In March of this year I attended Pioneer Nation, a conference for creative entrepreneurs hosted by Chris Guillebeau. I had been working on a new print for my store Calm The Ham titled The Filmography of Aircraft, which was a giant poster illustrating 100 years of aviation in film. It was a sequel to a previous print, The Filmography of Cars, which was a similar idea except with iconic cars from television and film. After showing the print and original sketches to a  fellow conference goer, Justin Thomas (of Craftsquatch), he convinced me to launch my work through Kickstarter rather than the usual way of putting it up on my site and hope people bought it.

I had been working on this print for months, so I was keen to get a campaign set up as soon as possible. I needed to sell this thing. I had to figure out the Minimum Effective Dose of input from myself to result in my desired outcome. Basically, what was the least I could do to get this thing funded?

By being organized, creative, and spending some time researching the dos and don’ts of Kickstarter, I raised $25,161 over 30 days. Having accomplished my initial goal of $3,000 within 12 hours, I had 29 days to enjoy it without stressing. Now I want to share exactly how I did it.

How I got over 25k in 30 days… and how YOU can do it too.

The 3 key ingredients to a successful Kickstarter campaign:

1. Professional assets
2. Awesome (and deliverable) rewards
3. Traffic!

1. Professional Assets

A good product is important. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you if your product is good. Let’s assume it is. Now we need to SHOW people how awesome it is. If you look at the trend in the most successfully funded projects out there, you see that they have professional assets: slick images and great video.

There’s a lot of options these days for producing quality content without it incurring a lot of cost. For example, I shot my images personally and hired a person off TaskRabbit to do my video. I was launched on Kickstarter for less than $300.

…Yes that means a Kickass Video!

When I was first advised to try Kickstarter I wasn’t going to do a video. My first thought was that since my product was a poster print and there was no 3-dimensional features, I didn’t need a video. That would have been a HUGE mistake. I got over myself and my fear of cameras because I knew this would be important for funding. It’s more than important; it’s critical! You should have a video regardless of your product medium. Kickstarter have stated that projects without a video are 30% likely to be funded, while there is a 66% higher chance of being funded if you do have a video.

Make your product and yourself a commercial. People back projects on Kickstarter because they want to know the person behind the project, their personality, their story, and how the project was inspired. Every person that donates money is someone who believes in you.

2. Awesome (and deliverable) rewards

People back projects on Kickstarter to be involved in the process but also to get something cool out of the deal. It’s not a charity. Offer cool rewards to entice your audience, but ensure you price your rewards correctly. Figure out the profit margins ahead of time so that you don’t lose money later. Kickstarter states that the most popular pledge amount on the site is $25, so, understandably, most people want to have a $25 reward to appeal to the masses.

With that said, don’t try to squeeze yourself into this box if it doesn’t fit your project. If your main product is worth $300, then that’s probably the primary reward people will go for. My print was $45, so $45 was the primary reward people went for.

The Perfect Package

The easiest way to grow your Kickstarter revenue is to have the right pricing and packaging of rewards. You can see below that the poster reward alone raised $7,435 from a total of 160 backers; however, I raised $5,104 from only 20 backers in the highest reward, which was a framed version of 2 prints.

Having different packages allows people to pick what they want, and they usually aren’t scared to tell you if there’s something they want that you’re not offering. Pay attention, and make changes if possible. For example, my $89 reward didn’t exist when I launched. It was created from backer feedback. By giving the people what they asked for I raised $3,875 in revenue from 41 backers.

Those pesky costs…

Consider all your costs, including manufacturing, production, packaging, shipping, and transaction fees. Plan ahead so that you can budget accordingly. I’ve created a resource for you to calculate your margins beforehand in this pricing calculator.

An example of how your price breakdown might look.

I personally wouldn’t price anything lower than a 40% profit margin. Things come up, especially when you get into retail and wholesale pricing. Don’t forget that you’ll personally be spending a lot of valuable time on this, and you should account for that.

3. Traffic!

Kickstarter itself is a great source for traffic. I was very happily surprised by just how engaged the community is. A large portion of backers came from within the referral traffic from Kickstarter alone. Here’s a little glimpse of behind-the-scenes.

I was fortunate to get some coverage from blogs in the 30 days of my campaign (Thrillist, The Awesomer, GearHungry, The Coolector, Werd, First Showing). Here’s some ways I was able to get press without too much effort.

Create a media list by finding relevant websites using Google image search (use this media list template to stay organized)

Last year when I created the print The Filmography of Cars, I received a lot of blogs writing about it, so I started creating my media list from there. I took the main image of the car print, dragged and dropped it into images.google.com, and got a list of every website that ever posted about it. I then had my virtual assistant add all these websites and contact information in my media list excel document. I’ve provided a blank version here so that you can start yours.

Now I know you may not have this option if this is your first product; however, this is where you can be innovative. If you look through the successful funded projects on Kickstarter and find projects that would share a similar audience, you can follow the same steps.

Take their main image, drop it into Google images, and you’ll see a list of websites/blogs/publications who wrote about their project that may be very interested in yours as well.

Tim Ferris has an awesome post about getting media in his Hacking Kickstarter guide that is a huge help and everything you need to begin creating your media list. It also includes templates.

For every blogger I emailed, I wanted to ensure that I made it as easy as possible for them to write about me. I didn’t want to hassle them with a lot of back and forth emails that took up their time – and mine. These people get pitched great ideas every day, so do yourself the favor, and make it easy for them. To do this I created a Dropbox folder with:

1. All my product images (both high-res and low-res image sizes)
2. A description of the product
3. A little background information on the project

I’ve included the Kickstarter link in all of my emails. The least amount of work you make a blogger do, the better. With a good pitch and organized information and assets, it’s a much easier decision for them to talk up your project. I’ve also offered a giveaway to their audience once the Kickstarter ends and the print is available in my store. It’s an incentive for them to write about me, but also a future opportunity for further press. I emailed only 10 bloggers, and 8 of them put out an article (that’s an 80% conversion rate) relating to me. Here’s an example of one email I sent:

Now, can you imagine if I’d pitched more than just 8 bloggers?

Speaking of which…

3 Ways I could have increased funding

There’s a lot more I could have done with my Kickstarter campaign to increase funding; however, at the time I was overwhelmed with what I had on my plate already. No excuses, though. For my next Kickstarter campaign (already in the works), I have some ideas with how to make it more fun for everyone involved. Here’s just some of the ideas:

Collaborate and Conquer with Co-Marketing

A great way to reach a bigger audience is to look for other projects that share a similar audience and those that may compliment yours. If there’s a way to partner up with them, then you can both benefit from each other’s audience. Reach out and offer to share their project with your backers/followers if they will do the same in return. I recently backed this project (an iPhone USB charger) and in one of the later updates they sent me a link to Recoil; an automatic coil winder for wires. These products are complementary and totally applicable to each other’s audience.

Unfortunately for my campaign, I didn’t see a project that I felt aligned with my audience due to my niche product; however, I will definitely be on the lookout next time as well.

Content Creation

Another awesome way I could have driven further interaction with the campaign was to create some content around the product. I could have had a “Aircraft Fight of the Day” campaign, wherein everyday I put two of the aircraft in the print against each other in a fun graphic, giving people a chance to vote “who’s better?” and promote it each day. There would have been a grand winner by the end of the campaign, and it would have increased social interaction between myself and the backers.

I had the drawings already done. If I had spent a few hours making graphics, it would have been an easy way to create 30 days of content that drove social interaction and isn’t “SUPPORT ME” whining. (Thanks to Jonathan Nation for that idea. I’ll make you proud next time.)

Social Proof

As blogs write about your project, you should be including either quotes or the logos of publications (or both) in the project description. This is social proof that other people believe in your project. When someone comes onto your project page and sees a logo of a popular blog, it eases their mind. There’s a reason over 70% of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. These blog logos are influencers with an established reputation. Anything they involve themselves with (in this case your Kickstarter project), is seen in a better light by association.

Great examples of using social proof, from Niwa 

Don’t forget to thank the blogs/publications that have written about you in your project updates – not only to be polite, but to expose your existing backers to social proof. In sales, buyers can have a ‘buyers remorse’ and wonder if they made the right choice. By keeping them updated on the process and showing them websites that have followed and supported you, it gives them a little peace of mind.

Keep your backers updated on the production timeline. I ensured that the two days before my campaign ended that I had the prints back from the printers and could show my backers some progress. Of course this is not always possible; however, if there’s a way to show updates, it’s a great confidence builder.

Kickstarter sends out a 48-hour reminder email to everyone who asked to be notified. This is another great reason to show some progress. By having pictures of the finished print and a timeline ( which can be a rough estimate), people will feel confident in pledging their money. Spending 30 minutes on an update is worth $718.

And that’s my story of how I did it.

I raised $25,161 after 30 days but only asked for $3,000. So where did it all go?

Subscribe here to get an update soon on The Economics of a Successful Kickstarter. I’ll be releasing all the numbers down to the cents of where all the money went. I’ll be sharing all my wins and losses.

My first Kickstarter project, The Filmography of Aircraft, was successfully funded on May 23, 2013 to the total of $25,161, which was 838% of the original $3,000 asked for. I wrote about how I set up that campaign here.

There’s a general misconception that if you ask for $3,000 but make over $25,000 that you have $22,000 profit sitting in your account somewhere. I’ve lost count of the number of people who said to me, “Wow! So you just get to keep the rest of the money?!”

Generally, the more backers you obtain during the campaign, the more pre-sales you’ve done. That is to say that people expect something (usually physical) in return for their pledge. So, “no,” you don’t get a magic bag of money 30 days later with no consequences.

And this leads to why you’re here. Where’d the money all go, and how much did I pocket?

I’ve done a detailed breakdown below and explained how I handled everything. And then you’ll read what I could have done better. 

TOTAL FUNDS RAISED: USD $25,161

KICKSTARTER’S 5% FEE – $1,258.05 (leaving us: $23,902.95)

Once your project is successfully funded, Kickstarter takes its cut, which is 5% of the total fees collected.

FEES NOT COLLECTED – $89.81 ($23,813.14)

Due to Kickstarter not charging credit cards until the campaign has ended, some backers credit cards don’t come through at the end (they could have cancelled, their credit/debit card could have been no good, etc.), so it’s very common that the amount of money you raise is not the money you will collect. I have a friend who had raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter that ended up losing 10% ($10,000) of their funds due to credit cards that were not able to be authorized. For them, it meant having to find an additional source of funding in order to have their project goals met.

AMAZON PAYMENT FEES – $1,185.63 ($22,627.51)

All backers are processed by Amazon Payments. The fees generally work out between 3% and 5% of what you collect at the end. However, most people don’t realize that you still pay fees on the transactions that aren’t authorized. If a credit card fails: too bad. That’s why my fees are closer to 5% of my net. (4.71% to be precise.)

PRINTING COSTS + DELIVERY – $2,200 ($20,427.51)

My original goal was $3,000, which would cover the cost of printing the initial run of 750 prints (as well as the necessary packaging). I only sold 291 actual prints through Kickstarter (based on the reward tier), meaning I had a surplus of 459 that I could sell on my store. My $3,000 cost also included delivery of all prints from the printer in Brooklyn to the shipping fulfillment warehouse in Minnesota.

ORDERING PACKAGING – $2,797 ($17,630.51)

While it’s true I could have sent these prints out in simple kraft Uline tubes for ¼ of the cost, I wanted to invest in some nicer packaging. I ordered clear plastic tubes (1,000 total for the best price possible), perma-sealed on one end with a black plastic lid on the other. Each print was put into these tubes, then into a long shipping box with tissue paper for protection. Then they were sent out.

I was sent a cool video of the guys from GiantBomb opening a print. I’m not gonna lie; it still feels pretty cool to watch.

KICKSTARTER VIDEO & EDITING – $155 ($17,475.51)

I found my Kickstarter videographer on TaskRabbit. Living in New York City, it may seem easy to find quality contractors; however, don’t overlook these types of resources in your area, as quality diamonds are in the rough in every city. After hiring him on TaskRabbit for $55, he came to my apartment to film, bringing his own audio equipment, his own camera, and his own lights. Total winner. For editing, he asked for an additional $100, and he had the first draft back to me within 48 hours. After a couple of back-and-forth emails, I had the completed video within a week of the initial shoot.

MORE VIDEO EDITING (DUE TO TYPO) – $30 ($17,445.51)

I learned within a few hours of launching my campaign, The Filmography of Aircrafts, that the plural of Aircraft is, in fact…

wait for it…

Aircraft.

This typo needed to be fixed; therefore, all the images that showed ‘aircrafts’ (including the actual main print itself) needed to be edited. Once I updated the print and photoshopped all corresponding images, the video needed a few small fixes. This was the cost of $30. (Pretty reasonable.)

500 CERTIFICATES WITH  ENVELOPES – $216.17 ($17,229.34)

Each print came with a backers’ certificate that was signed and numbered according to their print. These certificates were 6” x 4” matte cards placed within envelopes.

THE COLLECTORS’ BOOK PRINTING – $6,060.02 ($11,169.32)

While I initially found a nicely priced printing place, I didn’t like their general lack of responsiveness and flakiness in their answers regarding book quality and delivery times. I went with Blurb.com to print the books. And it was pricey. 75 books alone cost $6,060. And two cents.

I’m wincing as I type it…

I lost money on this aspect of my campaign as the cost per book was around $100 due to the paper quality, images, and number of pages. I did get a bulk discount of 10% off; however, I should have further researched other printers about book costs. (I know, I know…)

FRAMES WITH FULFILLMENT – $1,492.02 ($9,677.30)

The framing company handbuilt each frame (46 people picked this tier) and physically put the print into the frame. (Originally I had planned to order all the frames and have them delivered to my apartment in order to do this part myself. Thankfully I came to my senses.)

SHIPPING FULFILLMENT – $406.10 ($9,271.20)

The fulfillment company was in charge of sending out all the orders at a cost of $1.55 per order. $1.55 x 262 orders equalled $406.10, which also equalled me not worrying about packaging.

POSTAGE COSTS – $4,820.30  ($4,450.90)

I shipped all of the orders via USPS Priority within the U.S., which cost between $6 – $8 per package. International shipments ran between $18 – $65. (The framed posters ran even more expensive at over $100.)

TAXES – $1,907.81 ($2,543.09)

Even the U.S. government get a piece of your Kickstarter! Luckily for me, I only pay tax on the net profit, not the expenses.

Quick advice: If you run a Kickstarter campaign at the end of the calendar year, you should wait to deposit your funds from Amazon into your bank account until January 1st. This way, you don’t have to pay these taxes until the following year. (Use your credit card to pay costs if need be, otherwise you’ll have to pay taxes on the entire amount, instead of only on your net profit (profit AFTER expenses). Don’t let ‘em get ya.

