.

In April, we got the first signs of a thaw in our strained marriage. My wife started hinting that she just might be interested in quitting her day job. Our relationship improved. I no longer felt as if each next breath was an unbearable effort. In May, peace returned to my heart.

At the beginning of June, my wife decided to quit her job and she gave her notice in the middle of the month. She even noticed how burdened I was and declared that she will help me in my business. That is yet to be seen, because her company doesn’t want to let her go before the end of September. Well, she has plenty of overdo furlough, so she won’t be working much; but at any rate, I don’t want to pressure her. I’m happy she will be free from the day job shackles and at home for our kids.

In July, we exported the kids to Ireland to my mother. I took some free days and we visited friends and family. We also spent a week charging our batteries in a resort in Bulgaria.

Business Relationships

The first Slight Edge principle is “show up.” I’ve been experiencing many times its power in the past.

That way I noticed and got interested in Amazon ads in the first place. Since 2013, I’ve been active in a Facebook group for authors started by Pat Flynn. I met Derek Doepker there. If not for this, I would have happily ignored the matter of Amazon ads when seeing his book among other books advertised on my book’s page. But I knew him and exchanged more than one message with Derek in the past, so I asked him about his results. He was very enthusiastic about ads. He shared with me his beta version of his KD Sales Machine course.

I hate learning from videos more than I can describe, but I went through the course out of respect to his gesture.

And it appeared to be the most impactful decision in my author career.

 

Because I was active in that FB authors group and my books were in sales for the last few years, I was contacted by Raza Imam, and he invited me to participate in a big giveaway. I took part in it, and I got over 1,000 new subscribers. That was the single most impressive growth of my email list from its very beginning.

In the same fashion, I was invited to become an affiliate in Chris Naish and Matt Stone’s “Internet Business Insights” launch. I wrote a post that will direct readers to a sign-up on their landing page and got $100 for it. During the launch, I sent over 70 new subscribers to that page and already earned some commission from affiliate sales.

In the last year, I gave a few podcast interviews, and each time it was the initiative of the hosts who knew me via my books or my activity on Facebook.

In July, I had a promo of my three books and my mentor, Steve Scott, was polite enough to inform his list about the promo. I got 713 sales as a result.

Health

I got sick in December 2016. Considering my pitiful emotional state, I’m amazed I was functioning at all. I had a fever for a few days. That was my first sickness and first sick leave since July 2013.

Since the last report, I beat another dozen or so personal fitness records.

I made my health automatic, and I didn’t even realize to what degree. Quite recently, a coaching client asked me about my fitness routine. Going through it, I discovered that some habits that I installed 3-4 years ago are still working without my conscious supervision.

I avoid elevators, run through any stairs I encounter, including 17 steps at my home that I use many times a day.

I track my sleep since July 2013, and it provides me enough awareness to avoid sleep deprivation.

I read food labels instinctively. I was visiting my mother in Ireland in June. I was hungry, opened the fridge and found bread. I read its label, and my hunger evaporated. It read like an insane chemical experiment, not a food.

I’m an amazingly healthy and fit specimen, but only because I implemented a ‘maintenance mode’ into my health.

Career

My career as an author, with the help of my Amazon ads work, has overtaken my day job career.

And rightfully so. As an author, coach and book business consultant, I matched or exceeded my salary for the last several months.

In June, I offered my services as Amazon ads’ administrator to an author whose book I read and valued. When I took it on 8th of June, it had #841,000 rank in the Kindle store. We sold 144 copies in the rest of June, and I received my first commission at the beginning of July. In July, we sold over 200 copies.

I learned how to resurrect books. I am the first person I’ve heard of that can make that process repeatable. It doesn’t work with all of the books, but it works with most of them.

Now, I also took a friend’s book that was barely making back the cost of ads. However, the ads still provide some results for him.

I have also several more authors in the pipeline.

