You have your inspiration, now what? NOW is the time to start, that’s what! Some of you are saying “on a Tuesday, no one starts anything on a Tuesday”. That belief is exactly why I planned this post for today.
Waiting for the perfect day, the perfect time, the perfect situation – means perfectly doing nothing, ever.
Instead, every day take little steps toward our inspirational goals – then eventually look back and say “wow, look how far I’ve come”.
Need an example?
I wanted a social media presence for UpYourTeleSales.com, for me that was a scary inspirational goal – if I started, it wasn’t something that I could easily STOP because I was tired. People would begin to expect to see new ideas, new content, and inspiration.
Step 1 – break it down into a manageable bite.
Step 2 – make it repeatable, make it habit.
Step 3 – figure out what the next bite will be.
now, back to step 1 (even though it is now step 4!)
UpYourTeleSales.com’s first social media step was creating the Coaching over Coffee blog – my commitment is to blog at least weekly. Have I achieved my commitment? Well… it all depends on your measurement, perfection hasn’t been achieved – I have certainly blogged more weeks than I haven’t.
26 October 2008 was the first post and this is post 87 (I think). That is much better than not posting anything.
Once January 2009 rolled around, I started to feel like I would keep bloging, so what would my next step be? Step 2 – sending out a monthly newsletter. GULP, would I be able to continue to create content? Could I morph my personal style blogs into a newsletter format? How would I make them mesh together? What would it look like? How would I send it out? Who would want to read it?
ask for help; those questions were tough, so I turned to people with more experience, more knowledge, more skill and asked for help.
personal twist; after I got lots of feedback, I figured out a way that would work for me. I actually created 12 months worth of titles and ideas BEFORE I started to make myself feel better about having content.
It seemed fitting to send out the first issue on April Fools Day which reminds me, time to think up another year of titles again….
Which brings us to part three of my social media action steps: tweeting. As if weekly blog posts and a monthly newsletter weren’t enough – to have a presence on twitter, you’ve got to post daily (at minimum, in my opinion). That felt like a really frightening commitment level.
I decided that week day tweets would be enough, then registered UpYourTeleSales as a name. Then what? Well I did nothing – yup nothing, chickened out – freaked out – was too scared of the daily commitment.
239 tweets later, what changed?
sometimes you need a friendly push – don’t under estimate the power of sharing your inspirational goals and the daily actions you’re committing to make for you to get there.
one of my mentors started following me, even though I hadn’t posted anything… then someone who followed him STARTED FOLLOWING ME TOO *sigh* now I had to buck up and do it.
One more thing before I wrap it up, for me the cycle keeps repeating itself. Trying to build more, create more, make it more relevant. With the newsletter starting with the Construction Edition, I have been trying to use a metaphor and keep it running through the whole issue.
I also took the step of tying my blog content to the overall theme of my monthly newsletter – using my tweets to drive people to the blog. Now it will probably never be “done” or “perfect” but UpYourTeleSales.com is getting quoted and recognized more places than if no steps had been taken.
Here we are on a Friday, look at your inspirational goal and decide what one thing you can do today to take a step forward. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
This Post Has 0 Comments