TOTAL NET PROFIT: $2,543.09

Now, can you imagine if I had accounted for my time? Had that been factored in I would have definitely been in the red. Someone on Kickstarter asked me to reduce the price of prints on Kickstarter once I met my initial goal since I’d “already reached my goal” and could therefore afford it. I hope this shows the true cost of Kickstarter.

$3,543.09 is not a lot of profit considering the time and effort I put into the print, not drawing a salary, and not counting the rent, utility bills, and equipment for the office I spent in during the many hours working on the illustrations.

When I mention equipment, I’m also referring to a Christmas present I gave myself last year specifically for this print: the Cintiq. It’s an amazing piece of technology, and it saved me a lot of time digitizing the sketches into images. With that said, it runs $1,899.99.

Since we’re already discussing the taboo and oh-so-tacky subject of money and profitability, I’d be remiss to not mention that both The Filmography of Aircraft and The Filmography of Cars is available to at my store, Calm The Ham.

MY BIGGEST MISTAKES

– Offering framed prints for international delivery

Big mistake. Huge. The cost for shipping these prints alone was expensive. Adding a heavy wood frame to the mix made the postage cost more expensive than the actual frame costs. While backers did pay a small portion of the cost, it was still mostly an out of pocket (my Kickstarter pocket) expense. For my next Kickstarter I plan to offer framed prints only to domestic backers while I provide links for international backers to order their frames separately from a delivery source close to them.

– Paying commercial prices for the book

Due to the large cost of the books, I only bought enough for the backers (and two copies for myself). Ideally, if I had have used my time and money more wisely, I could have ordered a large number to also sell as a bundle with the print on my store.

These mistakes are definitely something I will be avoiding in my next campaign, which is The Filmography of Guns, which will be released later in August. If you’d like to be updated on the release of this print, sign up to my newsletter here. You can also follow me on twitter for updates about similar projects I’m working on.

Leave me a note in the comments if I missed anything, or have an idea for another Kickstarter article you’d be interested in learning about. Or if you’re like me and just enjoy seeing the nitty gritty numbers!

Over the past few years, I feel like I’ve gone from dipping my toe in the pool of entrepreneurship to jumping off the highest diving board right into the thick of it all. With that said, I feel like I’ve designed a life that I love, rather than the one I (secretly?) wished to escape from.

I was entrepreneurial from a young age, always cooking up ideas on how to make some extra pocket money. Whether it was washing cars in the neighborhood, selling cupcakes in the school playground, or setting up an eBay drop ship business at age 13 (I sold The Dawson’s Creek Full Series DVD Collection which wasn’t available in the UK or Ireland at the time. The say sell what you know, right?), I was an entrepreneur. I had my first “recurring revenue” business at age nine. It involved getting my brothers to pay each time they used my charger to charge their rechargeable batteries.

Then I “grew up.” I got focused on school and left my business adventures behind me. I went to university to study architecture. After almost seven years of working and studying, I earned a BA (Hons), DipArch, and MArch. With all those letters after my name I felt I had to be bound for success, right?

Sure…

I got offered a job in architecture in New York City, and left the UK/Ireland to begin my life in the United States. Little did I know that after two years of working, I’d be desperate to escape corporate America and, what I called, Archi-torture.

New York State of Mind

I worked 60-hour weeks, was made to feel bad when I took any mandatory time off, and I had a pay scale that I felt didn’t reflected my true value. Through reading books such as Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The 4-Hour Workweek on my subway commutes, I realized that I didn’t want to exchange the bulk of my time for little money any longer.

After reading The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau, I was inspired to start a side business freelancing and selling design prints that myself and a couple of friends would create for fun. Don’t tell Chris, but it was more like a $500 startup. However, it was extremely lean, and, more importantly, it was an intersection of my two passions: design and entrepreneurship. I considered it a vehicle to freedom that would help me someday escape the rat race while giving me the time to realize my full potential.

After 18 months of saving and grinding away at my hectic job while pursuing my new personal adventure, I decided to work my architecture job only part time – and on a 3-month trial basis. It was a calculated risk. If I failed or hated working for myself, I could always just go back to the grind.

Turns out I loved working for myself. I never wanted a “real job” again.

I wanted a challenge to keep me on my toes, but I also needed to feel secure while working on this new freedom. (I didn’t want to go back to my dreaded job.) I had known about an entrepreneurship course called The Foundation through podcasts such as Mixergy, but now it seemed like it was really calling out to me.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

The Foundation

Through learning success stories from The Foundation alumni Sam Ovens, Carl Mattiola, Josh Isaak, Esther de Boer, and Renata Haute (to name only a few), I knew I wanted that. There was an authenticity to their stories because they didn’t show up talking about some get rich quick scheme to make money online. Unlike any other business courses I’ve seen, they talked about their mindset shifts and how through overcoming limiting beliefs and creating a new identity they were able to build successful businesses. Furthermore, these businesses, for the most part, became 5-6 figure per month SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses, which is no easy feat.

I joined The Foundation on November 17, 2013. At the time, it cost me $4,500 – the most money I’d ever spent on one single thing! It was more than my credit card limit supposedly allowed (by $500), so I didn’t think it would even go through. It did, however, and I was in.

Spoiler: best money I ever spent.

I know what some of you are thinking: WTF is The Foundation? On their website they describe it as, “An online mentoring program guiding entrepreneurs to start and scale software companies, from scratch, as quickly as possible. Even if they have no idea what to build, or any software experience at all. Students take our program virtually from all over the world.”

How do I describe it? Building something of value in the world from scratch, uniting with like-minded entrepreneurs, and joining the Value Economy (not trading my time for money).

On November 26, 2013, the eve before my 27th birthday, I left my architecture job for good. And I was scared. No, that’s not it. I was terrified.

At 27 years old, I was unemployed for the first time in my life. I was splitting my time between Calm The Ham, my design/Shopify business and going through the Foundation framework.

I remember in the first few weeks we were asked to define our “Why.” By defining the purpose and primary motivation behind our actions, it helped us to gain clarity on what our ultimate goals were and why we were on this journey.

The designer in me decided to make a personal WHY poster for my wall so I could see it everyday when I was working. I didn’t realize how important it would be until about two months in when the daily minutia of cold calling, trying to get decision-makers on the phone, and frequently being rejected had set in. Having that poster on my wall staring at me day-in and day-out kept me motivated to keep going.

This was on my wall for every idea extraction call, outbound email, cold call, pre-sales call, virtual demonstration… everything. (I have the Holstee Manifesto, the inspiration for my WHY poster, on my wall as well. I love it.)

Being a business owner (with my Design Print business) didn’t help make me a better student at The Foundation, but rather being a student at the Foundation made me a better business owner. I was able to do more for my business while in the Foundation than I was doing before.

• Fulfillment: Until April 2014, I was still fulfilling all orders through my store myself, from my New York City apartment. This was a total waste of my mental energy, living space (during the holiday season my apartment looked more like a shipping warehouse) and most importantly, my time. My Foundation coach, Dennis, convinced me to get this off my hands. I took his advice and stepped away from everything else to solve it. Guess what? This huge issue that was costing me huge energy, time, and money that I had been ignoring was solved within three weeks. I found a fulfillment company that suited my needs, signed a contract, and shipped everything to Minnesota. I got my apartment back, and I no longer had to deal with USPS and UPS. Success!

• Kickstarter: It was another foundation student, Justin Thomas (founder of Craftsquatch), that convinced me to do a Kickstarter campaign while at a conference in Portland. My negative mindset asked who would want to fund me? But then thought, Why not? It was something new and uncomfortable, so I had to try it. Why couldn’t I pre-sell a product via Kickstarter like we pre-sell a SaaS solution in The Foundation? Three weeks later I had concluded my research into what makes a successful kickstarter project, filmed my video, and launched my campaign. I raised $25,161 in that project in May. (The Filmography of Aircraft reached 838% of my goal.) I just finished another project that raised $45,905. (The Filmography of Guns reached 706% of my goal.)

• Building Systems: After spending time with high-level entrepreneurs and seeing how they work, I started to build systems and processes into the business to take things out of my hands. This is still a work in progress (and something I will be sharing in future posts), however it has allowed me to leverage my talents.

At the end of the course’s six months, I had five customers pre-sold on my SaaS product, and I was beginning development. The big secret? I took action every day. Whether it was big or small, I was following the course’s framework and doing my best to move the needle.

Speed of implementation is crucial to success. Just between us, I have not yet completed the foundation modules. The last module is about scaling the business, but since I am not at that point yet why would I need to be learning about that? Exactly. Only digest content you can implement right away, or you’ll forget it. Think about it this way: your competition only has 24 hours in their day too. What’s the best way you can optimize your time and skill set so you can compete (and dominate)?

I was considered one of the “success stories” of this year’s class after closing $6,000 in pre-sales for my new company ClinicHero, and I was voted “Biggest Transformation” at their live event. While the pre-sales were really awesome, they didn’t compare with the mindset shift I’ve experienced or the connections I’ve established, and that’s how I measure my personal success in the program. If this new business doesn’t work out, I know I have the tools to create value in other ways.

Post-Foundation

Just last week I onboarded my first user onto my SaaS product ClinicHero. The other users that pre-bought the solution will be onboarded in the next few weeks. I’m turning back on my outbound sales process to get more users onto the product. It will be interesting going from pre-selling a product that doesn’t yet exist to selling one that does.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

The underlying message of the quote above is that the people you surround yourself with can elevate you as much as it can bring you down. Why not choose to be elevated? I recently joined the high-level Mastermind group Sterling Assembly, founded by Carl Mattiola and Josh Isaak. Early this month (October 2014), we spent four intense days staying in a house in Austin, Texas where we took part in skill workshops, business hotseats, and idea brainstorming. If you’re serious about being an entrepreneur, I would strongly recommend you find or create a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who are willing to learn and commit to their own success. It will help you grow. And it’s fun as hell.

That’s all, Folks! I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, and your own entrepreneurial journeys in the comments. Thanks so much.

I was recently visited by a good friend I went to university with. He’s still in the field of architecture, and it was the first time we’d seen each other since I’d given up on the industry in favor of entrepreneurship.

During his visit we talked a lot about the Architecture industry as a whole, our biggest problems with it, and why I ultimately decided it wasn’t what I wanted. I described moments at my job when I was working on designs for a high-end luxury apartment in the Lower East Side and thinking, “If I stay in this job, I will never be able to live like this.” Not that I dreamt of luxury penthouses and a $70,000 custom millwork closet (yes, this happened), but I did dream of financial freedom and travel, as well as working for myself.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I was working at my job in architecture, I started a side project, Calm The Ham, which after 18 months of work was making decent money, especially compared to the $40,000 I was making at my job (which does not stretch far living in New York City). I was only able to work on Calm the Ham on weeknights and weekends, which slowly became harder and harder as I juggled this new life. In the 6 months prior to quitting my more stable job, I kept thinking what if I had the time and resources to make my newer venture full-time. What could I create if it was my only focus?

Then the negative thoughts kick in. I don’t have an MBA. I never took a business studies class in high school. What do I know about running and growing a business?

I wasn’t about to quit my job, join an MBA program, and then start a business. I didn’t have the time, patience, or money for that. I needed to learn the basic principles of business, both running and growing one. I made a reading list for myself of all the business books I had heard about from people I admired or that had been recommended to me personally. I spent $237.91 on books and $199 on a Mixergy Premium subscription.

The Challenge

I told myself that I had to read my list of books before I was allowed to quit my architecture job. In January 2013, when I made the list, I was already itching to get out of the corporate world, so it was the perfect fuel for me to consume as many books as possible.

I quit my job November 26, 2013.

Here’s the list of books that made it possible to build not just one, but two businesses:

Personal Mindset & Inspiration

1. Awaken The Giant Within – Tony Robbins

An inspirational book by Tony Robbins. Difficult to drill down to one lesson I’ve learned but essentially this book has the potential to change your life.

2. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

Understanding the true stories of success and how people have thrived. Malcolm Gladwell presents the idea of it taking 10,000 hours to master a skill. I loved the great anecdotes of how hard work and luck (family background, birthplace, or even birth date) can play equally into success.

3. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell explores the moment when a trend or idea reaches the magic “tipping point” when it spreads like wildfire.

4. The Millionaire Fastlane – MJ DeMarco

Become a producer instead of a consumer to attain wealth, and stop trading your time for money. This book partners well with the concepts from Rich Dad, Poor Dad (in the Finance section below).

5. Good to Great – Jim Collins

A 5 year study on what differentiates good companies from great companies. This is a great book for playing the long-game with your company as opposed to a quick fix.

Productivity

6. The Four Hour Work Week – Tim Ferris

Takeaway: Making more money by working less – an alien concept, especially coming from architecture where we tend to work many more hours than we’re compensated for. I also learned the power of outsourcing. This alone has has helped my productivity immeasurably. I recommend this book to everyone whether they’re an entrepreneur or not.

7. The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy

Takeaway: I’m using the formula laid out in this book to become the best version of myself. This book is  a basic manual for success and living an extraordinary life.

8. The 80/20 Principles -Richard Koch

Takeaway: Focus on critical tasks which require only 20% of efforts and create 80% of results. Hugely powerful concept, and I’ve found it to be generally true with my businesses. I used it with Calm the Ham to define my top customers – the 20% that give me 80% of revenue. Then I asked myself, How can I better serve these people?

9. The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes

Takeaway: Stop doing 4,000 different things in my business. Through pigheaded discipline and determination I should do 8 specific tasks perfectly 4,000 times instead.

The time management chapter of The Ultimate Sales Machine was very helpful as I used to struggle with this. I took the advice from Chet Holmes and made an awesome planner to organize according to my most mission-critical tasks. Grab your own copy below:

10. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg

Takeaway: Through learning the science of habits creation, I’ve learned how to break some of my bad ones. There’s also great stories of how corporations have used habits to sell products. (The toothpaste one was my favorite.)

Business

11. The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufman

A great overview of everything I needed to know (and more) about business without any fluff or buzzwords.

12. The Lean Startup – Eric Reis

Allocating resources as efficiently as possible so your business is organized for fast learning. Great book for how to make best use of limited resources.

13. The $100 Startup – Chris Guillebeau

Takeaway:Startup inspiration: You don’t need much money to begin a life of adventure and purpose. Proof: I started Calm The Ham with less than $500.

14. Crush it – Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk wrote this great book on turning passions and interests into real businesses. He explains how he uses passion, social media, and transparency within his businesses to crush his competition.