I struck a deal with Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur. This relationship is the result of “show up” networking too. Dave will send graduates of his online course about Amazon ads to me telling them I am the guy who can run advertising campaigns for them on autopilot.

This is my new career, and it’s naturally growing. I know more about book marketing than most marketing specialists in big publishing houses only because my books’ survival depended on this knowledge. My interactions with fellow authors, listening to dozens of self-publishing podcast episodes, and reading through hundreds of blog posts is like an unofficial master’s degree.

Business

My business exploded in more than one area since the last Slight Edge report.

Amazon Ads and Book Sales

In the last year, I reported 6,000 Kindle sales and 228 paperback sales. Between August 2016 and August 2017, I sold 8,500 and 2,500, respectively. Readers bought my books worth at least $26,000 via my Amazon ads.

Right now, I run over 500 ad campaigns for my 11 books and a few dozen campaigns for other authors.

 

At the beginning of June 2016, I bought Dave Chesson’s keyword research tool called the KDP Rocket. It was a game changer. Keyword research was the most work-intensive part of setting up my advertising campaigns. KDP Rocket has changed that. After only a couple of months, campaigns created with Rocket’s help consist of well over half of my campaigns.

Thanks to those new campaigns, I was able to estimate how much my work on new campaigns is worth. The conservative assumption says it’s $100 per hour in the first 10 months.

My first reaction was: What the hell am I still doing in my day job, where they pay me about 10 times less? My second was: Why the heck am I not doing those campaigns 100 hours a week? I intend to dedicate at least 10 hours a week to this activity for the next few months.

I remember when I was listening to Internet Business Mastery podcast, and Jason Van Orden was sharing how he felt after selling his first product online – he was, like, “Wow, I can print money on demand!” For the first time in my business, a similar feeling hit me. I found a money machine. All I need to do now is to input my effort, energy, time and a bit of money (for ads), and the output is guaranteed: more money.

The stability of sales and income I got from running ads is something I’ve never experienced before. For the first three years, a 4-figure month was a rare occurrence and an occasion to celebrate. Since December 2016, every single month was 4-figure for me. Since the last report, I invested over $1,000 in audiobook production, only because I had spare funds at last!

Stabilization of income was crucial in my wife’s decision to quit her day job.

Saying that Amazon ads were a game-changer for me would be a gross understatement.

Mr. Expert

A few months, a few hundred campaigns, and I became an expert in advertising on Amazon. Oh, of course, I’m not nearly as good as Derek Doepker who catapulted his Healthy Habits Revolution into the top #100 in the whole Kindle store – and keeps it there.

But I gained another skill, very useful for most self-publishers who are busy people with a day job: I can create and have several campaigns up and running within an hour, and they will provide some results.

My campaigns aren’t insanely profitable, nor do they get plenty of clicks. But they can keep my books alive. By the way, in my 4-year author career, Amazon ads are the only resource I’ve found that can resurrect books. Any other method I tried (and I tried many of them!) could provide only a temporary boost in sales, if that.

When your book is dead, a few dozen sales a month makes a huge difference. It can rescue you from the horrible oblivion abyss.

As I indicated, I’m now taking other authors’ books and advertising them. Some are getting impressive results.

It looks like Amazon ads not only rescued my books, but they can become a valid business venture for me.

Coaching

Since October, a steady trickle of new clients materialized. They were finding me via Coach.me. It motivated me to finish the certification on Coach.me I started at the end of August 2016. Around January, I finally set my profile and messages according to guidelines and approached the exam once again. In the first half of January, I got the certificate. At the beginning of May, I was featured in Coach.me’s newsletter. Generally, since obtaining the certification, I have always had about 12 clients; about 20 in a peak after the newsletter.

Right now, I have 12 coaching clients, and this is the least I’ve had in months because I focused on my Amazon ad business.

