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What Blog Platform Should I Use?

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What Blog Platform Should I Use?

In a very recent email I wrote about how you need to have a blog.

The question that pops up next is usually …

What blog platform should I use? Medium? WordPress? Gatsby? Jekyll? Or something else?

This is a HUGELY important question that needs a bit of thought put into it … but first things first …

You Need to Focus on Writing

Before I get into comparing the vast array of options that you have out there I want to state that if your goal is to start bogging then ….

YOU SHOULD NOT BE FOCUSING ON BUILDING SOFTWARE TO RUN A BLOG

In other words, if you’re a software engineer (and some of you are) you should not get consumed with “building my blog” with some latest and greatest technology that you can learn along the way.

If your goal is to write ….

Then put your ego away and start writing.

If your goal is to learn a new technology then stop reading this and go learn a new technology.

Far too often I see software folks lose all of their time “building” something like a blog with technology X, Y and Z and then never ship a blog post because they were too busy optimizing CSS, HTML, JavaScript, deployment methods with integrated CI/CD pipelines.

All of that is a waste of time if your goal is to start writing a blog.

So focus on writing – not on building a blog engine.

Choosing a Platform

Choosing a platform can turn into a serious case of analysis paralysis. I hope to solve that for you today by comparing some of the top platforms and what they have to offer (on the good and bad front).

At this time I’m going to compare the following blog systems that you can use.

  • Medium
  • WordPress
  • Ghost
  • Static Sites (Jekyll, Gatsby, etc)

I’m not going to cover SquareSpace or Wix or Blogger or any of those because I don’t feel they’re in the top three choices for the folks that read this blog (mainly software engineers and entrepreneurs).

Medium

Everyone loves Medium because it’s drop dead simple to get started with blogging. You can sign up for a free account and then start writing in their editor in less than a minute.

The tooling that they have is top notch. The editor is gorgeous and they make it really simple to craft your content quickly. They also have a very powerful recommendation engine for readers. Meaning that if you have a blog on Dog Grooming and you write about Dog Shampoos then another reader who is reading another dog blog about walking dogs (on Medium) then there is a very high chance that Medium will recommend your article to them to read next. Again this is only for other blogs on Medium. Medium will not recommend other sites to visit for you to find similar content. Just doesn’t work way. The power of their network recommendation engines for exposing your content to others is fantastic.

However, that’s where the great news comes to a close. Medium has more downfalls than positives in my opinion:

  • You have no ability to customize your blog.
  • You CANNOT ADD features like:
    • Custom Domains
    • Email sign up forms
    • Payment forms
    • Customized landing pages
    • Contact pages
    • Custom integrations
    • Etc

I could write a small book about things I don’t like about Medium.

Lastly, and most importantly, if your content is on Medium –

You are the product.

Meaning that Medium is using YOU as their product to sell other services.

Medium is using YOUR content as a way to recommend other things to other viewers.

Medium is using your content as a place for them to throw up their pay wall to get folks to convert to paid members.

They own everything on the site and can do that they want with it (to an extent of course).

Lastly, one of the things that REALLY bugs me about Medium is that you cannot have your own domain (they use allow this, but not anymore). That means your blog will be medium.com/@yourusername

So … thats kind of lame.

Thats like having a business and then printing your AOL email address on your business card.

In other words – it looks like shit it makes you and your brand look half-assed.

That said, Medium is simply a “easy to get going” blog. Game over.

PROS

  • Super simple to get started
  • Gorgeous editor
  • Great Recommendation Engine

CONS

  • You are their product
  • No custom domains, have to use the ugly medium.com/@yourusername format
  • No ability to provide landing pages, payments, custom pages, forms, opt-in, etc
  • Locked into their platform
  • Integrations are poor

WordPress

WordPress is the 800 pound gorilla in the blogging world (and internet in general). It has been reported that WordPress powers over 1/3 of the internet.