15. The E-Myth Revisited – Michael E. Gerber

Takeaway: Putting things in place so I’m working on my businesses instead of in them. This has allowed me the freedom to grow revenue and have more free time.

16. Purple Cow – Seth Godin

How the key to success is to stand out among my competition and avoid distinction in today’s economy.

17. ReWork – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Short yet impactful read by the thought leaders of 37 Signals. Stay small, embrace constraints, and build less.

18. This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better – Neville Medhora

This short read by Neville Medhora of Appsumo is a great introduction to copywriting and learning how to write better, converting people into customers and mind-hacks that make it easier to simply write.

Sales

19. To Sell is Human – Daniel Pink

Takeaway: “Selling” is not a dirty word. This book helped me become comfortable with the idea of selling. This book is great for understanding concepts behind sales and how to approach them.

20. Pitch Anything – Oren Klaff

A great introduction of how to structure sales calls or presentations to ensure prospects are engaged enough to buy in. Coming from a non-sales background, I found this especially interesting.

Finance

21. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki

Takeaway: This book really drilled in the concept of wealth, liabilities and assets. I remember sitting on the subway commute and thinking, Why didn’t I read this book 10 years ago? Better late than never.

22. I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Ramit Sethi

Takeaway: Personal Finance doesn’t have to be boring. I applied savings and negotiation tactics from this book to my life which both made and saved me money.

In April I launched the project The Filmography of Aircraft and received $25,161 in funding, which was 838% of my original goal. In September, I launched The Filmography of Guns and received $45,905 in funding, which was 708% of my goal. So what did I do differently? Essentially these products were very similar, yet the second project doubled its funding to over $50,000 total (My math isn’t off. I’ll explain soon…)

In a previous post I wrote about my method of launching a successful Kickstarter campaign, and then later the true costs of a successful Kickstarter project. If you haven’t read these, I would suggest you read them for the full story of then versus now.

Backer Engagement

The behavior of the majority of Kickstarter projects is that it launches, get pledges during the first 48-72 hours, and then it gets quiet. How do you keep backers engaged? In the the last Kickstarter post I mentioned a strategy to improve in the future would be to run a contest to drive engagement between backers. I did that this time with the Guns campaign: a film gun tournament wherein everyday I put guns against each other in a fun graphic giving people a chance to vote and promote each day. Backers who voted at a $1 level were given voting rights. By telling backers that I’d be doing something cool with the winning gun, they had a vested interest in making sure it was one they liked. Toward the end of the campaign I had over 170 backers voting each day, which is great engagement considering it requires clicking to another site to vote. 

Updates, updates… and more updates

I posted many more updates this time to keep in touch with backers, both for the contest updates and to announce new ideas for the Kickstarter. Some of these were personal videos from me which I didn’t do previously (because I really dislike recording videos of myself), and I think this increased trust with backers.

Just look at the difference between The Filmography of Aircraft and The Filmography of Guns. Updates + contest = engagement.

Also since fulfillment isn’t quite complete (should be by the end of this week) there will be a few updates and comments forthcoming.

At the end of the contest, the winning gun was The Walther PPK made famous by James Bond. I gave a signed 8.5″ x 11″ of this gun to all my backers who pledged at higher than a $25 level or higher as a way of showing my appreciation for those who had taken the time to vote.

Joint Venture Opportunities

I reached out to Chris Serrano who runs the Internet Movie Firearm Database who was extremely helpful both during Kickstarter and since. Not only did he proof the print for errors, he has also partnered with me as an affiliate for The Filmography of Guns products, and we’re coming up with ideas for future products. I created a landing page on my store that was created solely for his audience.

I created many images for the contest which were very shareable by nature. By Chris sharing images on his Facebook page which was already highly engaged, I gained a lot of exposure and engagement. In the month of the Kickstarter campaign, I received 535 more likes on our Facebook page.

Takeaway: Partner with people who already serve your target audience. There are endless opportunities, and, if possible, create shareable images for social media to build a following.

Crafting the Perfect Kickstarter Page

Over the past few months I’ve been working on a free course for Kickstarter and had been researching both successful and unsuccessful projects. I’ve broken down a successful Kickstarter page into 7 key elements;

1. The Video
2. The Pictures
3. The Funding
4. The Timeline
5. The Rewards
6. The Social Proof
7. The FAQs.

I’ll explain these elements better in another post, but if you’d like to get this free Kickstarter course first you can sign up to be notified here.

Now, in regards to the page elements: a picture tells 1000 words. In the image below (click image below to see), compare my previous campaign page with the most recent one. Do you see a big difference?

Do you see a big difference?

I do. More detailed, more information about rewards, social proof, better images. Basically I crafted the Kickstarter campaign page as if it was a product itself and it worked.

The Rewards

I priced the rewards slightly higher this time. With Aircraft, I didn’t account (as much as I should have) for the high cost of postage. The base reward that I knew everyone would want would be the print itself. Last time I priced this reward as $45, whereas this time I had an early bird special for numbered editions 20-119 for $49. This was limited to 100 backers who would get both a price discount and an earlier numbered edition. By limiting this reward level, I’m building scarcity and people are more likely to back earlier. This reward alone accounted for 13% of the final raised amount, or $5,913, and almost the entire funding goal.

Takeaway: Build scarcity by limiting rewards for early adopters in your project. Give them something special as a reward (e.g., early numbered print editions).

Introduce new rewards

Don’t be afraid to introducing new rewards if people ask. In my mind, The Filmography of Guns print was the main reward everyone would want, and the Collector’s Book reward was a secondary supplement. However, several people wrote asking for just a book reward level which now makes sense. Some people won’t have any need (or room) for a print with guns on their wall, but they would want a book. I created that reward, and it ended up being one of the most popular tiers and accounted for $6,880 of revenue.

Reward bundles

Do you have backers asking how they add on multiple rewards to their pledge? Make it simple for them to do so by bundling products together as one reward. I don’t like doing math so I’m not going to make my backers do it either. In the image below is a reward bundle I added mid-way through the campaign to keep engagement going and increase funding.

Press

I emailed many more bloggers than last time as well as different types of bloggers, such as those that ran either design, film, and gun blogs. I essentially used the exact same template shown in this post. Many of the places I wrote ended up covering the print while other blogs I received coverage from simply shared from those places I did contact and posted the same information.

I also reached out to podcasters who were already serving my target audience and, as a result, appeared as a guest on Pencil Kings, Gun Nation, and Hollywood Guns.

All the links in pink are from emails I personally sent to these blogs owners. The press in blue were shared from the articles of the press I contacted… ah yes, the butterfly effect. The top 2 blog referral sources accounted for $3,760 (around 8%) of the total funding.

I used the press I received as social proof (#6 in my perfect Kickstarter page list) which I added to my Kickstarter page to build credibility. As well as this I created a share button which led to a very simple landing page to make it easy for people to quickly share my project to their Facebook and Twitter.

 The Fiverr Hack

Ever considered getting press from Fiver? Yes it’s possible. I got a 5,390% Return on Investment (ROI) from this platform. I spent $10 and ended up getting at least $549 in funding on Kickstarter (I’ll explain the ‘at least’ in the next part). How did I do it? I went to Fiverr.com and searched for ‘guns’. Most of the results were useless to me, but 1-2 decent ones is all I needed.

Screenshot:

I paid $5 for each of these people to post to their gun-related Facebook pages about my project, which was exactly suited to their large audience. One of them ended up writing a blog post about it since he liked the project so much. From that post I gained $549 in funding on Kickstarter. It most likely led to more funding than that, but unfortunately I can’t put an exact number on it due to limited tracking from Facebook. So while I can’t track from Facebook exactly if more people pledged from their posts, there’s a very good chance they did. Or at the very least shared it via social media.

 Takeaway: Don’t limit yourself to the conventional methods of getting eyes on your project. Small hacks like this may be equally as effective in funding on Kickstarter. I wish now I had explored it more; however, at the time, I was experimenting and seeing what works.

Want to see how I did it and how you can do the same? Watch the BONUS VIDEO below:

Backerkit

This is where the extra $5,000 came from that actually doubled my previous Kickstarter funding. I used Backerkit for this project which I didn’t use last time. My original intention for using was for the more robust survey and tracking capabilities. Due to the add-ons and reward levels, I didn’t think the Kickstarter platform itself would allow for such robust surveys – at least not without me spending many hours in front of a computer. I know my strengths, and organization and spreadsheets generally aren’t in my basket top skills. Backerkit allows people to increase their rewards and add on new products all at the same Kickstarter prices.

I thought it was a little expensive at first: $608 with 5% of any extra add-ons bought. However, I ended up getting money in extra add-ons from backers, so it turned out to be a great ROI. Also it meant easily sending tracking information, surveying for future products, etc.

Takeaway: Don’t be afraid of trying something new, it can end up paying off in dividends (literally). Also, value your time. I knew by not using this system I would waste many hours trying to do this myself, and I know there’s better things I could be doing.

Nevermind the time savings and revenue, I used the surveys to find out what products people wanted next from me next. It’s a lot easier to decide what’s next when you have a backer wishlist of products and email address for each.

And that’s how I did it… again. I made some major improvements from last time, gained some new fans from Kickstarter, made contact with a few people who are now working with me on collaborations for new projects. I’m definitely happy I returned to Kickstarter for this project for these reasons alone.

So was I more profitable this time than last time?

Time will tell… as will the blog post with the full cost breakdown of where all the money went (as I did before). To be updated first of when that goes live sign up for my update list, you’ll also receive The Entrepreneur’s Toolkit which is all the resources and tools I use to start and run my businesses.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below.

If I had to describe 2014 in 3 words, it would be Freedom, Growth and Discovery. I accomplished a lot in the year both personally and in business. I’m writing this entry on January 6, 2015 as I fly back from Ireland after my Christmas break. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks unwinding from the year, reflecting on what 2014 brought, and planning for this next year in 2015. And eating.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
– Ferris Bueller

According to Mr. Bueller, I miss alot. I don’t tend to do much reflection during the year, nor do I even take time off to celebrate my wins because I’m always onto trying to reach the next level. I also never realize how far I’ve come because I’m looking at the people ahead of me and keep trying to catch up to them rather than looking back to see how far I’ve come. I’m planning to change this in 2015 with quarterly reflection sessions. I found this post that gives you 50 questions to help you reflect, appreciate, and get excited for 2015 that you should check out as well if you’re unsure how to review your year.

“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn

One of the things I’m most happy with is how I’ve grown my personal network in the past year with other entrepreneurs and trailblazers who inspire me everyday to keep going and moving to the next level. I did this first through The Foundation, which I completed in June, and followed up by attending several conferences throughout the year. Surrounding yourself with other entrepreneurs is extremely powerful, and if you’re feeling stuck I would highly recommend this. During my 2014 reflections, I realized that my achievements were either directly or indirectly a result of the input or influence of these entrepreneurs.

Business

Here were my 3 biggest business wins:

1. Setting up Calm The Ham with a fulfillment warehouse

This was HUGE for me personally and the most important thing I did all year. It allowed me to save the time I was spending packing and shipping orders. I could now spend my time on much higher leverage tasks. On a personal note, it also meant getting my apartment back to being much more livable. It also meant location independence for me, as I was able to travel throughout the year without being worried about orders not being fulfilled in a timely manner. By completing this in Q1 (by March), I was able to work on the business instead of in it. I could also spend more time being creative.

2. 2 Successful Kickstarter campaigns

The Filmography of Aircraft successfully funded $25,161 in May (a direct result of meeting Justin Thomas at the Pioneer Nation conference). I followed up this campaign with Filmography of Guns in October which received over 50K in funding total. I was able to use Kickstarter as a platform to grow my audience base, engage with supporters, and grow my product line to more of what people wanted to see. As a result, I have creative projects lined up for the next 6 months.

3. Launching a SaaS business

I launched a software business (ClinicHero) which is something completely new for me. It was the result of my time in The Foundation, wherein I researched a market, spoke to people in the market, found a problem, came up with a possible solution, and pre-sold the idea to 5 people who gave me money to develop it. Yes, you can receive money for something that doesn’t yet exist if the problem is painful enough.

4. Becoming a Mastermind coach with The Foundation

I was asked to become one of the mastermind coaches with the new class which began at the end of November. I’m excited to see where these entrepreneurs go and how I can help on their paths. One student is only 17-years-old, which is pretty amazing. It would have been nice if I was so on the ball at such a young age. (But that’s fine! We’re focusing on accomplishes after all! wink)

A personal accomplishment: My speech at The Foundation live event.

Health & Fitness

A few years ago I had formed really good habits with exercising and working out daily, but when I moved stateside and was working as an architect, all that discipline went out the window. I worked too much, slept too little, and didn’t eat right. The long work hours and lack of sleep meant exercising was not a priority. After quitting my job at the end of last year (yay!), I decided to be more serious about getting back to healthy habits. I started working with a personal trainer in February, which was a game changer as far as personal fitness for me and learning how to exercise properly. I’d never gone near a bench press nor have I done any real weight lifting whatsoever, but now I’m comfortable with it, and I actually enjoy it.

“Losing Weight” was always what I considered my goal for the gym, which is a pretty generic and non-specific goal. I didn’t set goals last year. Sure, I had ideas in mind of what I wanted to achieve, but they weren’t SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Oriented – goals, which are the way to go. Setting precise goals for every part of my life is the only way to really make things happen.

When I measured my body fat in January 2014, I was around 25.1% body fat, which is in Average zone according to American Council on Exercise. When I recently measured in mid-December 2014, I was 21.4%, which is in the Fitness zone. My goal now is to acheive and maintain 19% body fat by June 1, 2015 and be in the Athlete zone.

Here are my current one rep maxes (It was “leg day” at the gym yesterday so I happen to know these):

• 460 lbs leg press
• 160 lbs leg extension
• 220 lb squat
• 4 pull-ups (I could do none at the start of the year)

Travel

Traveling is something I’m really enjoying having the freedom to do because now I can essentially work from anywhere. In 2012-2013, while I was still working as an architect, I barely went anywhere due to lack of time, money, and vacation days. In 2014, I made up for this with a lot of traveling – mainly for conferences, mastermind meet ups, and a little fun.

Between March and December 2014, I visited, Portland (twice), Colorado Springs and Boulder (CO), Seattle (WA), Juneau (AK), Skagway (AK), Victoria (Canada), Austin (TX), Orlando (FL), and Ireland.

In 2015 I have trips planned to San Diego, Portland, and Iceland so far.