 

One of my readers of “Bulletproof Health and Fitness” contacted me around January. We exchanged a few emails, and he asked me for a consultation. We had a great chat and, when I explained the nuts and bolts of coaching on Coach.me, he jumped on the bandwagon. I also offered him an additional deal – Pay What It’s Worth coaching. I gave him access to me via the audio messaging service called Voxer.

This is how my new coaching service started. I had a few conversations with other clients about this kind of coaching and a few more of them were interested, but so far only my first client is utilizing this opportunity to the fullest.

Email List

My email list grew by more than 100% in the last year. It was mainly the result of discovering the platform for organizing giveaways called InstaFreebie.

I have a few permanent giveaways set up, but they don’t provide many results – maybe 20 subscribers a month.

What really makes the difference on InstaFreebie is being featured on their blog. Unfortunately, it’s hard to engineer (read: it is hard work), so I don’t engineer it. I wait for a lucky shot. My books were picked by the InstaFreebie team twice in the last year. “Making Business Connections that Count” was featured in September, and “Learn to Read with Great Speed” in July. Each time, I got a few hundred new subscribers.

I was invited by Raza Imam to participate in a huge giveaway at the end of April. I included “The Art of Persistence” and hosted the event on InstaFreebie. It was a huge success. I got several hundred new subscribers and, a week after the giveaway, InstaFreebie featured the book once again on their blog. Thanks to this giveaway, I got over 1,000 subscribers.

I also organized a giveaway on the NoiseTrade platform for “A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road to Happiness.” It was definitely less of a hit. I had to pay for a feature and got about 150 subscribers from that source.

Thanks to increased traffic to my blog from Quora and Medium, it made sense at last to install sign-up forms on my most visited pages. I converted my main page from blog to a static page with my Expand Beyond Yourself manifesto. I guesstimate the number of new subscribers coming via my blog exceeded the number of subscribers I got via my Kindle books.

Many Streams of Income

After a few years of my online hustle, it finally became real.

Almost every month, I get money from several sources: my Kindle sales, my eBook sales from Draft2Digital, paperback sales from CreateSpace, audiobook sales, coaching and affiliate sales.

Most of those sources are connected somehow with my books (different formats, translations, etc.), but others are only loosely connected (coaching, affiliate sales, or my share in advertised books of other authors).

Kindle and CreateSpace sales make each about 30-40% of my side hustle income, but the share from other sources has been steadily climbing in the last few months.

 

Last year, I had been fussing a lot over the fact that I needed to draw from my salary to pay my business bills. Nowadays, coaching practice alone pays for my mastermind and various services I use on a monthly basis.

Income Side of Things

My personal income grew by 31%, mostly because of increased book sales, but those additional income streams had something to do with this as well.

Since the last report, I sold over 8,500 copies of my eBooks. They provided something like $11,000 of gross income.

My paperback sales exploded thanks to Amazon ads. I sold 2,500 copies, which was 10x growth compared to the previous year.



Income from that source was about $13,500, mostly because of a pricing trick I used around a hot book selling period at the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017.

But even without the trick, my revenue from print sales more or less matches the revenue from digital sales. I earn about 200% more on a print copy than on a digital one.

Costs

Unfortunately, my costs increased as well. Every month I have about $450 of fixed business costs plus another several hundred for Amazon ads.

I also invested about $2,000 into my books: new covers, paperback versions, audio version for three of my books, translation of “A Personal Mission Statement” into Spanish, and so on.

However, those investments were meant to provide income in the future. Paperbacks are the best example. Without a print version I, obviously, couldn’t have sold them. It took me about $50-$100 to publish each paperback for my Six Simple Steps to Success volumes. None of them is a blockbuster, but each of them made that investment back several times and will continue to do so for a long time.

I finally published a print version of “99 Perseverance Success Stories” in July 2016. This title did really well for a few months and made me over $1,200. (And this is only half of the revenue! The rest I shared with my co-author.)

I almost made back my investment into audiobooks of “A Personal Mission Statement” and “Know Yourself Like Your Success Depends on It.” In 2-3 months, those audiobooks will become my golden geese providing pure income month after month.