Thats wild. That’s a lot of sites. Apparently WordPress is doing something right.

To get set up with WordPress, you have a couple of options:

  1. Host on WordPress.com (they manage it)
  2. Self host or managed hosting.

Hosting on WordPress.com makes it easy to get going, but you’re limited because WordPress.com restricts certain plugins from being installed or utilized and there are a few other restrictions. Therefore I’m going to focus on the self-hosted or managed hosting solution. I’ll provide some links for self hosting and and managed solutions below. Sure, you’ll pay a few bucks, but it’s worth its weight in gold.

WordPress is very powerful. You can build a blog to a full blow website using WordPress. In this instance you will be building a blog.

You can use one of the built in themes or you can search for free themes on the internet (you can also search for premium themes if you don’t mind spending a few bucks). I recommend searching for “WordPress Themes” or “Free WordPress Themes” or “https://www.google.com/search?q=premium+wordpress+themes” if you’re searching online.

One of the best things about WordPress is the powerful plugin ecosystem. There are hundreds of thousands of plugins for WordPress. If you can think of it, its very possible a plugin has been created for WordPress. Plugins allow you to quickly add new features to your blog/site without any additional coding.

With a WordPress plugin you’ll be able to easily add email newsletter option support by adding of any number of email plugins that will allow you to do that. (You may need a email list provider already, such as ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc) but the plugins will be there for you to easily add it to the side bar or bottom/top of your site.

You can create custom pages to house custom content that is perhaps not a blog post, but something like a landing page where you decide you sell a product. Speaking of selling things, you can sell products on WordPress if you use one of the premium plugins like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.

If you think about doing something down the line, most likely it can already be done with WordPress.

Writing in WordPress is drop dead simple too. You create a new post, give it a title and write your blog post as you normally would. Add images, audio, video, etc all via the online editor that is built into WordPress. Hit publish and you’re live.

Hosting WordPress

I recommend using managed solution to handle your WordPress installation. I’ve tried running my own servers and then moved over to managed hosting years ago and I highly recommend it.

I recommend using a hosted solution such as:

What about GoDaddy? Meh.

GoDaddy overloads their servers with other sites which can be a real problem when your site needs to be responsive. WpEngine and FlyWheel have great response times and have fast servers and don’t overload you with other folks. If you have a problem with anything you can reach out to them and they’ll help you.

I’ve even had WpEngine representatives write some code for me to fix a particular image problem I had with their CDN – which brings up a good point. All of their images are stored on a CDN and delivered globally – making your site load that much faster.

Lastly, since you’ll be running your own blog you can have your own custom domain.

PROS

  • Simple to setup with a managed host
  • A huge plugin ecosystem
  • Very customizable
  • Good Editor
  • Supports Custom Domains

CONS

  • You have to pay $$ to host it
  • It can get slow if you over load your site with plugins
  • Often targeted by hackers because of how popular it is (if you stay with a managed host, like WpEngine they do a great job of keeping you up to date with security releases.)

Ghost

Ghost is another open source platform that is similar to WordPress but built on completely different technology. One of the biggest selling points of Ghost is that it’s fast.

The editor is simple and is very easy to use and you’ll find yourself creating some great looking pages quickly.

Ghost also offers a set of plugins, but it does not match the breadth of WordPress and that’s a downfall.

Hosting Ghost

Installation is where you’ll get stuck because you either need to install it yourself or host it. I’ll focus on hosting it.

At this point I’d only feel comfortable hosting on Ghost’s platform (Ghost(Pro) Pricing – Hosting from the creators of Ghost – Ghost.org) as they have the necessary skills to ensure that it runs correctly. I’d be skeptical that it would run correction or efficiently on another hosting platform.

Custom domains are also supported, which is great.