The conferences I attended in 2014 were:

Pioneer Nation, The Foundation: Live Event, World Domination Summit, Nearly Impossible

Pioneer Nation: Awesome conference in Portland. Also sitting next to Bill Gates brother…

How I plan to crush Q1 of 2015

Here are some area’s I’m going to be working on for Q1 of this year:

1. Set my morning success ritual

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.”
– Jim Rohn

My first focus for 2015 is to solidify my daily routine because I know how important it is for a successful life. Reading, writing, meditation, and exercise are all activities I want to be doing on a daily basis, so that’s something I’ll be implementing into each day. Once I have it perfected (successfully completing for 30 straight days), I will let you know what’s working for me and the results.

My friend Carl Mattiola wrote a great post last month about his morning routine, and he’s a top performing entrepreneur running 4 businesses.

2. Prioritize, Delegate & Build Systems

In the second half of 2014, I started valuing my time much more highly than ever before. As I became busier with business and different projects I began treating my time like a precious commodity. I started prioritizing tasks and delegating anything that which I disliked doing and/or tasks that didn’t require me specifically to do them to my virtual assistant (VA). This definitely helped a lot, but I could be much better and plan to spend time delegating and building better systems for everything I do in Q1 (Jan-March).

3. Read 3 books per month

I recently wrote a previous post about the 22 books I used to quit my job in 2013. I don’t think I read more than 6-7 books in 2014, which is why I want to get back into the habit of reading again. We’re now 7 days in to 2015, and I’ve already started and finished 2 books. By adding 20 minutes of reading into my morning routine, I’ll be ensuring I beat that number this year. My goal is 36 books in 2015. I’ll be tracking them here . Got suggestions for books? Let me know in the comments.

Massive Action Plan 2015

Have you set SMART goals for 2015? I spent yesterday completing an action plan for myself for January-April by setting outcome goals, breaking those down into 3 performance goals, and breaking the performance goals down into 3 process goals each. Essentially that’s 9 processes to complete for each outcome goal.

From there, I set out a daily to-do list so I know what I should be doing each day. This really helps because you can stay on track to your goals, and it helps with decision fatigue. The last thing you want to do in the morning is waste precious brain resources figuring out what you have to do that day to stay on track with goals – at least that’s true for me.

Let me know your goals for the year in the comments below. Do you have someone to hold you accountable?

For the majority of my child and adult life I never considered myself a “morning person.” I was a night owl. During my architecture school career I worked late through the night and slept in the mornings. When I started working at an Architecture firm, I conformed to getting up at 7am… but I didn’t enjoy it. I would get up as late as possible, skip breakfast, rush to work, and then feel like I was trying to catch up the rest of the day. This type of routine will take its toll on your physical and mental well-being and majorly impact your productivity.

Now, I work from home for myself on various businesses, and I happily wake up around 5:30 am each day. Even on weekends, I’m usually up by 7 am. It could be that I’m enjoying the work I’m doing so much and am accountable to only myself; however, I think it has more to do with the fact that I’ve learned so much about how creating good habits and a morning routine are critical for lifetime success. A morning routine sets the tone for the whole day, and if you do each day right, you’ll do life right.

One of my goals for the beginning of this year was to get into a good morning routine in order to set myself up for the day. It started whenever I read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod in January. I knew that not having a good morning routine and being disorganized were connected.

I needed to work smarter, not harder, and the first step was to create good habits. The first thing I needed to do was quit the belief that I was a “night owl.”

Over the past several months I have been working on “habit stacking” to craft myself a good morning routine that works for me. Habit Stacking is a way to build a new habit into your life by stacking it on top of something you’re currently doing. For example, before I brush my teeth in the morning (current habit) I will meditate (new habit) for 3 minutes. I’ve discovered the personal ritual I have set up for myself has helped put me in the right mindset and offset any morning procrastination. Here’s a great article about Habit Stacking.

Another great reason to create a morning ritual it is to avoid mental fatigue. We only have a certain amount of energy and willpower when we wake up each morning, and it slowly gets drained away with decisions. This is especially true if you’re making hundreds of small decisions in the morning that mean nothing yet will affect how you make decisions for the remainder of the day. Try to have the first hour of your day vary as little as possible with a routine.

Avoiding mental fatigue is why Mark Zuckerberg wears the same thing everyday.

Knowing exactly how the first 90 minutes of my day looks like is powerful, as it helps me feel in control and non-reactive, which in turn reduces anxiety and ensures I’m more productive throughout the day.

The First 60 Minutes of my day

1. Wake up and drink a 16oz glass of ice cold water

After 6–10 hours without any liquid, you need to rehydrate and wake yourself up. Drinking water is a great way to kickstart your metabolism, especially when it’s ice cold.

2. Stretching

A little light stretching in the morning is all it takes to shake off grogginess and limber up for the day ahead. It only takes a few minutes but by doing basic stretches, here’s the ones I do.

3.Take a cold shower (3 mins)

When I first heard friends talk about taking cold showers in the morning, I thought they were nuts. Then one random day in mid-February I decided to try it. I’m not going to lie: it sucked. However, I felt so energized and alive after it that I’ve been doing it every day since. If you’re considering it, be prepared for discomfort at first, but also look forward to feeling more refreshed and alive than you have before. Also, it has numerous health benefits

4. Brush teeth and get dressed

5. Meditate (with Muse, 7 – 12 mins)

Perhaps the most important part of my routine is clearing my mind so that I can gain focus for the day. I’m very new to meditation. I only added it to my daily life within the past 6 months. I personally use the Muse headband because, as a beginner, I had trouble learning how to meditate and understand when my mind was drifting. The Muse detects my brain signals to let me know when my brain is calm and focused and when it is not. It is not essential for meditation. I have also heard great things about the app Headspace.

6. Make bulletproof coffee (+ sometimes do dishes)

I’ve been doing bulletproof intermittent fasting since Oct./Nov. of last year, so I only drink BP Coffee in the morning. While the coffee is brewing, I use those few minutes to wash some dishes. No one could ever accuse me of being a “cleaner,” but I enjoy doing the dishes in the morning so I can think through my day. It also makes me feel like I have accomplished something already, which is a great way to start the day.

7. Reading (20 mins)

I mentioned in my last post that I want to read 3 books per month, or 36 books per year. I’m a little behind schedule according to my reading tracker, as I should be at 15 books by now, but I’m only at 12. Regardless, this 20 minutes of reading has been huge for me. Not only is it enjoyable, but reading books on mindset, personal growth,and business inspires me in the beginning of my day and gets the creative juices flowing. If you’re curious what I’m reading, you can see here.

8. Morning pages (15 – 20 mins)

This part of my morning routine was established more recently and is a creative process. It’s an activity of writing 750 words, around 3 pages, each morning. It’s not blogging or anything that I will ever release to the world. It’s a stream of consciousness of whatever is on my mind, essentially a brain dump on ideas for business, life, and other decisions. Whatever I want to clear my mind of, It gets my brain working and thinking more creatively.

9. Daily goals (5 mins)

Each morning I write down my goals. First, I write down a long-term goal that I’m working towards. I write this down each day to keep me mindful of my direction so that I don’t go off track. Then, I write down the day’s targets, which are what 3 things I need to accomplish to move me further toward my long-term goal. I usually have my MAP (Massive Action Plan) planned ahead of time that has my goals broken down with a timeline. I’ll delve into this process in another post, but essentially it’s a planning structure so that I know what I should be working on for 3 months at a time. Interested in learning about this? Let me know.

10. Day planning (3 mins)

I break down my day in 30 minute increments, enter any calls or appointments I have, and then schedule out my tasks for the day. I be sure to always put the most important (coincidentally usually the least enjoyable) first so that I ensure it gets done. I try to never book any meetings or appointments until late in the afternoon if I can help it because my mornings are my sacred hours of peak productivity.

Then I begin working.

I don’t look at my phone, email, facebook, or twitter until after I’ve completed that first big task of my day. I pause my inboxes the night before (using inbox pause) so that, in the morning, if I do need to send out any emails I can do so without being bombarded with any incoming mail. Remember, email is someone else’s request of your time. Prioritize your goals and tasks first before looking at email so you don’t go into reactive mode as opposed to proactive mode.

My morning routine takes just over an hour. I can’t stress enough to you the importance of a great morning routine, as it will set you up for a successful day – and life. With that said, what I do isn’t for everyone. I experimented with a few different things and figured out what worked for me. You should do the same. Soon you’ll know what things work for you, and you’ll enjoy starting your day.

I’d love to hear about your morning routine if you have one. What does the first hour of your day look like?

Having a nightly routine is as important as your Morning Routine. This way you can get the rest you need, and you will be prepared for an energetic and focused tomorrow. The Nightly Routine doesn’t have to be as long as the morning – mine is only around 15 minutes or so; however, I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to crush the day.

After recently writing a post about my Morning Routine I was being asked by some of you what time I go to bed at if I get up at 5:30 am. To to get the average 8 hours we’re advised, do I go to bed at 9:30 every night?

No.

Research has proven that the quality of sleep is much more important than the quantity of hours you sleep. Have you ever slept 9 hours but woken up still feeling tired and groggy? This is where the lack of quality of sleep comes in. It involves whether or not you wake up in the middle of a REM cycle. I sleep around 6 hours per night on average, and I’ve applied certain practices/sleep hacks into my nightly routine that help me to get the highest quality of sleep possible.

THE 5 THINGS BEFORE BED

1. Reflection
2. Priorities for tomorrow
3. Wins
4. Gratitude
5. Clean Desk = Clean Mind
6. Sleep Hacks

1. REFLECTION

Benjamin Franklin was known for his routines and continued effort toward self-improvement. At the end of each day would ask himself, “What good have I done today?”

It’s important to look back on your day and reflect on what went well and what you have achieved. If I have a rough day, I write down 1 to 3 things I could have done to make the day better so I that I’m ready for “next time.”

2. PRIORITIES FOR TOMORROW

When I was in Architecture school, I would write an absolute beast of a “to-do” list each day – a list in which I would never ever be able to complete even if I worked every minute of the day and night. It was pretty dumb. I would get to the end of the day, and, despite having worked all day, feel unaccomplished and overwhelmed. No bueno.

These days, I try to bookend my my day in a much more positive way. At night, I take stock of my day and how it went. First, I’ve stopped writing impossible to-do lists, and I limit myself to 3 prioritized tasks per day, which I set during my nightly routine so that I wake up the next day knowing what needs completed. This doesn’t mean I only do 3 things a day. It means I drill down to the things that matter – the things that if I did nothing else that day I would still feel accomplished at completing.

3. WINS

We’re generally our own worst critic. Take a few minutes to appreciate the things you did well, and stop beating yourself up about what you could have done better. Feel free to unapologetically brag about what you accomplished that day, whether it was a gym session, a sales call, or finally cleaning out your closet. Making a daily habit of being positive about yourself will grow the confidence you have in yourself and your abilities.

4. GRATITUDE

A recent study by Nancy Digdon shows how grateful thoughts can help your sleep due to the fact that having more positive thoughts than negative thoughts make it easier to drift off to sleep. By taking a few minutes and writing down what you’re grateful for, you are focusing on the positive.

I write down 3 things I’m grateful for that happened that day. Again, it doesn’t have to be deep thoughts or something out-of-this-world. It’s not for anyone to read but yourself. Some days, as I write my gratitude statements, my dog, Hugsy Malone, is asleep at (and sometimes on) my feet. I’ll write down that I’m grateful for her.

5. CLEAR DESK = CLEAR MIND

Each evening as I finish work or before I go to bed, I organize my desk and clear up any clutter that has accumulated over the day. There is something about having a clear work area that gives our mind the focus needed to be more productive. This doesn’t mean the rest of my apartment is tidy (our secret), but I make sure the space I need to work in is.

The above image was my desk when I woke up this morning. It’s so much easier to be productive and get your work done if you create the environment that allows you the head space for it.

I’m currently finishing up development on a product for optimizing your day and being intentional with everything we do so that it makes reaching your goals simple.

6. SLEEP HACKS

Most of the sleep hacks I have learned I got from from The Bulletproof Diet and other biohacking resources. Some quick and free things you can do today for better sleep:

1. Sleep in a pitch black room (to stop melatonin suppression)

Melatonin, a biochemical produced to regulate our sleep-wake cycle only works when it’s dark. Even a small amount of light can be sensed by our eyes and skin which halts melatonin process and causes disrupted sleep. Here’s a great article explaining why melatonin is so important in more detail. I recently purchased someblackout blinds that have helped with this and am already noticing a difference.

2. Track your sleep so you wake up at the best time

I use an app called Sleep Cycle to track my sleep each night. The best part about the app is its smart alarm function that only wakes me during a light stage of sleep to avoid the groggy feeling I used to get when I woke up. Here’s the type of stats you get:

3. Put your phone on airplane mode to avoid EMFs

Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) exposure from your phone will impede the production of melatonin, so make a habit of putting it on airport mode to prevent this.

4. Stop drinking coffee after 3 pm (I’m not always good at this.)

5. Avoid bright lights and minimize blue light exposure

Blue light from phone screens, computer screens, and TV trick our brains into thinking it’s daytime and thus causes melatonin suppression which affects our sleep-wake cycle. Here’s 2 ways to help avoid this:

1. Install F.Lux on your computer. This will adapt your screen to your surroundings. When the sun goes down, it will dim the blue light from your screen and revert to normal during the day. It works in the background, so you’ll set it once and forget it. (Be sure not to do any graphic color work in the evenings or your project will look a little funky in the morning.)
2. Use blue-blocking glasses in the evening 1 to 3 hours before bed. And yes, as you can see, they’re extremely glamorous. For more detailed info on blue light and sleep go here.

6. Don’t workout within 2 hours of when you plan to sleep

7. Avoid big meals before bed

SLEEP SUPPLEMENTS

Following the 80/20 rule, if you do all the things above, you’ll see a huge improvement in sleep quality and may not need anything else. Personally, as well as the things above, I take a few supplements before bed to get more quality sleep. Below is what I take and why.

– Magnesium

Magnesium is a component of more than 325 different enzymes in the human body. It plays an important role in hydration, muscle relaxation, energy production, and the deactivation of adrenaline. With that said, due to the very low levels of it found in food, most people are deficient in it unless they take supplements. A more detailed article about it and it’s role in sleep here. I take a magnesium supplement, Natural Calm, about 30 minutes before going to bed. This gives me much more restful sleep due to natural calming and relaxation effects. It’s also pretty tasty. My husband, Keith, who doesn’t share my passion for biohacking, takes it too. “It’s like lemonade!”

– A Spoonful of Raw Honey

Your brain uses a lot of energy to fuel all the processes it goes through during the night. An efficient form of energy comes from sugar stored within the liver. A spoonful of raw honey has shown through rigorous self-experimentation by Seth Roberts and The Honey Revolution to improve sleep by keeping liver glycogen full. It’s important however that it is raw honey and not cooked honey that you typically find in grocery stores.