 

31% income growth is amazing, but when I take into account just royalties growth (52.7%), or coaching income growth (1,238% !!!), it gets insane. I also earned a few hundred dollars in affiliate commissions for the first time in something resembling a regular fashion.

Even my salary increased by 15%, not because of any raise, but mostly because I took more stand-by duties than a year ago.

Savings

It all contributed into our net value increase. I stacked away about $10K in my peace-of-mind fund (aka ‘rainy days fund’ for most of the world). My wife saved most of her ‘bonus salaries’ from my royalties for house renovation. The rest she already spent on renovation, and she funded our vacation trip to Bulgaria last month.

I paid off early about 1.6% of our mortgage in one year. I tithed more.

Our recurrent payments fund is fully stacked up. We have a year’s worth of recurring bills for water and waste. We have funds prepared for car insurance, coal for the whole year ahead, textbooks for kids, unexpected car repairs or replacement of white goods.

Some unpleasant financial surprises are no longer a headache. I had to spend over 100% more on our car insurance this year. I expected some inflation, but not to this degree. I had about half of this sum saved, and I simply took the rest from our monthly income.

We bought a new vacuum cleaner in July. The old one was 8 years old. I took money from the white goods fund and filled the fund in about a week. In the past, those would be major headaches requiring significant sacrifices.

Personal Development

When I took a mental inventory of this area, initially I couldn’t put a finger on any progress.

And maybe this is how it should be. Take, for example, transparency. I’m so used to sharing almost everything from my progress journey that I don’t realize when people find it inspiring or unusual.

My supervisor from my corporation found my Facebook account. I felt a pang of dread for about a second. What to do? Ignore her friend request? I quickly corrected myself. What would be the use of this? Everything on my Facebook profile is public anyway.

My supervisor is an unusual person, so she had no problems with my “second life” I reveal on Facebook; the life of an author. She wished me all the best in my second career, including quitting my job (which didn’t stop her from enjoying the news that my wife quit her job first, and I’ll be stuck there a little longer).

When I shared the details of hardships of my marriage in my mastermind group, I had no second thoughts about it. However, the leader of my mastermind group said he appreciated very much what I had done, and that it really solidified integrity of our group and gave other members “permission” to be vulnerable as well.

 

After a moment of reflection, I found one thing I improved: my prayer. Thanks to the book “Confessions of a Prayer Slacker,” I introduced a new 5-minute prayer into my morning ritual.

On the other hand, I almost completely quit listening to podcasts and doing cardio exercises in the morning. It’s hard to call it “progress,” isn’t it?

 

In the past, I struggled a lot with big goals. They always intimidated me, and that hampered my progress. Now, I focus on daily actions and they compound into something much greater.

Consistency brings growth and results. I had been showing up for a long period of time in my authors group, and that created networking opportunities.

It worked for me as good as, or even better than, setting big goals and pursuing them. For two years, I tried in vain to grow my email list to 1,000 people. This year, one offer of participating in a giveaway resulted in more than 1,000 subscribers.

I had set goals of selling hundreds and thousands of books in the past, and I didn’t reach those numbers. In July, I sent a single email to Steve Scott inquiring if he could inform his email list about my free promo. He couldn’t. He did something better – he sent an email when four of my books were on Buck Books promo. I sold over 130 copies of each!

The fundament of those successes wasn’t goal setting; it was merely showing up.

The same happened with my speed reading practice. I broke down an intensive 2-hour-a-day program into 10-minute practices. In less than two years, I was done with it. I ran out of materials and techniques to practice. So, I decided to maintain speed reading practice by reading as fast as possible for ten minutes a day.

I haven’t done anything more for 20 months or so. A few months ago, I decided to check my speed reading on a paperback. I took Robin Cook’s medical thriller and checked my reading speed. It was over 220% of my starting reading speed. I almost finished that book, and my results were always in 200-280% range.