PROS

  • Simple to setup with a managed host
  • A growing plugin ecosystem
  • Good Editor

CONS

  • You have to pay $$ for managed hosting
  • Customization options are limited

Gatsby/Jekyll/Hugo/Etc

This section is meant to cover all static sites. Static sites don’t have a database and render pure HTML to the browser. This typically results in a site that is very fast with minimal configuration and can scale very well due to demand.

While these benefits sounds great there are a lot of downfalls.

Unfortunately you need to learn a templating language (such as markdown or something else). You’ll often need to work with HTML/CSS and perhaps some JavaScript. If you’re a coder, then this might be something that is interesting to you. Otherwise, this is something you’ll ant to avoid.

However, it is important to remember that the point of the blog is so that you can start writing, not create software to render the blog. If you find yourself writing HTML/CSS/JavasScript to render you’re writing … well … what are you really doing then?

Static sites do offer a lot of flexibility though. You can code them to do whatever you want.

Want a payment form?

Code it.

Want a email opt-inform?

Code it.

Want an Image Gallery?

Code it.

Sure, there are other tools that you could use to provide this functionality, and you should evaluate those … but you get the point… a static site through one of the many static site generators.

The real rub here is that your blog is going to be written in a text editor. You typically do not get a great editor to write your blog in. Furthermore, very often you’ll need to “compile” your pages so that they’re read to go on the web. Once again, you’ll need some technical prowess to handle this.

Hosting a Static Site

Hosting a static site requires that you have a place to put the files. Typically this can be done on a web server, Amazon S3, GitHub pages, or through other services like Nelify and Zeit. You will need some technical know how in order to set these up (which is beyond the scope of this article).

As you can imagine, since Gatsby is very customizable and can be hosted anywhere (it’s just HTML) you will be able to use a custom domain.

PROS

  • Very customizable
  • Very fast (response times)
  • Can Scale to many viewers due to it being raw html

CONS

  • Hosting is not simple
  • Most likely need to know how to code
  • Spend more time configuring the site and writing (most likely, yes I’m pointing at you engineers).
  • Technical Prowess is needed to fully use the platform

So, Which One Should I Use?

WordPress.

WordPress is the market leader for these types of sites (blogs). It has a rich plugin ecosystem that will be ready for you to grow when you need it and hosting with companies like WpEngine ensure your website is fast and secure.

You’ll find that as you need more from WordPress, it can offer almost anything you need.

Last piece of advice – try to build everything without code first.

WordPress allowed me to do that. It forced me to focus on my content and not on some cool engineering that ultimately would have acted as a distraction.

But … Can I go from X to WordPress if I like X better initially?

Sure, you can, but here again, if you decide to go to WordPress later you’re going to have to spend time migrating from one platform to another. If your goal is to write, why would you want to create more work for yourself?

Just go with WordPress now and save yourself the trouble.

📸Andrew Neel

Podcast Equipment and Software

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Audio quality is our #1 concern (other than content) on the Fragmented Podcast (a Podcast for Android Developers).

Our goal is to give you, the listener, the experience of sitting with us (and our guest) as if you were there in person.

Nothing will kill a podcast faster than shitty audio.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to a podcast that I really loved but eventually had to turn it off due to the terrible audio. If your audio is crap, it doesn’t matter how good your content is because terrible audio will kill your listenership.

Microphones and Audio Interfaces

You’ll want a quality microphone. We use the following from lowest to highest price.

 

Audio Interfaces

For the SM58, Beta 87A, PR40 and the SM7B you’ll want an audio interface to connect the mic and to power it (Beta 87A & SM7B require power).

The ATR2100 USB connects directly to your computer with USB, so you won’t need an interface, though it does have an XLR connector so you can also use to connect it to an Audio Interface. We recommend using one of the following interfaces:

If you’re going to use the SM7B you’ll need some more juice. We recommend adding the Cloudlifter inline amp to help as the 7B needs some more power to really sound great.