– Krill Oil

Krill oil is a  great source of Omega–3s, which have been proven to reduce anxiety and depression while also improving muscle growth and insulin sensitivity. Take a Krill Oil pill 2 hours before bed.

– GABA

I only take GABA on occasions when I have been travelling or I’m working crazy hours on a product launch and know I need a long restful night of sleep. It is a neuro-inhibitory transmitter, which is what your brain needs to shut down.

And there you have it – my evening routine and how I hack my sleep. Since I’ve started, it’s been helping with morning decision fatigue (by knowing my priorities for the day), and it’s given me a much more restful sleep.

Do you have an evening routine or sleep hack? I’m on a constant path of improvement and trying to become my best self, so any tips or tricks are appreciated.

The Roadmap To Your Goals; Self Journal is a new type of accountability journal that helps you structure your day, enjoy life, and reach your goals quicker than you thought possible.

Ever feel like you’re doing everything? Whether it’s in your business or in your job, the to-do list never seems to get smaller. You’re wearing so many hats due to the range of different tasks you need to do everyday, but you never seem to be moving the needle to where you want to be. What could happen if you weren’t the only person working on your business or your job? Do you think you could get more done and actually move the needle forward on the things you are looking to accomplish?

“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!” – Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited

Like many entrepreneurs in my generation, The 4-Hour Workweek was my first glimpse into the world of virtual staff and seeing how powerful leveraging a virtual assistant could be. One way to escape the minutiae is to hire someone to pick up on all the balls you’re holding so that you can start leveraging your time better. This isn’t black magic – it’s taking advantage of our global economy by hiring a virtual assistant.

For the past 2 years, I have been working with my virtual assistant on an average of 20 hours per week. It’s less time when things are slower and more when I have more going on. For example, in regards to my last Kickstarter project, I had my assistant do a lot of the organization of the fulfillment, send backer details to the warehouse, contact backers about their orders, etc. It saved me so much time and headache.

These days I’m actively running 3 businesses/projects, an online store, an amazon business and the new BestSelf project. Without using virtual assistants this would be impossible.

If you’d never thought of it before, here’s some reasons you may consider a virtual assistant:

• You hate administrative tasks and would like to minimize time spent on this
• You’re doing a lot of repetitive tasks on a daily basis
• You can’t afford to hire someone full-time
• You know you need help but don’t want to deal with hiring someone that you may have to physically recruit, interview, train, and manage
• You’d like to feel less stressed and more productive

There’s an awesome feeling when you start working with a VA: you wake up, and the things you assigned yesterday are done! Maybe you take a day off of work. Things still get accomplished! That’s freedom.

I consider myself a creative type, so paperwork and administration really weigh me down and cause me to procrastinate. Because of this, I delegate as much as I can to someone else.

Virtual assistants come with different skillsets. It’s not a one size fits all person that will be able to do any task you assign them. For example, I can’t hire someone that will do video editing, write blog posts, and design web graphics. Just like you have your skills and things you enjoy doing, so do they. This is why the first person you hire should be a general virtual assistant which helps you with more general tasks that help you buy more time in your day.

When you first start considering a virtual assistant, it’s hard to really establish tasks that they should do. What tasks can you outsource? Here’s some examples of tasks a virtual assistant can do:

• Screen your e-mail and respond on your behalf
• Complete miscellaneous research for projects
• Create and send invoices
• Booking appointments/travel
• Creating basic reports
• Preparing slideshows
• Manage and update social media accounts
• Following up with clients/customers (sending thank you and other reminder emails)
• Manage your Blog

For an example of how I use my VA, here’s some specific tasks I have him do frequently:

Create new products in Shopify and update existing listings
Track wholesale/dropship sales and create invoices
Track customer service issues for Calm The Ham
Run monthly reports
Create discount codes and set up sales
Update my blog with posts (Just like this one)

I would personally advise most people to get a virtual assistant for the experience of learning the power of delegation. I know that I used to be terrible at it. I wanted to do everything myself, thinking ‘only I could do it right.’ Meanwhile for as little as $3 an hour (yes… really) I learned how to delegate and bought my time back.

Now that you have some ideas on the types of tasks you can get them to do, where do we find these awesome people? I use Elance or Upwork. I post on both and then weed out the people that don’t fit.

We’ll cover that topic next post, where I’ll go into detail on how to find great people that will give you the time and attention to detail that you need at a reasonable price.

Your assignment for now is to take some time and start listing all the tasks you think you could use help with. A great way to start this is simply starting to list out the things you do each day for a week. From there, it’ll be easier to figure out what tasks can be outsourced.

Then we can start creating a great job posting to find the right person.

We’ll also go over exact job templates and Standard Operating Procedures I use with my virtual team (this will save you a bunch of time) so you can get started right away.

Have you ever been so close to the finish line on a project that you can almost touch it?

You know how great it would feel to cross that line, yet you still aren’t quite there.

Suddenly, what you’re working on seems silly, unimportant, or not good enough for the world to see it. So you put it aside to finish later.

I feel like this is the biggest invisible struggle for creators these days: the Resistance.

Two books that I read that explain this Resistance concept is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

Pressfield describes the concept of Resistance as a destructive force whose sole existence is to stop you from doing what you most need to do. As Pressfield puts it, “the more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

When I read this, I remembered back to all the times I had an opportunity and had screwed it up for stupid reasons.

Without fail, with every product I’ve completed and shipped, there were moments I looked at what I had created and thought

• Who cares?
• Did I just spend the last X months on this?
• This isn’t good enough yet. It needs much more time (usually on launch day!)

Even with my current project, SELF Journal, that we just successfully funded to the tune of $322K on Kickstarter, I recall thinking the same thoughts.

I had these feelings despite the fact that people had already seen the beta product and loved it. We had even built a substantial email list interested in the product. Logically, I had evidence that people cared.

Resistance doesn’t care for logic.

“Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” – Steven Pressfield

The week before and even the day of the SELF Journal launch, my co-founder Allen and I experienced some pretty harsh Resistance that made me start to re-think everything, completely irrationally. Luckily we were both familiar with Resistance and knew what was happening, and we weren’t going to let it stop us.

Resistance rears its ugly head during these key times when you’ve overcome the other obstacles, done all the hard work, but there’s just one thing left to do – ship the product. Resistance is the reason people never finish a project because they’re always perfecting it.

It’s scary to put your work out there for the world because you’re welcoming critics into your life, and, as we all know, the internet is full of then. Armchair critics are just another form of Resistance. It takes a human form, but that’s what it is.

Resistance is present all the time in some form or another. Here are some common ways it shows up:

• Procrastination
• Fear of Failure (or Success)
• Opposition
• Criticism
• Perfectionism
• Constantly comparing yourself to others

The important thing is recognizing what’s going on, putting the Resistance to the side, and doing the work. 

A few ways I eventually grew wise to this feeling and was able to put it to the side was:

1. Acknowledging what Resistance was and recognizing when it was coming up for me
2. Setting hard deadlines for myself and rewarding myself when I met them
3. Accountability; specifically having a partner in Allen for the SELF Journal project meant I was accountable to someone on getting things done.

Accountability is a huge factor when you’re working on a project (especially if you’re a 1-person team). An easy way to stay accountable is to tell everyone you know what project you’re working on. Why? Because they will ask you about it – this in itself will keep you moving as you’ll feel like you will always need to have updates about it.

“It’s better to be in the arena getting stomped by the bull than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.” – Steven Pressfield

Pressfield wrote a great follow-up book, Do The Work, about what happens when you beat Resistance and all the magic that was being kept from you suddenly starts showing up in your life. This wholesome force he aptly calls the Assistance.

Do you recognize Resistance coming up in any area of your life? I’d love to know if there’s a change you need to make, but you’re struggling to take the next step. Share it in the comments below.

Hardly anyone talks about money once you grow up.

When my friends and I finished university, we all started working in architecture. Since we all were looking for jobs, we all were open with sharing and comparing job offers.

A few years later, as people changed jobs and moved up the chain, money became a much more taboo subject.This concerned me when I started writing this. Is it okay to talk about money so openly? Is it okay to want to share how I’ve spent a significant chunk of money since I left architecture and went on my own. What if this money wasn’t on inventory or a direct business expense? What if it was on personal development?

What if it was $40,000?

Whether it was online courses, workshops, mastermind events, or conferences, over the past 2 years I have been on a quest of constantly learning, growing my personal network and getting out of my comfort zone. I added the total cost up today.

$40,000. That’s the same pre-tax amount I earned as a junior architect in New York City.

Had you told me 3 years ago I would have spent $40,000 on personal development, I would have assumed that I’d be abducted by some hippy dippy guru aliens or won the lottery. (Actually, I’d probably just thought you were crazy, but you see my point.)

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.” – Warren Buffet

I’m proud to say that I’ve gotten a pretty solid ROI from the investment. Both professionally and personally.

I’ve started 4 businesses in the past 3 years, all of which are still currently running. I did this despite having never taken a college or high school business class in my life. My business experience before this had been child’s play, and I mean literally. I sold bun cakes on the playground at age 10 and had an eBay business at 14.

There’s so much I didn’t know, and even more that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

We live in the best time ever for you to go out on your own. The internet gives power and platform for everyone to start from nothing. Traditional university is becoming less important as companies like Google have started hiring people who didn’t go to university at all.

Before you go out and start investing in yourself with classes and workshops, there are some things you need to look out for.

Be an Action-Taker! Not a Content Consumer

Once you get into the entrepreneurial space, it seems like there are shiny objects everywhere. And there are. There’s something new out every day, whether it’s a new course or a platform to try out. You can waste a whole lot of time and money without ever seeing results.

How is this possible? It’s possible because you can keep consuming content, always feeling like you need to know more, and never taking action on what you do know.

We’ve all been there.

“A little less content, a little more action.” – Elvis Presley, kind of

Plan your Outcome

Every time you spend money on an online course or class, you need to have an end goal in mind – something you want to get out of whatever you’re buying. If you can’t think of how you will use the book or course right now, then put the credit card away.

The speed of implementation is crucial. If you learn something today but can’t take action on it until months later, then it’s essentially useless. You’ll forget the information and have to re-learn it later.

Here’s the last few big courses I’ve bought and my goal for each:

Get 10K Subscribers ($1,500)

Goal: Build a List of 2,000 subscribers for a Kickstarter launch
Why: To validate the product before launching, tweak to ensure it was the best it could be, and to ensure a successful launch.

Outcome: We built a list of 3,512 before the Kickstarter launch and raised $15,000 in the initial 28 hours.

The Foundation ($5,000)

Goal: Build my personal network and create a software business
Why: I wanted to create a business and gain experience on digital products and software since I’d only dealt with physical products thus far. Additionally, I wanted to meet like-minded people who were also new entrepreneurs.

Outcome: I met some of my now closest friends in The Foundation, including my business partner Allen, who I’ve created 2 businesses with since. I also created ClinicHero and had $6,000 in presales by the end of the 6-month program.

Business Mastery ($10,000)

Goal: Building teams, Business Analysis for scaling and growth
Why: For growth of BestSelf so we start out with our best foot forward
Outcome: It’s in January 2016 so time will tell.

The point of this is to always know what you want to get out of something. This is how you ensure that you take action on content and how you know when you’ll get a return on your money and time.

This is why I am open to sharing how much money I have spent on personal development. Had I spent 40K aimlessly – not had personal goals in mind or taken action – I probably would have kept my mouth shut.

Recently I decided to pre-sell a workshop teaching people how to launch successfully on Kickstarter. I limited it to 15 people and only accepted those who had an idea for a product they wanted to move forward with. I refunded 2 people because I felt they weren’t in the right position to take full advantage right now. With limited spaces, I wanted people to be able to take action right away.

Why did I do this?

The people who have the idea and product in mind already are going to be taking action and seeing immediate results from the course. I can provide more guidance with an actual idea or product rather than a hypothetical, and that will make the course more successful.

If you’re interested in getting into the next Kickstarter Success Kit class, you can sign up here.

In the comments below, I’d love to know: What’s the best investment you’ve made in yourself over the past 2 years and why was it so?

In 2014, my accountability partner Allen and I started working together on creating an Amazon FBA business. If you are in the online world, you know that the Fulfilled-By-Amazon marketplace has exploded over the past several years bringing millions of sellers into the space.

We had friends doing it, and they were making a good amount of money per month so we figured, why not? We took a course that taught us the process and forged ahead.

We invested around 10K of our own money to get started.

The FBA process we followed is essentially researching good products to sell, finding a supplier on Alibaba for white-labelling products to sell on Amazon through the Fulfilled By Amazon service (FBA). Highly simplified version of process

FBA is a very easy and inexpensive way to get started with physical products as that you don’t have to deal with any of the actual customer shipping yourself. Also, with Amazon having such a huge customer base, you already have a built-in audience for your products if you do the right marketing for the right product.

Curious what white-labelling is? It’s essentially when you take an existing product and rebrand it with your logo and packaging. Some sellers will make a variation or improvement to the existing product, however, the majority do not. Therefore, there are many products on Amazon that are exactly the same, made by the same factory but sold under different brand names, for different prices.

It’s pretty crazy.

Now I’ve experience Amazon.com as an FBA third-party seller, I tend to shop entirely differently than I used to.

So, what’s possible with this business model?

Well, a friend of mine sells white-labelled phone accessories and makes over $180,000 per month. Cha-ching!

To be frank, when we started this business, it was not about following our passion. We never had a dream we had to be Amazon sellers.

It was purely a money-driven business agenda.

It was something we thought we could do to make some money while we figured out what our “big idea” was.

Little did I know that working together on the Amazon business would lead us to create a product and business that we felt aligned with and led us to ultimately quit.

When we started working on the SELF Journal, it was a side project that we created to solve our problems. We were feeling busy all day but not productive. We weren’t moving forward as we wanted, so we created a tool that helped us be our best, most productive selves.

We thought becoming more productive would help us with Amazon and our other endeavors.

However, this side-project grew a life of its own, and as we developed it, our interest in the Amazon business dwindled. Everything we did for Amazon came from an agenda not driven by purpose or creation, but by money. After reading Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us recently, it’s no surprise that we lost enthusiasm, and it became just another job for us.

We were focused on making money, not solving people’s problems. BIG Mistake. 

In the months before launching the Kickstarter our primary focus moved to SELF Journal and making it successful, which meant Amazon began to take a backseat.

We launched our Kickstarter and in 34 days this thing that began as a side-project driven by passion exploded and raised $322,695 in 34 days.