So, I felt like I was making no progress while, in fact, I progressed. The progress was so slow that I didn’t notice it.

Spiritual Growth

I rarely speak publicly about this topic. I am no priest nor pastor. I’m just an ordinary guy who tries to recognize and follow God’s will as I understand it.

I consider any spiritual-inclined rumination about my own experience highly suspicious and probably originating from haughtiness: “Look at me, what I achieved; I’m almost a saint – listen to me!”

However, I cannot keep quiet about what happened to me in the past year.

 

This year, I suffered like never before in my whole life. A crisis in my marriage was a darker period than anything else that happened to me.

And with a clean conscience, I tell you this: the experience of torment was profitable for me beyond my understanding. I suffered like a beast. I saw no sense in my life. I saw no way out. All I could do was trust God with my life and focus only on the next step in my life. Wake up. Do my morning ritual. Commute to work. Survive a day in my day job. Commute back. Do household chores. Write.

I felt barren and dry all the time, but I kept going.

 

In the darkest period, I found Julien of Norwich’s “Revelations of a Divine Love.” It was a perfect cure for my state of soul. I read it and added it as a third daily lecture to my morning ritual. It means I’ll read a paragraph or sentence from this book every day till the end of my life.

That was another case that convinced me that there are no accidents in life; everything is governed by God’s Providence. I’ve been reading saints’ books for years, I heard about a mystic Julien a couple of years ago. But I read it when I mostly needed it, and its message infiltrated my heart. The premise of this book, by the way, is that God’s Providence is all-encompassing and overarching. I recommend it to any Christian that goes through a tough time in their life.

 

From this experience, I took away one great lesson: pain equals growth. I no longer shy away from pain. I embrace it. I got humbled. My ego diminished a bit. I even started to see other people from behind it. I thought I was ready for anything, but I was wrong. Now I know, I’m ready for more than I had been before.

All I want from my life is growth, and spiritual growth is the most important aspect for me. If I had experienced the same amount of suffering for half the growth I got, I would’ve volunteered without a second of hesitation.

There is no sense in anticipating future disasters. When I went through my dark period, sometimes I wished I could hold my breath and suffocate. When you live through a disaster, you need to focus 100% of your life energy on the next breath or the next step. Living in the past or the future is a luxury you cannot afford.

Lately, I’ve met many people who’ve suffered a lot more than I have. People who lost their relatives, who got cancer, whose kids got cancer, are miserable with their life, or are constantly making bad choices and their parents can only observe with pain how they struggle. My cousin’s son was born prematurely and went through a couple of serious illnesses in the first months of his life. He suffers from neurological affliction, and my cousin lives every day with anxiety as to his child’s future.

In the past, such encounters with the suffering of others were very unsettling for me. I had lost peace of mind and ruminated why it happened to them and why I was so blessed in my life.

Now, I can state I accept their challenges. I don’t just theoretically know they will benefit from their struggles. I feel it deep in my gut. Pain equals growth. What will not kill you, will make you stronger. What will kill you, will kill you.

 

I passed through my valley of shadow, and I emerged on the other side stronger than ever. I attained peace of mind I wouldn’t have believed was possible. I’m more grounded in the present moment and my current life. I think less of me. I see more of my flaws and, at the same time, it doesn’t rob me of power, but entices me to become better. I am more compassionate. I judge people less. I serve them more. I trust God more and am less afraid. “Do not be afraid” is a phrase that is repeated in the Bible the most times. Strangely enough, I became less afraid going through the worst time in my life.

Summary

In hindsight, I feel I grew the most in my spirit. Skim through this report once again. Read all those fantastic numbers and metrics: thousands of subscribers and thousands of dollars; fitness records, networking opportunities and starting a new business; my wife quitting her job and her first tentative steps in supporting me.

All those things are wonderful on their own, but I consider them small potatoes compared to my spiritual growth.

