Hey friends! At the beginning of each month, I share in-depth look at my blogging and business goals for the month ahead. I find that crafting goals at the start of the month is a great way to align my work with the aspirations that matter to me most. It’s also a way to keep me focused and dreaming big. Not to mention, sharing these goals for everyone to see makes me even more motivated to complete them. Today, I’m sharing how I did in June, as well as some big goals I’m striving toward this July.
As a new addition to these posts, I want to start sharing some statistical info, so you can see where we’re at. In terms of pageviews, the past month was one of our biggest months to date. Our pageviews grew 20% compared to May. And if we compare June and April? Our pageviews grew 60%. Here are June’s statistics, straight from Google Analytics:
Each week is pretty consistent and steadily growing. The dips are for each weekend — pretty interesting!
Also, while working on my quarterly taxes in June, I realized that my income so far in 2015 is the same as my entire income was in 2014. That was quite a trip for me to see, and I’m on track to double my income this year. It’s exciting and very motivating. I wonder where my business will be a year from now?
I’m currently working on an e-course that explains the exact strategies I implemented to see this kind of growth. I’m crazy excited to release it and I know it’s going to help a lot of people. WOO! (By the way, if you’re interested and want updates on when the course launches, you can sign up here).
How I did on my June goals:
1. Host my first Twitter Chat (#NectarChat)
I sure did — two, in fact! In all honesty, I wasn’t entirely sure how much I’d like hosting a Twitter chat. I knew it could be fun, but I was worried it would just become one more thing on my ever-growing to do list. The first chat took a LOT of work to prepare. I am an over-thinker and a perfectionist (a real winning combination there #sarcasm), so it took me forever to think of questions that felt useful, built community, and flowed. During the chat, I set alarms on my phone so that I was alerted each time I needed to send out a new question, which was SO HELPFUL. Hosting a Twitter chat is waaaay more fast-paced and bananas (but fun!!) than I expected, so those alarms kept me on track.
The second chat was a lot easier to create and run, and now I’m feeling much more confident about hosting them. They’re a ton of fun and I really enjoy getting to meet more members of our community. Even more than that, I enjoy seeing people have those moments where something just CLICKS. I’ve had participants tell me that they ran back to their blog after the chat because they were so inspired that they wanted to implement everything they learned straight away. I even had a reader email me to say that she stayed up until 4am just to participate and was glad she did. Man, that makes me so happy!
Our next #NectarChat is actually TONIGHT! We’re talking about how to deal with comparison and competition as a blogger, and given the supportive community that #NectarChat has become, I have a feeling one is going to be the best one yet. It starts at 6pm PST (9pm EST). If you follow me on Twitter (@nectarcollect), you’ll be able to see the questions I post. Stoked!
2. Launch a podcast
Well, clearly that hasn’t happened yet, haha! I did start the month on the right track, by purchasing all of the supplies I’d need (I had a lot of fun finding a jingle to use for the intro), but got too busy with other projects. I still would like to have a podcast in the near future, but I think it will need to take a backseat until my ecourse is finished.
3. Give a speech at Alt Summit that I feel proud of
I think there was room for improvement (but if we’re being honest, I always think there’s room for improvement), but I do feel proud about the presentation I gave! I realized that feeling proud of my presentation wasn’t about how fancy or funny it was, but about how much knowledge I was able to give the participants. And I definitely think they learned a lot, which makes me feel good.
Speaking at Alt also ignited a craving in me to teach even more. Now that I live in LA, with lots of creatives and bloggers, I’m really looking to start hosting in-person workshops sometime before 2016. I’m forcing myself to wait until my e-course is done, because I have a tendency to start a million things at once. 😉
4. Finish my eCourse and create a plan to launch it
Welp, not quite! I realized that I kept getting overwhelmed with the amount of information there is and everything that I needed to do to complete the course, which kept halting my progress. In an effort to find someone to “hold my hand,” I invested in a course (about making online courses, go figure!) with David Siteman Garland. The course has been great so far and the Facebook group that comes with it is an awesome motivator, too. I feel like I’m finally making real progress!
Goals for July 2015:
1. Finish the content for my e-course
According to the handy-dandy schedule I created, I should have the content written, recorded, and filmed by July 20th. That feels preeeetty damn ambitious right now, but I’ve also taken on less design clients for this reason and KNOW that I have enough time to do it. It’s just about finding the motivation to work on this constantly, which can be hard for my multi-passionate little brain.
2. Design a membership site for the e-course
Along with creating an e-course comes about a zillion other things I need to do, like creating a membership site where the course will actually exist and where members can log in to access the content. As a web designer, it feels a little sacrilegious to hire someone to do this for me, so I’m aiming to do it on my own. This might be the sort of the thing that would save me a lot of time to hire out to someone else though. We’ll see when it comes down to it!
3. Work on ideas for a new logo
I’ve been thinking a lot about my logo lately, and I don’t know if it feels right for us anymore. I still want our brand to feel fun, warm, and inviting, but I think our current logo looks a little too playful. I’ve also always disliked the fact that it’s asymmetrical and doesn’t work horizontally (neurotic perfectionist rears its ugly head again). I want to create something more clean and versatile. What do you think? Do you like the logo? Think we can do better?
4. Take professional headshots
This is something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, but never quite got around to it. The profile photo I currently use everywhere is a super cropped photo of me at Alt Summit last year. I like it, but it wasn’t taken to be a headshot (there’s a ton of other stuff in the photo that I cropped out haha). Anyone know of any fun portrait photographers in the LA area?!
5. Make blogging more of a priority
Or perhaps I should say, “publish blog posts consistently and on-time.” Why? Well blogging is a priority right now, but the things I’ve been prioritizing have been more “behind the scenes,” such as creating social media systems, taking photos, etc. But recently my blog posts have been a little untimely. I usually try to schedule posts for 7am each weekday, but many of them have been going out much later. I know that maybe this could be a small thing, but being consistent and reliable doesn’t feel small to me and I’m sure people have felt a little let-down when they visit in the morning and still see yesterday’s post. Anyways, I’d like to get my booty in gear and begin scheduling posts in advance again.
6. Exercise
Last but not least, exercise! One of my biggest accomplishments in 2015 so far has been adopting a much healthier diet. I stopped consuming dairy, I drink a gallon of water per day, and as much as possible, I try to eat “paleo” (i.e. I eat healthy meats like chicken breast, turkey, or fish with a heaping side of veggies). I also try to buy organic as much as possible, which is crazy expensive, but I read an article that suggested that the cost of buying organic is less than the cost of the medical bills you’ll be paying later in life if you eat a processed, GMO, non-organic diet. I don’t remember if that was from a study or someone’s opinion (haha that would be helpful!), but I understand the reasoning and it makes sense. By the way, I’m not trying to judgmental of other people’s diets and I know that eating healthy can be time-consuming and expensive. This is just something I’ve been working on, so I wanted to share my progress.
That is all to say that now I’m wondering, why don’t I ever exercise? If I’m putting in all this effort to eat healthily, then why would I lower the payoff by leading such a sedentary life? I’m currently reading The Power of Habit (awesome book so far…if you like Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll love this!), and the author talks about “keystone habits.” A keystone habit is one thing in your life that you change, which has a ripple effect and changes everything else, too. I feel like eating well is my keystone habit, which is now making me want to improve myself in a myriad of other ways. And it only took me 26 years to find it! 😉