Add to this, within mere minutes of our Kickstarter campaign ending I had set us up for preorders for the people who missed our Kickstarter and still wanted to buy.

People still did!

We made over $10,000 in sales over the following 7 days:


That got me thinking…

Our Amazon business was doing a similar amount per month as Celery had done in 1 week…. but I really hated working on it.

Not because the work was so terrible, but because the time investment needed took me away from BestSelf and doing work that I loved and felt aligned with.

I see money as a byproduct of solving people’s problems, and with SELF Journal we had created something that clearly did that for people. So why did I want to waste my time on sh*t that I didn’t care about?

Time ≠ Money

Money can be multiplied, stockpiled for a rainy day and spent however you like. Time is irreplaceable, once you spend it’s gone forever. Whether you’re Warren Buffet or a regular Joe Shmoe, your time is being depleted at the same rate of one day per day every day.

As a society, we’ve been wired to protect against a loss of money rather than loss of time, probably due to the bias and culture of collecting material possessions as a sign or status of happiness. Imagine a world where we redefined prosperity by our time rather than money.

Check out this great talk by my friend Calvin Johannsen on this exact topic:

Therefore, why would I be investing my time, a non-renewable resource, into this Amazon business that I wasn’t passionate about to someday make more money?

Right then and there I decided that I wanted to quit and double-down on a project I believed in, enjoyed and was working. 

I was nervous when I first broke it to Allen, but, when I explained the reasoning, he was on board 100%.

Some people may read this and feel like I wasted a year of my life on a project that didn’t go anywhere. That’s another human condition, sunk-cost bias. This is when you hear “throwing good money after bad”, however it really goes for any type of time, effort or money investment you make. Don’t get trapped in this thinking.

It’s about the journey, not the destination – this was a mere stepping stone on my path.

I believe we may have never created SELF Journal had it not been for experimenting with Amazon.

The FBA Amazon experiment, what we learned:

• Creating a Complimentary Partnership: Allen and I learned how to work together and saw how much our skills worked well together. It meant we were able to focus on the tasks we loved and enjoyed rather than trying to wear all the hats.
• About sourcing great manufacturers in China and how to work with them on products.
• How to sell on Amazon, from creating a product page to Amazon PPC advertising which we can later use with our own BestSelf products.
• How to import products from China (which can be pretty complicated and stressful when you’re new), this meant we had a good idea how it worked for when Kickstarter rolled around.
• Not to follow the money, but rather focus on solving the problems and people will be happy to pay for the solution

Last note: We didn’t just up and leave Amazon, as we had stock and systems in place we’re currently in the middle of selling the business. A great book I read earlier this year that helped me understand this process was Built to Sell.

If you also want to build a sellable business I’ll be sharing more in the next few months about systems and processes that will essentially buy your time back by leveraging other people and software better.

Over the past 2 years, I have run 3 Successful Kickstarter campaigns, each with increasing success as I’ve picked up tricks and skills along the way. I’ve learned some valuable and expensive lessons along the way.

Here are the 7 big ones:

1. Don’t Underestimate Shipping

While running Calm The Ham, I’ve shipped prints all over the world to over 50 countries. When customers repeatedly asked me to include a frame option, it seemed like the next logical step. However, I was thinking quite illogically when it came to international shipping and Kickstarter.

In my first Kickstarter project, The Filmography of Aircraft, I drastically underpriced the framed print rewards. Not only was the amount of time and labor more than I imagined, so too was the packing supplies and the actual shipment cost. I didn’t realize that once you went above a certain size (the prints were big at 24“ x 36”), you had to upgrade to a higher priced tier of shipping. My profit for those reward levels went bye-bye, as you’ll see in my post: Kickstarter Economics 101: The True Costs of a Successful Project.

Takeaway: Consider and price out your shipping ahead of time. Packaging cost, labor cost, and shipping cost. If you know the weight and size, you can calculate this cost ahead of time.

2. Underpromise and Overdeliver

I read recently that optimistic people are commonly late; not because they don’t respect your time, but because they believe they have enough time to make whatever it is, no matter how much time is left.

Well, Kickstarter is a platform that rewards the pessimistic; the one’s that always allow extra time for that just-in-case disaster that happens. Because it’s Kickstarter, a first time product – and it likely will.

Our most recent Kickstarter project for SELF Journal ended on September 22nd. Manufacturing takes four weeks, shipping by boat to the U.S. takes 3 to 4 weeks…

So, we’re good to go by mid-November. Being optimistic people, we thought that gave us plenty of time to ship the rewards out by Christmas.

WRONG.

Best laid plans are the devil’s something? Anyway…

Between an almost 3-week manufacturer delay and a 1-week hold at customs, we were four weeks behind, and we scrambled to get everything out before Christmas.

Kickstarter isn’t a store, and some people don’t understand that. If you say December Delivery, they will expect the product for Christmas. If you don’t deliver, you hate Santa Claus.

Takeaway: Add at least 30% to your delivery timeline and manage backer expectations accordingly. It’s much better to ship earlier and look like a hero than to ship late and “ruin Christmas.”

Feature Download: Kickstarter Creator Toolkit containing my swipe files, reward pricing calculator and pre-launch pack.

3. Update and Engage with Backers

Kickstarter supporters are what make your Kickstarter succeed. They gave you their hard earned cash in exchange for the promise of a reward. They will continue to be valued customers if you treat them well. For each project, I tried to keep our backers in the loop with production updates, shipping delays, and whatever was going on. With that said, we could have been better at this. Even when there wasn’t much news, people wanted news. In the world of Kickstarter, no news = bad news. Takeaway: Keep backers updated every step of the way, especially if it’s around the holidays and you’re getting lots of emails. Even if the news isn’t good, it’s better they know the status than be kept in the dark.

4. Simplicity Is Key

Kickstarter doesn’t make fulfillment very easy for creators, especially if you have any complex rewards, such as unique backer requests. In the Filmography of Guns campaign, I offered a signed and monogrammed book, meaning I had to get the names of backers in advance for signing and then ship them out to the right people. It sounds simple enough, but between rewards of different sizes, variations and add-ons, it can turn into a real mess.

My fulfillment center was in Minnesota. I live in New York. Having hundreds of books shipped to me to sign and ship to MN to combine with the prints didn’t make time or money sense. Looking back, I should have offered the monogrammed/named book at an additional premium cost rather than doing it for everyone. Due to a delay from the book maker, books had to be shipped out separately, by me, in my New York apartment.

Check it out: For the SELF Journal campaign, we kept it much simpler. Our reward levels were essentially the SELF journals in different quantities. The most complex aspect was the monogrammed leather covers. These were charged at a premium; therefore, we didn’t have to deal with sorting out as many.

Takeaway: Understand your fulfillment chain ahead of time and how everything will go out. We used Backerkit to stay on top of fulfillment, because we needed robust surveys and fulfillment export options. Trying to handle fulfillment through the Kickstarter survey alone would have been an absolute nightmare. 

5. Collaborate and Conquer with Cross Promotions

A great way to reach a bigger audience of backers is to cross-promote your campaign with other Kickstarter creators who are also looking for more backers. The key to this is to look for other projects that share a similar target audience to yours or is a complementary product.

For our SELF Journal campaign, this was the single most influential thing we did, accounting for over 35K in funding revenue. You want to wait until you have a decent amount of backers before you approach a seller’s project. It also makes sense to reach out to projects with a similar number of backers. We did a cross-promotion with the Travel Jacket, which had 4 times the backers than we did. While 1 backer to them is worth $130+ (as that was the value of their base product), our base reward was only $30. We also did not promote any other projects in our cross-promotion update with them, whereas we were 1 of 4 projects included in their update. This kept it fair.

That cross-promotion was worth over $16K to our project:

Takeaway: Reach out to popular projects that share the same audience even if it seems unlikely that they’ll cross-promote with you. There’s often room for negotiation. This is especially helpful to keep in mind close to the end of campaigns when they are running out of time (and want to increase their funding as much as possible).

6. Add backer value not bulk

Once we hit our funding goal, we wanted to keep people supporting the project by adding stretch goals. Stretch goals can be tricky. You want to add value to the initial reward for your backers without adding something that will add too much to your costs or project timeline.

Consider your target audience and what other products or service they are interested in. Is there a partnership opportunity there? We found one. We partnered with Blinkist on a 6-month promotion for our backers. With them, our backers received a 6-month membership to their premium service – a $40 value for our backers that didn’t cost us anything.

Takeaway: Consider your target audience and what else they are consuming. How can you add value without adding more physical products or things that will take you time (and money). Survey your backers and find out what they’d be interested in.

7. Build an Email List BEFORE you launch

I left this until last as it was probably the biggest lesson I learned from previous Kickstarters that we effectively implemented for the last Kickstarter. For the SELF Journal Kickstarter launch, we spent the three months before our launch building up an email list of people in our target audience. We started from scratch and built a list of 3,235 subscribers in only three months.

Why is an email list so important?

Well, the first 48 hours on Kickstarter are crucial since this is when the first jolt of backers will pledge money to your campaign. Once you show Kickstarter that people dig your project, their algorithm will do it’s thing, and you’ll show up under popular projects and perhaps even the first page, like this:

But you won’t get featured on the front page if you don’t have that initial surge of sales, and the best way to get that initial surge is to build a list of people who can’t wait to get it.

Curious how we did this? I wrote a pretty epic blog post about it over at sumome. 

Hope this helps you with your own Kickstarter campaign or product launch. In the comments below, let me know what else you’d like to learn about Kickstarter.

It’s officially that time of year again. You contemplate life, reflect on the year, see what worked (and what didn’t)…

This is only my second year doing these annual reviews. You can read the previous one here.

I post these mainly for me, to be honest. I do so publicly in case anyone can take away anything from it for themselves; however, it mainly holds me accountable for the goals that I set for the following year.

I reviewed my goals from last years annual review.

1. Set my morning success ritual (from reading A Miracle Morning)
2. Build systems for business
3. Read 3 books per month

I’m happy to say that I’ve accomplished all 3 goals for the year.

I’ve read 40 books in 2015, which averages 3.33 books per month. Check out my list here.

You can read about my morning routine here, which was my most popular article ever, and was even tweeted out by Arianna Huffington herself! (Yay Me!)

My big 2015 wins:

1. Creating a partnership with Allen

With each previous venture that I’ve embarked upon, it’s always been me – solo. While it feels good to only be responsible for myself, there’s only so much I can and want to do at a time. There’s also a lot of tasks that come with a business that I do not enjoy doing, which is why having a partnership with someone whose skills compliment mine is extremely beneficial.

Allen is an action-taker. He doesn’t spend a lot of time hemming and hawing over things. He goes out and gets shit done! (It’s why we’re accountability partners.)

Over the year, I’ve realized that I’m a “product person,” which is to say that while I enjoy learning marketing, I dislike the minutiae of what that involves. Facebook ads, tracking links, leadpages, email segmenting, split-testing… C’mon! Just writing about it is exhausting!

I like being creative; working on product, it’s contents – creating experiences. It’s so great to have a partner that excels at the skills that I lack. This gives me the freedom to do this creative work, and it means that we can both stick to our own wheelhouse and move further, faster.

Takeaway: Partner with someone who shares your values but has complementary skills. You want to work with someone who enjoys doing the work you don’t.

2. Launching the SELF Journal on Kickstarter and getting over 10,000 journals sold

After working on SELF journal development for almost a year, it was exciting to finally release it to the world on Kickstarter and get validation that all the work had been worth it. The feeling of creating something from scratch, and then people taking out their credit cards to buy it before it’s even available!, is pretty incredible – and the ultimate validation that what we made actually mattered.

Over the past few years, I have invested in my own personal growth, and I’ve become a better version of myself. I have also become more successful. I know this isn’t an accident; personal growth and success go hand in hand. This is why I’m excited about working on the BestSelf.co brand in 2016. Our mission is to create meaningful products, like the SELF Journal, that help people become the best version of themselves.

Takeaway: I wrote about it in this post, but essentially it all comes down to focus. Once I stopped splitting my time across several projects, I was more successful because I stopped thinking about money and focused on creating value.

3. Pre-Selling 18 People on a Kickstarter course (from a Facebook post)

In November I put up a Facebook post offering to teach 10 people my product launch formula for Kickstarter. As a product person, I’ve always felt the need to “perfect” a product and have something polished by the time I show people.

After a mastermind event in Maine, where we created a product in a day and pre-sold it to the tune of $30,000 (for charity), I realized what was possible within myself, and I set myself a challenge: pre-sell 10 people on the course in 24 hours.

The results: I had 18 people sign up and pre-pay $197 in advance. Within a month, I did two online workshops teaching everything I knew around product launches and Kickstarter. I’ll be posting about how I did this shortly.

I got some great feedback:

Takeaway: I enjoy teaching and sharing what works for me. As someone without a traditional background in business, I like showing people what’s possible with hustle on a shoestring budget. I want to do more teaching in 2016, through private workshops, coaching and through this blog.

What didn’t go well:

Personal Relationships:

When I’m working on building and launching projects, I get tunnel vision, and I get bad at responding to personal messages and email. As a result, some of my personal friendships and relationships have suffered neglect because I take them for granted. Luckily I have some great friends and family who have not given up on reaching out, and I’m going to make a conscious effort to cultivate these relationships. In fact, one of my 2016 goals is to write a personal email or message to someone each day.

Takeaway: Don’t take relationships for granted. It’s a two-way street. Saying, “I’m bad at staying in touch,” is (of course) not a good excuse.

Daily Rituals

When the Kickstarter campaign launched in late August, my life became more reactive and less proactive. Due to the nature of Kickstarter, I felt like I was always “on;” so, each morning, rather than completing my morning routine and my first big task of the day, I was checking Kickstarter, my email, etc.

How ironic.

Here I was, launching a journal around the topic of productivity and being intentional with your day, and meanwhile I was practically doing the opposite!

Once the campaign ended, my bad habits continued for awhile. Even though it was “over,” I had to talk with suppliers overseas who are awake when I’m asleep. First thing in the morning, I was checking my email to correspond with them before I missed my window for the day. It wasn’t until the beginning of December that I really started to get back on track with my habits. I wrote down my ideal day and started following each step like a recipe until I was back on track.

Takeaway: Starting my day reactively causes me to be less productive and makes me feel frazzled by the end of the day. My daily ritual is not optional. It is a necessity.