Travel Interfaces

The interfaces above are rather clunky and will pretty much be sitting your home desk or studio once set up. If you need a mobile rig that can do both, you’ll want to use the following:

You can throw this thing in a bag with a couple of mics and you’er good to go. If you’re going to record on the road, I recommend using Shure SM58’s as those thing are road dogs – they can take a beating and keep on going.

Road Kit

In fact, this exact setup is used by the Super Duty Tough Work Podcast (Blueprint is the producer of our show intro and ad music) and their audio is top notch.

 

What about Blue Yeti and the Blue Snowball Microphones?

Both of these mics also work. In fact, the first 5-10 episodes of Fragmented I used a Blue Snowball. Unfortunately, I had many problems with background noise. You could hear a door shut across the office, talking in the next room, etc. It was not good. The mic was good, but the pickup profile … not so much …

In short, these mic’s noise pick pattern is not great. Meaning that it can pick up a mouse fart at 200 yards. You don’t want that. You want a pickup profile that does not grab a ton of extraneous background noise – hence my other recommendations.

Audio Recording Software

When recording you’ll want something to grab the audio from the mic. We’ve used the following with success:

Once you have your mic, you’ll want to grab some software to record with. Which one works the best? It’s up to you to decide.

Personally, I use Reaper. Kaushik uses Logic. I used Audio Hijack Pro before that. Why did I change? I wanted more audio editing features. If you don’t need audio editing features, then Audio Hijack Pro might be your jam.

Recording Quality Audio

There are a couple of things you need to record a good podcast.

  1. A quiet space with low or no echo.
  2. Quality Microphones

Find a Quiet Space

To record good audio, you’ll want to eliminate background noise as much as possible. Sirens, dogs barking, lawn mowers, etc will all be nearly impossible to get out of the audio in post-production.

Find the quietest room you can. This can be in your house, your office, a phone both at your office, anything

Can’t find one?

Use a Walk-In Closet

If you have one in your house/apartment use the walk-in closet. Closets are the best because they are lined with clothes which act as dampening material for sound to not reflect off of and they usually have a door of some sort that allows you to block additional sound.

The key thing is – eliminate the echo.

Kill the Echo

You’ll have echo if you have the following:

  • Hard surfaced floors
    • Tile
    • Cement
    • Wood
    • Laminate
  • Empty Walls
  • Large Open Space

The best way to see if you have echo is to do a test recording into the microphone. I tend to talk about 10-20 seconds about what the podcast will be about and then stop the recording.

Listen to the audio, if you hear some obscene echo, you’ll need to do something about it.

 

The first thing you can do is try to find a smaller room/mask floors with pillows

If you are. In a very large open room, try to find a smaller room. Once you have done that (if possible) then the next step is to try to remove the echo by adding sound absorbing material like pillows, couch cushions, blankets, etc. The goal is to line as much as the floor as possible with sound absorbing material to prevent echo.

Do a test a recording again and see if it has improved and then adjust the flooring material. Sometimes, if possible, its great to put some blankets on the wall (again, if possible) to absorb the sound that is bouncing off of them.

If you can’t do that or if you don’t have enough material to line the floor … then …

Create a blanket fort

Just like you did when you were a kid. Set up a small chair, set your laptop on it and then put your recording equipment in there. Perform a test recording under the blanket again and adjust from there.

Post Production

You’ll want to go through and clean up anything you want to be removed, cleaned up, etc.

After that, upload the audio and run it through Auphonic with the following settings enabled:

This will level your audio, remove any additional hum and background noise that it can and it will make your audio pop.

That’s it. Upload it to your podcast host and start marketing.

 

If this helped you, please comment below and let me know about your podcast. I’d love to see it/hear it.

 

📷- NeONBRAND

You Need a Blog

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Yeah, that’s right. You need one.

Maybe you already have one. If you do, you might be reading this
and thinking …

Crap I haven’t written anything in a long time.

Why?

Who knows. I was that way. Sometimes I still am. The last couple
of years my blog has been a desert riddled with occasional posts.

