Are You Half Way There?

Even when you think you have your life all mapped out,
things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined.
– Deepak Chopra

In Issue #172

Are You Halfway There? by Monica Day

Remember January? When your New Year’s resolutions were fresh and you were motivated, ready to take advantage of the clean slate offered by the new year?

I’m finding it difficult to believe, but I look at the calendar, and it’s true. The year is half over. And it’s time to ask yourself: Are you at least halfway to reaching your goals?

It’s time to take stock of where you are compared to where you want to be. If you have an income goal for the year, tally up what you’ve made so far and see if you’re on track. If you wanted to book a certain number of projects a month. or go part-time at your job, or finish one of the programs you’re working on – take time to determine how much progress you’ve made, and what you need to do to re-focus.

I’ve noticed something interesting about setting goals and achieving them over the years. If they are the right goals for me, and I am motivated to do them, accomplishing them feels almost effortless. Things fall into place. It’s almost as if setting my intention alone gets me halfway there.

But if they are the wrong goals for me – if they are not based on something I have a real desire to do in the first place – at the six-month mark I will be no further along than I was on day one. In fact, I am likely to be further away from accomplishing the goal than I was when I made it!

If you do your goal review and you find this pattern is happening for you, too, your review process might include making a big change. You might have to face the fact that you don’t really want what you think you want. Or that your goal isn’t focused on something that motivates you.

For example, you can set a goal to become a six-figure copywriter – but if making money alone doesn’t motivate you, the odds of you accomplishing this goal are slim.

But if you love writing about alternative health, researching supplements, and revealing remedies that are not popular in the mainstream, you could easily make $100,000 a year by accident. Just by doing what you love.

Setting and achieving goals is trickier than most people think – which is why so many goals go unrealized. When they are a means of articulating and quantifying desire, they are useful. But if you find you are using your goals as a way to coerce yourself into a life that you don’t really want to be living, they will dangle out there unaccomplished for much longer than six months.

So when you review your goals this week, be brave. If you’ve made progress, but not as much as you’d like, you might just need minor adjustments. But if your goals are languishing like tufts of dust under the bed, just waiting for you to find some convenient moment to clear them away, you might need to face the truth. You might not want what you think you want.

There is a lot of freedom in getting down to this kind of truth. Right underneath your false desires lie your real desires. And that nagging feeling you live with when you aren’t accomplishing your goals gives way to genuine motivation and excitement.

Resource Referral: Research Your Way To Effective Goals

As I continue to refine my goals and aspirations – and as they continue to change – I find myself using my research skills more and more. If I have an idea for a new business direction, I know how to quickly size up the market. If I hear about a new twist on an idea I already have, I know how to learn more, and uncover a fresh idea that strengthens my approach.

The truth is, next to copywriting, conducting effective research has become the most valuable skill I’ve learned in the last six years of doing direct response marketing. That’s why Krista and I wanted to share this critical skill with you. So we teamed up with one of the top informationists in the industry, Richard Conero, to bring you Finding the World’s Best Ideas: How to Access More Than $100,000 Worth of Intelligence for as Little as 55 Cents a Day!

Krista and I have both learned an incredible amount from Richard and are indebted to him for drawing back the curtain on this powerful secret. And we feel confident this course is just what you need to take your career to the next level practically overnight.

Click here to download Finding the World’s Best Ideas: How to Access More Than $100,000 Worth of Intelligence for as Little as 55 Cents a Day! and we’ll send you two bonus reports as well:

“Just finished reading your “Finding the World’s Best Ideas” book. GREAT STUFF.

Mind you, I’ve done research for about 20 + years for my technical writing projects and I never knew some of these sites existed. I’m looking forward to diving in and using them in my copywriting projects. I think this is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about research. I’ll be honest here… wasn’t sure it would be worth the money. BOY was I wrong. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.” –Cherryl Wistos

And please let us know what you think – good, bad or ugly! And yes, by all means, return it any time in the next 30 days if you don’t like it. I’ll be shocked – but will graciously return your money anyway.

We think this is the breakthrough information you’ve been waiting for. We hope you agree.

Quick Marketing Tip from Ilise Benun

I’ve been noticing lately how good I am at starting things, and how terrible I am at finishing them. It’s a bad cycle to be caught up in all the time. So I scrolled through some archives of tips I have from various colleagues – and I found this one from my friend Ilise Benun. She refers here to phone calls – but I think the advice applies to nearly everything – follow up is the key. Here’s what Ilise recommends:

After an initial conversation with a prospect, whether you called them or they called you, don’t wait to start your follow up. Right away, build on the momentum of your freshness in their mind by sending an email message in which you:

  1. Thank them for their interest, for taking the time to speak with you, for visiting your web site or anything else they went out of their way to do.
  2. Express what you understand to be the challenge they face. Use as many of the words they used as you can.
  3. Refer to an experience or project in your background that supports your claim that you are the right resource to help them.
  4. Provide a link to your web site and, in particular, a case study or article that is most relevant, based on what you know so far about their challenge.

If too much time passes before you follow up, sometimes even a day or two, the conversation may slip into the recesses of their mind, or blur with that of others like you, and therefore won’t make as strong of an impact.

Benun publishes a blog (www.marketingmixblog.com) and a weekly email newsletter, "Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor," which is read by 8000+ small business owners and has been excerpted in many other email newsletters, including Bob Bly’s Direct Response Letter and Michael Masterson’s Early to Rise.