I became a better version of myself. I expanded beyond what I thought was possible. I’m at peace and more connected to God than I ever was.

This is worth the world to me.

My current position on The Slight Edge chart

The post The Slight Edge Report Year Five appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Forty Fifth Income Report – December 2016 ($104.37)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

My biggest takeaway in December 2016 was networking. I found in my journals traces of several calls with other authors, my readers, and guys from The Community.

But the calls were just a tip of an iceberg. I regularly visited a few Facebook groups and shared (and absorbed) some tips and tricks.

Most of those interactions were simply fun to have and didn’t change much, if anything, in my life. However, feeling a pulse of an online community happened to be extremely lucrative in at least one case.

Writing

I kept writing coaching messages, Quora answers, and broadcasts to my email lists — and nothing more. Well, it was enough to generate over 35,000 words, my 2nd result ever at that moment in time.

Guest Post

At the beginning of December, Dave Chesson published my guest post on Kindlepreneur. It went back and forth between us a couple times with some revisions before that.

Nothing significant happened as a result of that post. I guest post all too rarely to make a difference in my business. But the post was a pleasure to write, and I helped a few authors to start/improve their Amazon ad campaigns.

Sickness

In the middle of the month, I got sick for the first time since July 2013. I was healthy for so long that I reacted with disbelief. I hoped to be over my weakness within a day or two, and only when I got 39 degrees Celsius did I go to the doctor. Ironically, the next day, when I went to a doctor, was decisive. Anyway, I was sick for 5 days and much less productive than usual.

Lesson:

What got me into catching a flu? Sleep deprivation, I think. I was regularly sleeping less than six hours a night for about a week, and then I got sick.

Get enough sleep. This is Take Care of Yourself 101. My “enough” is at least 6.5 hours, preferably 7 to 7.5 hours a night. Most of the time when I get 7 hours of sleep, I can function optimally for the whole day.

Don’t take anyone else’s “enough” for yours. You have to experiment, track the amount of sleep, and journal to figure out what is the optimal amount for you.

Coaching and Revenues

I got a few more clients in December. I still did almost nothing to advertise my coaching practice. My clients were finding me via Coach.me.

Sometimes you are simply too good to be ignored.

Forty Fourth Income Report – November 2016 ($446.6)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

In November 2016, I could finally take care of several small projects that were sitting in the back of my mind for weeks and months. I had a bit of time and brainpower saved because I stopped even planning publication of further books.


Other Formats

I finally published my last paperback – for Bulletproof Health and Fitness. If I recall correctly, I also fixed a few formatting issues in my other books. In October I purchased some of my paperbacks from CreateSpace and noticed that the cover for 99 Perseverance Success Stories was off a bit. I didn’t care about this very much. But when a few dozen copies were purchased, I contacted HappySelfPublishing in emergency mode, and we fixed the issue within one day. Eh, the blessing of urgency!

Derek Doepker narrated an audio version for Know Yourself like Your Success Depends on It. Before the end of the month, I submitted it to ACX.

Writing

I had been keep writing Quora answers. I also wrote a few blog posts, including an affiliate post (more about it below). In November, I wrote my guest post about Amazon ads for Kindlepreneur. I wrote quite a lot of content for my email broadcasts, coaching clients and corresponding with my readers.

Subscribers

I tried to keep my email subscribers engaged. In November, I organized two or three habits challenges, I created a FB group and interacted with some folks there.

Not much came out of that, I hoped for more massive response to the challenges. But you never know the results of the ripple effect. One of my readers started a gratitude diary and, following my advice, shared this activity with her grandkids. She was super stoked how much this simple habit improved their wellbeing and mutual relationships.

Coaching

I got a few new clients, and the November’s payment from Coach.me was 3-digit for the first time. Judging by my income, I coached 4–5 clients in October (thus the amount) and 6–7 clients in November.

The satisfaction from observing my clients’ daily improvement was enormous.