Why?

I got lazy.

I have a HUGE list of ideas I have written down in Evernote of
blog posts I want to write. Some of them are pure GOLD. Like, Why
Recruiters are your Secret Weapon – Utilize the tool everyone
ignores to dominate in consulting.

Sounds interesting, right? Who wouldn’t want to have a constant
flow of clients? Who wouldn’t want to eliminate that fear of “Oh
no, I don’t have a client and my bills are due, and my car
payment is late, and we’re having a kid in 6 weeks. GREAT. I’m
screwed”.

I’ve been there. So, yeah…. You need a blog. Why? From my
experience, I’ve found it to be very lucrative …

But again …

Why didn’t I do it? Yeah, I was lazy, but also ….

It wasn’t a priority. I’m working on it though. You may have
noticed that some of these posts that are on my email list end up
on my blog.

Again, why am I doing that?

The better question is – why not?

Reach is reach. Any movement forward is positive movement. I’ll
be talking about repurposing content in the near future, but
that’s what I’m doing here. I’ll talk about reach and marketing
more and more as we continue, but for now, this is about why you
need a blog, an active blog.

Which brings me back to what people often ask me:

Donn, how I can grow my exposure and get my name out in the
community so that people know me?

I usually say this:

You need a blog.

They usually look at me with eyes of bewilderment and I quickly
intercept that look with a question.

“Seems like you don’t believe me. Why?”

Usually, the retort is that “Blogs are dead” and “No one reads
blogs”.

Nonsense.

Do you know who reads blogs?

Google. Bing. DuckDuckGo. etc.

Do you know who uses those search engines? All of us.

Do you know who reads your articles that the search engines find?
All of us.

Ah, makes sense right?

How many times have you searched for something online and ran
across an article that explained what you needed? Probably a
lot.

How many times has a friend sent you a link to something that was
interesting? Probably a lot.

How many times have you seen an article linked from another site
that led to a blog? Probably a lot.

See what I mean?

Blogs are everywhere. There are thousands upon thousands of
people making a crap-ton of money off their blogs.

I’m not, or am I?

I don’t sell anything on my blog. Sure, I have a few affiliate
links, but that generates enough revenue for a few Chipotle
burritos a month (no complaints there, feel free to send me all
your burritos – I’ll eat’m).

But yes, my blog does make money. In fact, it’s made me more
money than I can ever have fathomed. How?

Exposure.

That’s right. Exposure. The kind of exposure that I didn’t
expect.

When I started my blog I wrote about how to do things with given
languages. From C# to databases, to Rails, to Node/etc. I still
write about those things. However, at the time, my main focus was
on sharing what I learned with the world via my blog.

If I created a cool way to handle errors in a resilient way, I’d
blog about it and show people how I did it.

If I created a cool geo utility class to help perform geolocation
with one line of code, I’d share that implementation on the
blog.

… and then this one … this one is the hidden gem:

If I ran into an error in programming that had no results on any
of the search engines, I’d blog about how I finally fixed it.
Let’s say the error message was “CM00234 Not Found During
Processing”. I’d title my blog post: “How to Fix: CM00234 Found
During Processing” and then I’d show people how I fixed it in my
situation.

Guess what?

Do you know who ranked #1 on Google for “CM00234 Not Found During
Processing”? (This is not a real blog post, just an example).

My blog.

If you want to see a real-world example, Google this “Syntax
Highlighting for .build and .msbuild”

Guess who’s #1 on Google?

My blog.

That post is 12 years old. Yes, there is even a broken image that
is on that page and it’s super old, but this illustrates how you
can rank your content easily.

This is known as long tail keyword ranking.

Long tail keywords are very specific and you have a higher chance
of rating higher on Google.

Guess what happens when you rank higher on Google?

More exposure.

What happens when you get more exposure? More people know about
you.