Travel:

I’m so grateful for the freedom that my work gives me to travel. Back when I worked in architecture, I got 10 days off per year. That didn’t give me much opportunity to travel. In fact, I couldn’t go home for the first 2 years that I’ve lived in the U.S. Now, 2 years later, I’m able to travel pretty extensively for both work and fun:

• Palm Springs, CA (Mastermind Event)
• Minnesota, MA (Work, Visiting warehouse)
• San Diego, CA (Traffic & Conversion conference)
• Ft Lauderdale, FL (Amazon conference)
• Maine, CT (Mastermind Event)
• Chicago, IL (Tony Robbins Conference)
• Iceland (Friends wedding + vacation)
• Ireland (Trip home – fun)
• London (Visiting uni friends – fun)
• Brussels & Brugge, Belgium (Visiting friends – fun)
• Maui, HI (Friends wedding + vacation)

In 2016 I am hoping to extend my travels to Australia and South-east Asia.

2016 Business Goals:

1. Grow BestSelf 3X and sell 50,000 journals
2. 2. Build my LittleMight email list to 5,000

New habits:

1. Write 1,000 words per day
2. 2. Send daily personal message/email to someone I care about
3. 3. Take 1 day a month off work for reflection and planning

In the comments below, I’d love to know: What are your goals for 2016? What new habits are you trying to add to your life?

I was recently visited by a good friend I went to university with. He’s still in the field of architecture, and it was the first time we’d seen each other since I’d given up on the industry in favor of entrepreneurship.

During his visit we talked a lot about the Architecture industry as a whole, our biggest problems with it, and why I ultimately decided it wasn’t what I wanted. I described moments at my job when I was working on designs for a high-end luxury apartment in the Lower East Side and thinking, “If I stay in this job, I will never be able to live like this.” Not that I dreamt of luxury penthouses and a $70,000 custom millwork closet (yes, this happened), but I did dream of financial freedom and travel, as well as working for myself.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I was working at my job in architecture, I started a side project, Calm The Ham, which after 18 months of work was making decent money, especially compared to the $40,000 I was making at my job (which does not stretch far living in New York City). I was only able to work on Calm the Ham on weeknights and weekends, which slowly became harder and harder as I juggled this new life. In the 6 months prior to quitting my more stable job, I kept thinking what if I had the time and resources to make my newer venture full-time. What could I create if it was my only focus?

Then the negative thoughts kick in. I don’t have an MBA. I never took a business studies class in high school. What do I know about running and growing a business?

I wasn’t about to quit my job, join an MBA program, and then start a business. I didn’t have the time, patience, or money for that.

I needed to learn the basic principles of business, both running and growing one. I made a reading list for myself of all the business books I had heard about from people I admired or that had been recommended to me personally. I spent $237.91 on books and $199 on a Mixergy Premium subscription.

The Challenge

I must read my list of 22 books before I was allowed to quit my architecture job.

In January 2013, when I made the list, I was already itching to get out of thecorporate world, so it was the perfect fuel for me to consume as many books as possible. Every morning and evening on my subway commute I would consume as much knowledge as possible, knowing that this could be my escape from the 9–5.

I quit my job November 26, 2013.

Here’s the list of books that made it possible to build not just one, but two businesses:

Personal Mindset & Inspiration

1. Awaken The Giant Within – Tony Robbins

An inspirational book by Tony Robbins. Difficult to drill down to one lesson I’ve learned but essentially this book has the potential to change your life.

2. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

Understanding the true stories of success and how people have thrived. Malcolm Gladwell presents the idea of it taking 10,000 hours to master a skill. I loved the great anecdotes of how hard work and luck (family background, birthplace, or even birth date) can play equally into success.

3. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell explores the moment when a trend or idea reaches the magic “tipping point” when it spreads like wildfire.

4. The Millionaire Fastlane – MJ DeMarco

Become a producer instead of a consumer to attain wealth, and stop trading your time for money. This book partners well with the concepts from Rich Dad, Poor Dad (in the Finance section below).

5. Good to Great – Jim Collins

A 5 year study on what differentiates good companies from great companies. This is a great book for playing the long-game with your company as opposed to a quick fix.

Productivity

6. The Four Hour Work Week – Tim Ferris

Takeaway: Making more money by working less – an alien concept, especially coming from architecture where we tend to work many more hours than we’re compensated for. I also learned the power of outsourcing. This alone has has helped my productivity immeasurably. I recommend this book to everyone whether they’re an entrepreneur or not.

7. The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy

Takeaway: I’m using the formula laid out in this book to become the best version of myself. This book is  a basic manual for success and living an extraordinary life.

8. The 80/20 Principles -Richard Koch

Takeaway: Focus on critical tasks which require only 20% of efforts and create 80% of results. Hugely powerful concept, and I’ve found it to be generally true with my businesses. I used it with Calm the Ham to define my top customers – the 20% that give me 80% of revenue. Then I asked myself, How can I better serve these people?

9. The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes

Takeaway: Stop doing 4,000 different things in my business. Through pigheaded discipline and determination I should do 8 specific tasks perfectly 4,000 times instead.

The time management chapter of The Ultimate Sales Machine was very helpful as I used to struggle with this. I took the advice from Chet Holmes and made an awesome planner to organize according to my most mission-critical tasks. Grab your own copy below:

10. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg

Takeaway: Through learning the science of habits creation, I’ve learned how to break some of my bad ones. There’s also great stories of how corporations have used habits to sell products. (The toothpaste one was my favorite.)

Business

11. The Personal MBA – Josh Kaufman

A great overview of everything I needed to know (and more) about business without any fluff or buzzwords.

12. The Lean Startup – Eric Reis

Allocating resources as efficiently as possible so your business is organized for fast learning. Great book for how to make best use of limited resources.

13. The $100 Startup – Chris Guillebeau

Takeaway:Startup inspiration: You don’t need much money to begin a life of adventure and purpose. Proof: I started Calm The Ham with less than $500.

14. Crush it – Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk wrote this great book on turning passions and interests into real businesses. He explains how he uses passion, social media, and transparency within his businesses to crush his competition.

15. The E-Myth Revisited – Michael E. Gerber

Takeaway: Putting things in place so I’m working on my businesses instead of in them. This has allowed me the freedom to grow revenue and have more free time.

16. Purple Cow – Seth Godin

How the key to success is to stand out among my competition and avoid distinction in today’s economy.

17. ReWork – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Short yet impactful read by the thought leaders of 37 Signals. Stay small, embrace constraints, and build less.

18. This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better – Neville Medhora

This short read by Neville Medhora of Appsumo is a great introduction to copywriting and learning how to write better, converting people into customers and mind-hacks that make it easier to simply write.

Sales

19. To Sell is Human – Daniel Pink

Takeaway: “Selling” is not a dirty word. This book helped me become comfortable with the idea of selling. This book is great for understanding concepts behind sales and how to approach them.

20. Pitch Anything – Oren Klaff

A great introduction of how to structure sales calls or presentations to ensure prospects are engaged enough to buy in. Coming from a non-sales background, I found this especially interesting.

Finance

21. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki

Takeaway: This book really drilled in the concept of wealth, liabilities and assets. I remember sitting on the subway commute and thinking, Why didn’t I read this book 10 years ago? Better late than never.

22. I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Ramit Sethi

Takeaway: Personal Finance doesn’t have to be boring. I applied savings and negotiation tactics from this book to my life which both made and saved me money.

Even if you’re not a gamer (which I’m not), you’re probably familiar with the elements of classic videogames, such as the energy/life bar that’s usually on the corner of the screen showing how “alive” you are.

You start off with a full life bar, and then, throughout the game, as you fight battles, your energy bar drops. If you’re lucky, you stumble upon a mushroom or some elixir soup that helps you out. (Okay, maybe I was a LITTLE bit of gamer…)

What if we considered our daily life in the same way?

Every morning we wake up with our energy at its fullest and our willpower at its highest, and we’re ready to take on the day. If this were a videogame, our health bar would be filled up.

Throughout the day, we come up against obstacles. There’s work – personal and otherwise – that depletes our energy to the point where, by the evening (or sooner), we feel like someone literally fried our brain.

When I started into entrepreneurship, I had to start wearing many different hats, some of which did not fit me well. There were tasks and everyday things I had to do that were draining my energy bar to zero quickly and getting in the way of me completing what I considered important tasks.

This was me by the end of the day:

That was until I came up with a system to leverage my energy better across multiple types of tasks. This system has helped me manage three businesses simultaneously while not feeling burnt out.

Here’s how it works:

Energy Bar Taskmaster

The first part of the formula is understanding how different activities in your day affect your energy. Some activities are energizing, some neutral, and others draining (insert Pac-Man death sound here).

Make a list of the tasks you complete on a regular basis, then categorize them under one of the following:

1. Energizing
2. Neutral
3. Draining

This is a brief overview of how it looks to me:

Energizing activities:

• Designing
• Writing
• Strategizing & Business Development

Neutral activities:

• Creating processes
• Organizing & task assignment

Draining activities:

• Technical stuff, such as dealing with WordPress (which is why I’m thankful to WP Curve and ConvertKit)
• Responding to emails/Customer service
• Managing people
• Anything spreadsheets…

If you’re not sure which task fits into which section, start recording your energy levels throughout the day. Before you begin a task make a note of how you feel, and then make another note after.

In an ideal world, we would all only be working on the energizing activities throughout the day to keep our health bar full. However, this isn’t always possible.

Fortunately, thanks to working with virtual assistants, I can delegate some of the draining work I dislike to do.

Once you know where the types of tasks sit on your personal “energy bar,” you can understand how to leverage yourself, your energy, and your time to be more productive throughout the day without feeling like an empty shell by the end.

2. Sunday Brain Download

You know that feeling when thoughts and lists are flying through your brain faster than you can write them down. Trying to recall these by memory is a drain on your mental energy and should be avoided.

That’s why every Sunday I have a process to download my brain so that I don’t need to try to remember anything.

Here’s how it works:

• Sit down at your computer and write out EVERYTHING you need to get done. Business, personal, and everything in-between.
• Go through this list, and if certain tasks have a specific due date, make a note of that next to the task
• Prioritize each task on a scale of 1 to 3, which mean the following:

1. Extremely time sensitive/only you can do it/revenue-generating activity
2. Important but not urgent or time-sensitive
3. Tasks that need to be done but can be outsourced/done later/not crucial

In the feature download Sunday Process, you’ll see I also have space to calculate the estimated time to complete tasks. I do this so that I can keep on top of how long I think these activities will take versus the actual time they take. Additionally, this way if I can outsource a task, I will know how much time it should take a virtual assistant and how much time I’m saving.

Feature download:

E.N.D. Ranking

Once I have a prioritized list, I go back through the ranking again and put an E, N, or D next to each task (Energizing, Neutral, Draining).

By doing this, I can start to manage my energy better across the projects I need to get accomplished.

Schedule it
Once I have my list prepared I write them into my SELF Journal (however most calendars or planners will work).

My Rules:

• Put all your 1s in first (top priority) with no more than 3 to 5 tasks per day.
• Eat That Frog: Start the day with the hardest (1) tasks first because that’s when your willpower and energy bar are at their fullest.
• Top priority creative work should be done first thing in the morning when the mind is fresh
• Schedule an ‘E’ task after lunch to get me energized
• I only move onto the 2s when my 1 task list for the day is completed.
• The 3s I do whenever I have time/feel like it. If I can outsource these tasks, I will.

Batching

Another great way to keeping your energy bar fuller is by batching similar tasks into one block of time. This way, your brain is not needing to switch between different types of tasks, and you become more efficient.

For example, I batch all of my calls for the week on Tuesdays when possible, mainly because calls interrupt my flow. I’d prefer to get my calls out of the way rather than be interrupted throughout the week. I noticed how much knowing I had a call later in the day would disrupt my productivity, as if my brain was saying, “Don’t get too into a flow yet. You have a call in 3 hours.”

IN 3 HOURS?

That would have been time to get whatever I was doing done, but, for some reason, my brain stopped me getting into a flow knowing a call was coming up. Since batching my calls into one day, I’ve been able to get more done.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square explains how he uses this batching in his daily routine to manage his full-time role at both successful companies. For him, each day has a theme, which means he’s working on a particular area of the business for a full day so he can stay focused.

Monday: Management and running the company
Tuesday: Product
Wednesday: Marketing and communications, growth
Thursday: Developers and partnerships
Friday: Company culture and recruiting

Feature download:

“There is interruption all the time, but I can quickly deal with an interruption and then know that it’s Tuesday, I have product meetings, and I need to focus on product stuff.” – Jack Dorsey

I’m writing this post on the plane en route back from spending the last five days at Business Mastery with Tony Robbins in Palm Beach Florida. It was the best and most intense conference I’ve ever experienced with five 12–15 hour days (with only one break per day.) The reason for the long days is Tony believes in learning through total immersion so that you and 1000+ people leave knowing exactly how to take your business to the next level.

Many people know Tony Robbins as THE motivational guru and while he is that, he is also a very successful businessman worth over $500million and owner of 20+ companies. He knows what he’s doing, and his network of friends are top business men in the world, from Ray Dalio (Owner of largest hedge fund in the world), Steve Wynn (casinos), Richard Branson (Virgin) and Peter Guber (author and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment).

First off, Tony Robbins is the most incredible speaker and storyteller I’ve ever experienced; I saw that at Unleash The Power Within (another event) and again at Business Mastery. It takes a true talent to have an audience of 1,500 people hanging on your every word for hours at a time. In fact, when he was on stage it was like time ceased to exist.

While he motivates the crowd to believe anything is possible, he drives home the fact that without discipline and hard work you will not get anywhere.

A goal without a plan to get there is just a dream.

Your rate of success will not grow beyond the rate of your personal development which means the biggest chokehold on any business is the psychology and skillset of the owner.

The 7 Forces of Business Mastery

Tony breaks business down into seven key categories to achieve mastery:

1. Creating an Effective Business Map – Knowing what business you’re in and what business you need to be in.
2. Strategic Innovation – New ways to continue to add value to your clients
3. World Class Marketing – Understanding your offer, your ideal clients and finding more of them.
4. Sales Mastery Systems – Strategic and simple ways of increasing your sales, the backbone of any business.
   
5. Financial and Legal Analysis – Knowing your numbers and protecting yourself.
6. Creating Raving Fans – Apple has raving fans lined up and sleeping outside their stores before the new iPhone comes out. How do you cultivate them? The key is to do more for clients than anyone else is, consistently.
7. Optimization & Maximization – Measuring KPI’s (key performance indicators) and tweaking your approach for daily improvements to your systems.

Tony recommends studying each area 90mins per week to get you into thinking mode and working on the business. By looking into and improving just one area per week you will be ahead of the majority of the competition.

Speakers

There was a handful of speakers that attended over the five days, here were my personal favorites:

Keith Cunningham (rich dad) – Financial Intelligence & Business Optics
Over 3 hours he broke down how to read balance sheets, understand cashflow and dig into our numbers. As someone who used look at the profits and call it a day (like the majority of business owners) this was especially eye-opening.