Paperbacks Revenue

One of authors from a FB group I’m active in shared a great tip with me: if you price your paperbacks, Amazon will most likely discount them significantly, but royalties will be paid based on the full price.

I checked it out, and it worked for all of my books but one. I priced my paperbacks at $25, but readers were getting them for as low as $8 or $11. It had some psychological effect (“wow, a discount!”) on the sales. I sold over 140 copies in November. What is more, I earned over 14 hundred dollars on them.

PromoRepublic

I bought a lifetime access to a software called PromoRepublic. They work in a similar fashion like Buffer, allowing you to schedule your social media posts in advance. At the beginning, they included only Twitter and Facebook, but those were the two platforms I was the most active on.

I taught my son how to use it, and he began to schedule inspirational quotes and links to my old blog posts on my FB page and Twitter feed. I didn’t get much traction, but also it didn’t cost me much, both in terms of time and money.

Each of those posts on FB got a few to several impressions. I noticed a small trickle of traffic coming from Twitter to my blog, maybe one visit a day, but it was one additional visit a day. You never know which visitor will become your next raving fan.

Podcasts

I gave at least one podcast interview (maybe a few) in November, for My Kitaab, the biggest publishing podcast in India. As usual, the podcasts’ hosts reached out to me, not the other way around.

I love podcasts for almost a total lack of preparation for it. I only need to schedule my time and mobilize my wits.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Second year in a row I organized a sale of all of my books during the weekend after Thanksgiving. It was quite fruitful. I sold a few dozen copies both on Friday and Monday.



I wonder if my great December results weren’t driven to some degree by that promo.

Ads & Sales

In November, I created five new Amazon advertising campaigns, which was almost 50% increase (so far I had 11 of them). My sales had been stable since September, like never before. I observed a slight decline in November, but I made up for that with the huge promotion after Thanksgiving.

I sold in November 439 Kindle copies on Amazon.com alone, plus about 50 copies on other markets, and 140 paperbacks.

I attributed most of those results to the ads. It wasn’t an accident that my sales stabilized exactly when I started to advertise my books on Amazon. Besides, I had a clear comparison between the books that were advertised and those that were not. The books from the second category sold only several copies a month (Master Your Time with 10 copies was the leader). Advertised books sold a few dozen copies each (Directed by Purpose, which was relatively ‘young’ sold 103 copies).

I was happy with those results, and I planned to expand advertising as soon as I tackle numerous smaller projects.

An Affiliate Post

As an effect of my great results, I pitched the guest post to Kindlepreneur, but I also decided to write a review of the program I learned AMS advertising from – KD Sales Machine of Derek Doepker.

I wrote the detailed post, included detailed numbers and screens from my “before” and “after” results and published it at the end of the month.

Of course, I secretly counted on making an easy fortune. Of course, the reality was different. During seven months, three copies of the program were sold via my affiliate link, and I collected a couple hundred dollars so far. It’s hardly a fortune. On the other hand, I earned money for writing something I wanted to write about anyway.

Had I been paid for each of my blog posts as handsomely, I would have already been rich.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €469.42 ($497.58)

CreateSpace royalties: €739.48 ($783.85)

Draft2Digital royalties: $12.59

Coach.me fees: $136.9

Audiobooks royalties: $5.12

Total: $1436.04

Costs:

$36.9, View From the Top Community fee

$58, Aweber fee

$20, InstaFreebie fee

$265, Business on Purpose mastermind

$28.28, royalties split with co-author

$419, Amazon ads

$70, RA’s (RA = Real Assistant; my son

Forty Third Income Report – October 2016 (-$413.16)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

Prague

I must admit with regret that I didn’t use my sabbatical from publishing very well at the beginning.

Going through my journal entries from October 2016, I noticed an unusually high number of mentions about binge TV and YouTube watching.

On the other hand, I was away from home for more than a week during October, so decreasing my workload was a good idea.