This is a fantastic way to start blogging. Simply share what
you’ve worked on, and how it worked for you or share a fix to an
error that was very tricky that you could not find an answer for
online. Most likely, others are running into this as well and
they can’t find a solution. Posting your solution on your blog
will help them out.

This will lead to more exposure, FOR YOU.

This is a good thing … let me tell you a quick story before I
wrap up …

In 2009, my first full-time independent contract was coming to a
close. I was getting paid $90 an hour as a web dev. I was
blogging one to two times a week using this method above (sharing
what I learned, how to fix errors, etc) and all of a sudden I got
a cold email from a guy named Jesse from the contact form on my
blog. Jesse worked as a contractor at GMAC (now known as Ally
Bank). He saw that I was writing about some of the stuff they
were dealing with at GMAC and asked if I had any capacity to help
them.

A week later I had lunch with their team to see if it was a fit
(it was a mini interview for the team and to gauge my knowledge)
and I was a fit! In about 2-3 weeks I started working at GMAC for
$125 an hour. – a 28% raise … from a blog post. This contract
lasted almost two years and then I eventually wrote the Android
book and moved onto Android consulting.

I’ve seen this happen to MANY people over the years. MANY.

Long story short – this ONLY happened because of my blog. Jesse
was a reader of my blog and saw that I knew what I was talking
about. I was simply sharing the knowledge that I had learned from
coding and doing my day to day duties. This turned into an
opportunity – a very lucrative one.

So yeah … my blog does make money.

How?

Exposure.

It exposed what I knew to Jesse, through some indirect way – he
found it online, perhaps through a search, someone sending a link
to him, who knows. I still don’t know to this day how he found
it. That led to him emailing me and then before I knew it, I was
working with him and his team.

If I had NOT been blogging, I would not be in the position I am
in now. I’m not saying this exact thing is going to happen to
you, but I do know a blog has helped my career immensely and I’ve
seen it help others in fantastic ways too.

Which brings me to …

The two best things I’ve ever done in my career has been to start
blogging and start speaking – I’m sure you’re starting to see why
now.

If you don’t have a blog, there are many places you can set them
up. Some are great, others … not-so-much. I’ll talk about the
various options you have in the next email – stay tuned.

If you haven’t written anything for your blog in a while, or if
your not sure even what you’d talk about please hit the comment section below and let know. I’d love to learn how I can help you get it started.

📷 Lukas Blazek

That One Person

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That One Person

I follow a simple mantra when giving presentations, talks, writing a blog, creating a video, a podcast or creating anything public for that manner.

Improve the life of ONE person

My belief is that …

If I improve the life of ONE person with my content then my job is complete and I’m happy.

If I help more than one person, then that’s all gravy, baby.

Here’s my thought process on this …

If my blog post about a bug I fixed in some app helps ONE person. I’m beyond satisfied.

This is the same approach I give to public speaking – if I help ONE person then I’m happy.

Unfortunately, so many people these days start off on the wrong foot by only submitting their talks to conferences that have a lot of attendees because that’s where they feel they’ll make the biggest impression.

Yes, big conferences are fun … but IMO it doesn’t matter how many people there.

It’s the lasting effect you leave on people that matters.

I’ve spoken to groups as small as 2 people before at small tech meetups in the midwest.

It didn’t bother me. I’m honest. Not one bit. I loved it.

I was grateful they took the time to drive out to see me, sit there with me and listen to me. Beyond grateful.

Do you know why I really loved it though?

It was because I was able to help them.

They needed something and I was able to help them in their careers and life through what I provided.

That feels good. I know it will come back around in some way or another in the future. How? I’m not sure. Life works in mysterious ways.

Let’s keep going …

If I have a crowd of 500 people that I’m speaking to, and my talk helps ONE person, JUST ONE, I’m happy.

Some might say (myself included sometimes) …

Your goals are too low, you should aim higher to have everyone get something out of it. Go big!

