It’s impossible to get what you want, if you don’t know what you want.
Early this year I polled 25 of the most respected marketers I know and asked them this question:
“If you could have 10 times more of one of the following, which would it be?”
- Facebook likes
- Twitter followers
- Email subscribers
- Traffic
Here are the results…
I learned a lesson a long time ago: if you want to be successful, find out what the most successful people are doing and focus on that.
So it stands to reason that if you want to grow your online business and all of the successful people are focused on building an email list, then you should be focused on the same thing…right?
Right.
The problem is this: Focus is incredibly hard.
One minute my Facebook timeline is telling me to turn off the comments on my blog, then my Twitter feed tells me to shut down my Facebook page, and now you are reading this which is telling you to ignore all of that and focus on email.
Which do you chose?
In May my friend Noah challenged me to focus on one single business goal. Having just seen the results of this survey I knew what all of the smart people were focused on, so I decided to copy them.
There are three criteria for picking your focus goal:
- It has to be a number.
- It has to surpass your current trajectory.
- It has to be displayed in a place where you constantly see it.
I picked the number 75. Then I wrote it on a Post-It note and stapled it to my forehead.
Just kidding.
I wrote the number 75 on the whiteboard in my office.
75 was the number of new email subscribers I wanted to get on a daily basis.
That one number simplified my entire business. No longer did I have to wrestle with decisions. Any time an opportunity or tactic presented itself, I simply asked myself…
“Will this help me hit 75?”
If so, then I did it.
If not, I didn’t.
For example, a month ago I came across this article: What I Learned From Growing My Email List 3,418% (Nearly 200k) in Just 11 Days
I read it and was BLOWN away. Dude collected 300,000+ subscribers from hosting a giveaway.
So guess what I did?
I stopped everything I was doing and set up a giveaway. I went on to collect more emails from that one giveaway than I did in my entire first 5 months of blogging.
The mental clarity that this one little number gave me was incredible. The best part? Six weeks after setting the “75 new email subscribers per day” goal, I hit it! Not because I’m smart. Not because I’m pretty. But because I focused on it and ruthlessly cut out everything else. I was averaging 18 new subscribers per day, and 35 days after setting the goal I averaged 75 subscribers. Why am I telling you all of this? Because focus will make your business go BOOM. AND because I’m making a piece of software to help you focus on building your email list. Last Friday we talked about building software together (and porn and gambling). If you haven’t read that post, stop now and go read it. Today, I want to introduce you to the first project we’re going to make. Have you ever used the Chrome extension Momentum? It replaces your “new browser tab”: instead of a blank white screen, every time you open a new tab you get a cool-looking picture like this… I want to build off that concept and make something similar for marketers like you and me. Except instead of a pretty picture it will remind you of your most important goal. Building. Your. Email. List. It will display how many subscribers you want on your list and your exact daily progress towards that goal. Here is my vision of what it will look like: The app will integrate directly with your email service provider (MailChimp, AWeber etc.) and live update your progress throughout the day. My theory: If every time I open a new browser window I see my focus goal (how many subscribers I want) AND I see my daily progress towards that goal, then getting distracted on menial, less important tasks will be much harder. An old Auburn football coach, Jack Crowe, used to say… “Peak performance happens when the mind is uncluttered, the objectives are clear and the focus is consistent.” That’s the objective of List Goal. Stay focused. Stay clear. Make consistent daily progress. Every time you see List Goal, you’ll be forced to ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to do working towards my #1 goal? If not, why am I doing it?” I’m sure you have a bunch of questions about the development process. I want to answer them all, so leave your specific question in the comments below. Over the next few weeks I’m going to be showing you every part of the process of building this tool: List Goal will be free, but it will be released in small batches to make sure it goes live. I should have the first working prototype back tomorrow for testing. There is no ETA on releasing it yet, but I’ll keep you up to date. What do you think? Would this tool help you grow your list? Let me know in the comment section.
How to Stay Focused Every Minute of the Day
How to Get a Copy of List Goal