Trips
Prague

At the beginning of October, I visited my friend Hynek Palatin in Prague. I spent a pleasant two days with him and a blogger and serial entrepreneur Nick Loper and his family.



In the evening, Hynek introduced us to the host of Rocking Self-Publishing podcast, Simon Whistler.

I didn’t have a devious scheme in mind when going to Prague. Networking simply works that way. People meet you, speak with you, get to know you and then do some deals with you.

A couple of months after the meetup, Simon interviewed me for his podcast. Nick mentioned my Slight Edge pursuits in one of his podcast episodes.

A Retreat

Straight from Prague, I went for my church community yearly retreat. Four years ago on such a retreat, I gave the most substance to my personal mission statement.

I was back at home by Sunday, after five days of being away.

London

Big Ben

At the end of October, I traveled to London in my employer’s business. I wanted to organize a meetup with other authors. Unfortunately, a meeting with a client destroyed this plan. Well, at least I finally (It was the 4th time in London in my life) did some sightseeing.
Another Way NOT to Build a Light Bulb

Encouraged and chivied by my mastermind partner, I spent a good chunk of the first half of October working on the online coaching program I wanted to offer to my subscribers.

I signed up for a trial of a shopping cart, wrote several messages in the email sequence, sent a broadcast, followed up individually with those who responded, brainstormed the outline and structure of the program… and I discovered no one was interested enough to pay money for this venture.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas A. Edison about his 10,000 attempts of inventing a light bulb

Lesson:

I wasted several, maybe even a dozen, hours trying to get this program off the ground. But I wasted only several hours, not several months painstakingly building the whole program.

Ask your audience about their opinion. Survey them. Discuss with them. Be in contact with them.

It will save you thousands of dollars and a lot of your precious time down the road.

Coaching

I got three or four new coaching clients. They found me, not the other way around. The prep work I did in August bore fruit. One of the clients cancelled the coaching even before I sent him the first message. I wrote a few hundred words on a train from Prague, and when I crossed the border and Wi-Fi started working, I discovered he was gone.

Anyway, October was the last month my coaching earnings were at a 2-digit level. Since then, I’ve always coached several clients simultaneously.

Loose Ends

I used this less intensive time to take care of a few things that I procrastinated about, or that simply didn’t have a high enough priority in the past.

I published two paperbacks, one for Know Yourself… at the beginning of the month, and the other for Making Business Connections… at the end of October.

Finally, I had paperbacks for all of my books except the permafree and very short (about 7,000 words) introduction to my Six Simple Steps to Success series.

Slower Pace

I wrote only Quora answers and income reports in October 2016. Well, and some materials for the coaching program, which had never seen daylight.

I kept my Amazon advertising campaigns mostly on autopilot. I tweaked them from time to time.

On 19th of October, I created an experimental campaign that contained not very specific and relevant keywords, but the most common English words.

I did it out of curiosity, I bade very low knowing that conversion rates cannot be great with such words.

To my surprise, the campaign was a big hit. Later, I copied it for all of my books, and it was always successful.

Lesson:

One of the cornerstones of my personal philosophy is: “I will never know till I try.” It gives me a self-permission to risk failures. It’s quite important for me because, in the past, I was paralyzed by the fear of failure.

This experiment was a perfect example. I owe a big chunk of my success with Amazon ads to playing with common words. That one success enabled me to afford to start about 100 campaigns that were failures. I lost on each of them probably less than a dollar. It goes back to Edison’s mindset, sometimes you need many experiments to find this one way that is working.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €172.46 ($189.7)

CreateSpace royalties: €170.38 ($187.42)

Draft2Digital royalties: $10.19

Coach.me fees: $74.87

Audiobooks royalties: $7.46

Total: $469.64

Costs:

$36.9, View From the Top Community fee

$29, Aweber fee

$265, Business on Purpose mastermind

$17.17, royalties split with co-author

$513.74, Amazon ads

$72.61, RA’s (RA = Real Assistant; my son