I see your point, but you’re never going to make everyone happy – so don’t try. Here’s the thing that should apply if you have 1 person or 500 people in your crowd – you should aim to pour yourself into your talk and your presentation. If you do this then you know you gave it your all.

If you gave 100%, you’ll know that you didn’t leave anything on the table. Additionally, you’ll know that in your heart that if that ONE person out there gets something out of your talk, you’ll be truly grateful to be a positive influence in someone’s life. Well, that’s the way I see it at least.

Let’s diverge for a second as I’m sure this question is on some of your minds …

Won’t bigger conferences magnify this effect?

Definitely Yes. The more eyes and the more people you can get in front of the more impact you can make.

HOWEVER … don’t be afraid of small meetups and gatherings though. You can find these on Meetup.com and various other places that have associations and such. These are gold mines of opportunity for personal growth and professional growth.

How?

Easy.

The formula for winning here and large arenas is this: Provide Value and help at least ONE person (yet try to help as many as possible)

If you’re doing that, then guess what? You’re doing marketing for your own personal brand and when you compound this over time it will have some insane positive changes for you during your career.

Here’s some real honesty here – the majority of my consulting contracts have come from my blog, my speaking engagements and the content I’ve put out into the public.

When I speak in front of 5 people, or 500, either way – someone out there sees it and hopefully ONE person finds value in it. That ONE person may not need my help now, but eventually, 2-3-6 months or even 2-4 years down the road they have a boss/friend/family member who needs something and they know I can help them.

You never know who’s out there. Someones wife/husband/cousin/brother/etc could be the CEO/CTO of some big company or startup that needs your exact specialty. We’re all connected in ways we’ll never fully know. Never take anything for granted.

In these instances when a friend/family member/etc needs help, the person who saw my talk will say –

“Hey, I know this person who could do exactly what you need. His name is Donn Felker. Let’s get ahold of him.”

BOOM. 💥

This is magical serendipity at work.

You might be wondering … how does this fit into becoming an independent consultant or maybe even going out on my own (something I’ve been talking about more and more)?

Simple.

That one talk turned into a consulting opportunity from that ONE person. Now I just need to seal the deal and turn it into a real contract (and I did).

You wouldn’t believe how many times this has happened in my career. More times than I can count.

Helping that one person in a talk or presentation or blog or article or whatever … that’s what has tipped the scales in my favor and it will yours too.

Helping that ONE person is what will build you an endless pipeline of prospects for you to build your career on. You’ll then be able to slowly go out on your own and start consulting, contracting, freelancing and living a life that YOU want to live.

So the next time you go to speak, write a blog, create a video or put anything out there, don’t second guess yourself. Put your 100% effort into and do it right. Most likely you’ll end up helping someone and you never know when it will come back to help you in the future.

Because …

It’s that one person that you helped and walked them through a tough problem.

It’s that one person you made a good impression on and they forever remember you.

It’s that one person you stayed after to talk to or help walk through something they didn’t understand.

It’s that one person you helped open their eyes to a new concept, tool, methodology or practice that helped change their life (even if it is only small – it doesn’t matter).

It’s that one person who was mega-nervous to talk to you because they’re super introverted but they wanted to say hi and you made them feel comfortable and welcome.

It’s that ONE person.

It’s that ONE person that will remember you.

I’m sure you remember that ONE person who did something for you or said something to you that made a difference in your life.

The next time you create something, a talk, a blog, whatever it is – remember to help …

… that ONE person.

 

Thank you for reading. If you’ve read this far, please comment below and let me know what that ONE person did in your life that made a difference.

Lastly, if you enjoy this content please sign up for my email list. I send this content out 1-2 weeks prior to it being posted on the blog.

 

📷: @whereisfarid

Achieving Your Goals Feels Good

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Achieving Goals Feels Good

Do you know what feels good?

Achieving a goal.

