Decisions

Just a quick reminder before we dive into the newsletter... You can still take advantage of my birthday bundle until Friday: [Join The Laptop Lifestyle Academy + Blog Mastermind 2.0 Birthday Bonus]( The bundle includes my flagship course Blog Mastermind 2.0 (was $1,997 before I closed it this year). Plus, you get lifetime access to all my training, coaching and community inside the Academy. Now on to the newsletter... ****** I was listening to a video from a successful entrepreneur turned coach. He said: People know what to do, they just don't do it. They don't have a knowledge problem, they have a motivation problem. I agree and disagree with this. It's fair to say we all know on some level there are things we could do to solve our problems. It's also fair to say that motivation plays a big part. Yet, there are no guarantees. Just because you think certain next steps could help, they may or may not. Everything is a risk, an experiment. Opportunity cost is huge. Decide to spend one day doing one thing, is a day you are not doing something else. This ambiguity can lead to paralysis, even if you know your options and are motivated to get things done. [Decisions everywhere] Commit To Experiments, Follow Positive Signs, But Have A Deadline My co-founder Claire and I have a rule about how to test new marketing methods for our company [InboxDone](. We don't know if anything will work until we give it enough of a test. Yet, we also don't want to invest too much time or resources into something that's not working, or underperforming potentially compared to other options. Let me illustrate with an example... A few years ago we hit a plateau. We'd maxed out our current marketing methods. To grow, we needed to tap into new ways to reach people. We had plenty of options on the table -- grow our social channels with content, run a press campaign, get on more podcasts, pay for ads on Google or Facebook or YouTube, sponsor events, place ads in email newsletters, influencer marketing... ... and the list goes on. For a long time I'd felt that Google ads were a good choice for us. When people need help with email, they search Google for virtual assistants. Ads are the top four results in most Google searches. We needed to be in those search results. Yet I also kept putting off the decision to really focus on it. Why? Because it wasn't in my comfortzone. Finally, I decided to commit to the experiment. Not only that, I wanted to run the campaign myself. I wanted to go through the process of keyword research and ad copy creation to really get a deeper understanding of our audience. Claire and I agreed to a budget and a time frame, and I got to work. Nothing, Then Something, Then Growth Initially my results with Google ads were not good. We spent a lot of money on clicks to keywords that seemed very relevant. Yet, no bookings for discovery calls. I was frustated, but I kept going. I still had time. I added new keywords, deleted others, and added negative keywords where appropriate. We started to get a couple clients that came from our ads. They were few and far between, but at least it was something. Yet, it wasn't enough to say this campaign was really working. Our initial deadline for testing past, but with the positive signs, we extended the experiment. Eventually I had a breakthrough. Our ad budget was getting consumed by more popular keywords, which seemed great, but were not converting to calls. I decided to eliminate the money hungry keywords. Each week I'd check results, delete keywords, add more negative keywords, leaving fewer and fewer active search terms for our ads to show up in. The remaining very specific keywords started to get more clicks because all of the budget was going to them. Then the call bookings started coming in. Learn, Experiment, Learn More, Adjust And Grow My Google ad campaign is still running today. It took more time than I expected, but through learning and adjusting, it became a meaningful source of new clients. You can take this example and apply it to any aspect of growing an online business. Whether you are still deciding on a business model or a idea to focus on. Or you're growing your email list, attracting your first coaching clients, selling services or merch (physical stuff!). How you grow your team, choose your pricing model, which software you use, what content you publish -- all of these decisions can be made through experimentation, following positive threads, learning and adjusting until you have the result you desire. It's not a perfect formula, but I really believe it's the only way to progress in a world of abundant choice. Knowledge + Coaching = Better Decisions To learn more about how to start and grow an online content business and get help with the decisions you face, I invite you to join the [Laptop Lifestyle Academy](. [Laptop Lifestyle Academy]( You get instant and lifetime access to all my training, including my flagship course Blog Mastermind 2.0. I provide a guide on how I got my mindset and motivation aligned for results. There's very practical training on how I sell with email. I teach my system for using content to sell your products or services on autopilot. Plus, regular coaching calls and a forum to ask questions any time. You don't need to learn it all, but I can guide you to what you need for your next step. I'll see you there. Yaro -- yaro@yaro.blog Blog Mastermind Ltd 81 Hove Street, North York, ON CANADA M3H4Z2 [Unsubscribe]( Sent with [Systeme.io](