When you work for yourself, all you do is set your own goals. If you don’t achieve your goals in business you’ll fail fast and hard. Getting things done in a self-directed manner is paramount to your success.

Self-discipline = Success.

Even something as simple as striking something off of a list feels good.

I’m not talking about some massive goals (though those are also great to complete) – here I’m talking about any goal.

Small goals. Big goals. Huge goals. Anything.

Getting things done just feels good.

Let me give you an example …

The other day I came back from a trip to Miami. When I got home I knew I needed to bring my bags in, unpack my bags, put things away and get ready for the next day. I also needed to spend some time with my children because I missed them and had been gone for nearly 6 days. I also needed to write 1000 words for a new book I’m working on (as well as reply to some of you who have replied to some of my emails – thank you all by the way).

I got home at 715pm and usually go to bed at 9:30pm-10pm. There’s not much time to do all fo that. So I got after it as soon as the car was parked in the garage …

My first goal was to get our car unpacked.

I parked and immediately brought everything in a couple trips. Goal achieved.

That felt good. 

Next goal: Get the bags upstairs and unpack.

I brought them up, and then immediately got interrupted by the kids’ bedtime routine. For the next hour or so I helped them get ready for bed, showers, talked to them about their week and spent quality time with them. It ended with some much-needed affection between us all.

Spend time with kids: Goal achieved

That felt good.

It was now 8:45 pm and  I’m already getting tired. I still had to unpack my bags.

Ugh. At this point I’m tired, I want to start winding down.

“I can do this tomorrow”.

NO.

I pushed through the desire to relax and unpacked my bags, put everything away and put my luggage away where it belongs. It doesn’t even look like I traveled anymore.

Unpack bags: Goal achieved

That felt pretty good.  So glad that is done. 

In fact, that gave me some energy and inspiration to keep going.

I like this.

I remembered that I needed to schedule some contractors to give us some quotes on having some hardwood floors installed in part of our house.

Since it was a small goal I figured “I’ll just do that tomorrow.”

Then I realized “NO, DUMMY, you can do that right now, online in a few minutes.”

I stopped what I was doing and scheduled a contractor online to come over next week.

Schedule contractor for a quote: Goal achieved

That felt good. Damn, another thing is done. Hell yeah. I’m getting some momentum.

I’m starting to feel REAL GOOD because I’m accomplishing a lot.

After that, I sit down, turn off notifications on my computer and crank out 1000 words for my upcoming book (more on that later) and by then it’s around 10:15 pm. Past my bedtime.

Write 1000 words: Goal achieved

Goddamn, that feels good. 

I went out and hung out with my wife for a few minutes and then went to bed.

What’s the point in telling you all of this?

Because setting goals, even if small, and getting them done feels good. 

Remember that time you created a todo list and you started to strike those items off of them throughout the day? How did you feel? I’d wager that you felt pretty damn good when you were done.

I feel this way about getting things done around the house, scheduling calls, writing code, writing words or copy, anything.

Big goals or small goals. Inconsequential goals. Any of them feel good to get done. Even changing the cat litter, I’m happy when it’s done.

When you set goals, even small, and continue to execute and get them done over and over, your confidence and discipline compounds. Your confidence and discipline get stronger, and well, you get better as a person. You become a better version of who you really are.

Whatever goals you have right now, be it big or small. Start on them.

Maybe you’re feeling unproductive. Take something small, and do it. Just start it. Do something.

Take out the trash. DONE. That felt good. 

Maybe you need to do a long intensive task on the computer and you really don’t want to do it. Do it for 5 minutes, that’s all. Most likely it will compound into 15-20mins (or more). This happens to me all the time.

The goal is to set goals and get them done. Pun intended.

Why?

Achieving goals feels good and builds tremendous momentum when done over and over again.

Ride the wave of confidence into the next set of goals you have and let it propel you. 

Now I’m off to finish my next goal – hitting publish on this post.

 

Photo: Glenn Carstens-Peters