John Paul Dejoria of Paul Mitchell Systems and Patrón
 John Paul shared how he started Paul Mitchell Systems with only $700 while he was living out of his car. Later went on to create Patrón tequila and his latest project Rok Mobile. While going high-level, he also shared some of the nitty gritty tasks he had to do to make them successful through negotiating terms, presenting the product and getting distribution.

“Success unshared is failure” – John Paul Dejoria

David Meerman Scott – Marketing Great talk by David, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, about how people buy, content marketing and newsjacking.

Biggest Learning Principles

• Business is 80% psychology and 20% Strategy
• Business = Innovation + Marketing
• Profit is a theory. Operating cashflow determines the success of a business.
• Add more value for your clients than anyone else, consistently.
• If you don’t have an exit strategy you have a job
• Accounting is the secret language of business; success is a math formula
• Don’t get caught up with the tyranny of How?. This is where most people fall. Focus on what you want without knowing how you will achieve it. The how will show up once you’re clear on your goal.
• People don’t buy products. They buy a feeling.
• Marketing is getting people to want to do business with you.

My 3–5 to Thrive

On the last day, we put together an Implementation plan with our “3–5 to thrive”. These are the key takeaways from the conference that we plan to apply moving forward:

Create a 7/7 Plan

One day per week I will be sitting down to spend 90min working on the business rather than in the business. It’s called 7/7 as I will be focusing in on one area of the 7 Forces of Business Mastery each week, at the end of 7 weeks, I start over.

• Week 1: Creating an Effective Business Map
• Week 2: Strategic Innovation: Products, Service & Delivery
• Week 3: Marketing
• Week 4: Sales Systems
• Week 5: Constant Anticipation: Financial Analysis
• Week 6: Optimization & Maximization
• Week 7: Create Raving Fans & Culture

Gain Financial Intelligence – a bi-weekly review of numbers

Accounting is an area that in the past I avoided like the plague until tax time. That changes from now. By gaining financial intelligence through knowing my numbers I can ask better questions within the business, see problems before they get too big and get clear optics.

Allen is Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of BestSelf so it’ll be his job to organize the data, control where the money goes and how best to move forward. However as CEO, I will be scheduling a time to review numbers on a bi-weekly basis, so I have the financial intelligence to know which area’s to focus on.

Hire an Operations Manager – Becoming an Owner

There are three key positions of any company: – Skilled producer/artist – Manager – Entrepreneur

While we can be a bit of both, everyone at their core is one of these three orientations. My zone of genius is a skilled producer/artist followed by the entrepreneur. I like coming up with ideas, vision and bringing those to life.

An operations manager would be in charge of managing myself, Allen and our virtual team so that the day-to-day operations run smoothly. This is the key to getting out of the business operator role and becoming an owner.

Map out a 30/30/30 Plan

Implementing Jay Abraham’s three ways to grow a business formula through increasing three key metrics, the number of clients (customers), the average transaction value, and the frequency of repurchase. My 30/30/30 plan will be a 30% increase in the following things by end of 2016:

• 30% more Customers
• 30% Frequency of Purchase (or referrals)
• 30% Average Transaction

Here’s the spreadsheet I use to calculate this.

All this only scratches the surface of what I experienced at Business Mastery. I attended the conference because learning is a key competitive advantage, and despite reading many books I find the immersive in-person seminars much more useful.

Do you have any takeaways from reading this post? Share in the comment below!

–

In August 2015, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund our new product, SELF Journal. This started as a passion project between myself and my accountability partner, Allen, and after a successful Kickstarter campaign emerged as a business.

I’m going to walk you through the exact process we used to figure out where to launch, when to launch, how much to ask for and everything else along the way that we used to generate $322, 696 in funding and later over $75K in pre-orders.

I’ll share what we did right, what we did wrong  and everything in between.

Feature Download: Download my entire Pre-Launch sequence, pricing toolkit, and launch checklist (click here to download)

A few caveats before we start:

Launching on Kickstarter is a whole lot of work. If you’re looking for a get rich quick scheme, this isn’t it.
I wrote this to explain step-by-step how we did it to bring clarity to the process and show you what’s possible from people who started with just an idea, no list, and no internet fame.
My goal is for you to finish this post thinking “I can do that.” and then for you to email me in six months and share the results of your launch.

Why Crowdfund?

First off, why did we decide to go to Kickstarter in the first place? Mainly because crowdfunding is the ultimate tool for validation. There’s no better way to test demand for your product or service than to ask people to pay ahead of time. This takes a large part of the risk out of creating a new product as you’re not shelling out a chunk of money for an initial run just hoping that people will want it.

The best part about crowdfunding is that you can build a community around your product and even get incredible feedback on how to make it better.

If you decide that crowdfunding makes sense for your situation, you should have the following ready to go before moving forward:

• A working prototype
• Knowledge of production and how you will deliver to backers
• Associated costs from launch to delivery

Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo?

Lots of people asked me why I have a preference for Kickstarter over Indiegogo because Kickstarter has an all or nothing model which means if you don’t raise your minimum goal you walk away with nothing. Alternately, Indiegogo has a flexible funding option wherein if you don’t reach your goal you can still keep the money you raised.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of flexible funding. The whole point of crowdfunding is to set a minimum goal you have to reach to bring the product to life. If it doesn’t hit the minimum how will you still deliver to backers without the full amount – and more importantly, is it really validated?

I don’t think so. More on this later.

Here’s a chart of the main difference between the two platforms:

We chose Kickstarter because besides receiving much more traffic than Indiegogo statistically, I have personally backed many more Kickstarter campaigns than those on Indiegogo. I feel people browse and “Shop” on Kickstarter, and the organic traffic it brings as part of the community is hugely useful.

However, as shown above, each platform has different strengths and weaknesses.

Campaign decisions

1. Who + Why

Kickstarter is a perfect vehicle to share the story behind you as the creator and why you started on the mission for this product. We wanted to introduce ourselves and the story of why we created the SELF Journal and what problem we were solving.

Creating a new product is an incredibly personal experience. The story behind who you are as a creator and why you started this mission is what enables people to fall in love with your story and is what will help you build a tribe around the product.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” – Simon Sinek

The questions you should ask yourself before you launch are:

• Who is the project for?
• Where do they spend their time online?
• What is the best most economical way to grab their attention?
• How can you add more value to your campaign to help these potential backers even before the product is delivered?

By asking yourself these key questions ahead of time, you will be able to target the right people with your marketing, message and product, sniper-style, rather than trying the shotgun approach and hitting everyone (and wasting time/money).

2. Length of time

You can choose any length of time up to 60 days for your campaign. However doing a longer campaign will not necessarily mean raising more money. Check out Kicktraq to research the funding graph of similar campaigns, typically the first and last week of the campaign drive the most pledges.

As I mentioned above, Kickstarter is A LOT of work if you want to do it right, so running a longer campaign comes with a longer time and energy investment. Do some research so you can ensure it will pay off.

“Kickstarter is a marathon, not a sprint” – Someone, sometime, probably said this.

We wanted to launch and end during a time when people are online most, which is typically during the week rather than a weekend. Therefore, we launched on Wednesday, August 19th at 11am and ended Tuesday, September 22nd at 10 pm.

Total campaign time: 35 days.

3. Choosing a Launch Date

It’s important to launch your Kickstarter during the time of the year when people will resonate with your product. For the SELF Journal, while we technically could have launched in July (we had everything ready), we chose to wait until late August when people were in “back to school mode” and thinking about getting organized. Another important thing for us is that we wanted to ship by the beginning of December so that backers could have in time for the new year.

Having these key timeline constraints helped us to plan our campaign accordingly.

Does the time of year really make a difference with Kickstarter?

Yes.

The greatest example of this I have seen is with the Coolest Cooler, which in 2014 became the most funded project ever at over $13M. However, it had surprisingly failed the first time around to raise only $125K. The creator, Ryan, has stated that one of the biggest reasons for the failure was that the first project was launched in December, at a time people aren’t resonating with needing a cooler. When it was re-launched in July (besides having an updated prototype) it was during prime summertime season when people were thinking about needing that specific type of product.

Lastly don’t launch on a weekend as people are online much less than during the week, it’s also going to be more challenging to get press coverage on launch day if it’s a weekend.

Takeaway: Launch when your target market is thinking about your product and when your audience will be online.

4. Minimum funding goal

Your funding goal is hugely subjective to the product you’re selling, so there’s no hard and fast rule. The key is to know the minimum amount of money you need to successfully produce and deliver to backers.

Why do we ask for the minimum rather than going higher?

Momentum matters in Kickstarter, and quickly succeeding your goal can go a long way with backers than struggling to hit a higher number. People want to be on the winning team, and despite the fact that if the project fails, backers will get their money back, people are much less likely to back if they feel you will not be successful.

By looking at other campaigns and our production costs, we decided that the crucial factor for us was picking a fund goal we could surpass quickly while still being able to deliver on.

$15K ended up our number.

We hit that goal within 28 hours…. Ahhh, sweet momentum.

5. Reward levels

Every new reward level is a new complication to your delivery. Backers are there for the main product, not some swag with your company branding on it that you feel you have to put on just to have another backer level.

Keep it simple.

We stuck with multiples of the SELF Journal as well as early bird deals:

Earlybird Rewards

The early bird deals are a great way to get those initial pledges in during those first 48 hours which builds initial momentum for your campaign. Our early bird deal was just $3 off the regular price of $26, but it was enough that these levels sold out quickly and gave us some initial momentum.

Here’re some options you can consider for Earlybird levels:

• A small discount
• Earlier delivery
• Limited edition version
• Bonus gift included

These reward levels should be limited as it creates scarcity and therefore, visitors are more likely to back quickly than procrastinate on it. We limited ours to 250 backers per Earlybird reward.

How do you know what to limit the early bird rewards to?

We chose 250 per Earlybird reward, so 500 total. The strategy behind this is that selling out of these limited specials would bring us over our minimum fund goal, which would mean we would be successfully funded over $15,000.

The Earlybird Numbers:

Creating the Campaign Assets

The video:

If you’re considering crowdfunding without a video, I urge you to reconsider.
MWP research of 7,196 projects revealed that projects that have a Kickstarter video are 85% more likely to achieve their funding goal.

People’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter all the time. Therefore your video needs to be concise. Being succinct is tough, so it’s important that you write the script ahead of time and edit, edit and edit some more until you distil it down to the essence of your message.

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” – TS Eliot.

Video tips:

1. Write your script and time yourself before you shoot anything.
2. Create a storyboard with all the shots you want to capture as well as who will be appearing and where you’ll be shooting. The more detail and consideration you put into this part ahead of time the less stressed you’ll be on the day(s).
3. Show different use-cases within the video itself so you’re relating to your target audience. You should know this from when you wrote out who the project was for.
4. Share the storyboard, script and inspiration shots with the camera person ahead of time so they can prepare accordingly.
5. Music choice is critical to set the mood and should be selected ahead of time. Ensure you have permission to use so you don’t get into trouble later. We got a song from this site.
6. Get feedback constantly! Ask people that don’t know the product to watch your video and see if they have any questions.

Crafting the Campaign page:

It’s important to craft the Kickstarter page as if it’s a product in itself. A polished campaign page with exceptional photography and graphics makes a huge difference developing backer trust.

If you don’t have one already, hire a designer for this!

Our page was organized into the following sections:

• Introduction: What we do, who we are, and why we created SELF Journal.
• Social Proof: Logos of podcasts, blogs we’ve appeared on
• Unique Selling Proposition: Telling our story and sharing what makes our product different
• Social Share: An offer to entice people to share, in exchange we give them a free PDF bundle.
• Specs & Features: The nitty gritty details about the physical features and specifications of the journal, including the layouts.
• Testimonials: Quotes of what people have said about us.
• Rewards: A graphic representation of the rewards we offer (much clearer to read than the default Kickstarter side-panel)
  Project Timeline: Our planned schedule for the campaign, production and delivery

Feature Download: Download my entire Pre-Launch sequence, pricing toolkit, storyboard template and launch checklist (click here to download)

Planning your Pre-Launch

It’s important to get off to a running start with Kickstarter so planning an effective pre-launch is crucial to success.

Here’re some things to do to pre-launch successfully:

1. Build an Email List

The first 48 hours on Kickstarter are crucial since this is when the first jolt of backers will pledge money to your campaign. Once you show Kickstarter that people dig your project, their algorithm will do its thing, and you’ll show up under the ‘popular projects’ and perhaps even the first page, like this:

But you won’t get featured on the front page if you don’t have that initial surge of sales, and the best way to get that initial surge is to build an email list of people who can’t wait to get it.

We had a list of 3,025 people that we built up between May and August. I wrote a very detailed post on exactly how we created that list over at SumoMe.

2. Create a Media List

Creating a media list is incredibly useful as it’s a highly-targeted list of relevant sites that have covered similar projects to yours who you can reach out to for coverage. The task of creating this list can be delegated easily to a Virtual Assistant. I’ve figured out two ways to do this, one with BuzzSumo and the other is more time-consuming with Google Images.

Option 1: Find Relevant Websites/Blogs Using BuzzSumo:

BuzzSumo is an excellent tool to analyze content so you can find key influencers in your niche efficiently. It speeds up the media list process incredibly. Here’s how it works:

1. Get the Kickstarter URL for 10 Kickstarter projects that serve your same audience
2. Go to the Content Research tab of BuzzSumo
3. Paste the Kickstarter URL into the area provided:
   
4. Export results into an excel sheet, this will give you database of incredibly useful information such as:
   • Article URL
   • Date Published
   • Social shares; segmented out by Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Pinterest
   • Author Name

Option 2: Find Relevant Websites/Blogs Using Google Images:

1. Find 5–10 Kickstarter projects either similar to yours or that serve the same audience as your campaign will.
2. Save the main project images for each to your computer.
3. Use Google Images to search for image:
   
4. On the Google results page review the top results
5. Create a spreadsheet (or download my template)

   with all relevant data

Once you have your media list of important contacts you can start planning your outreach. You should write all your emails ahead of time and schedule them in advance; I use Followup.cc for this.

3. How to reach out to Media list/Influencers

Bloggers and influencers get bombarded daily with pitch emails. 99% of these emails will go straight to the trash because they do it all wrong.

You need to make it as easy as possible for them to write about your project which means giving them all the information up front in a short and engaging format. No back and forth emails that create friction for them.

The first step is to create a press folder with:
– Product images (both high-res and low-res image sizes)
– Description of the product
– Your project video
– Any additional information that seems relevant

Essentially the least amount of work you make a blogger do, the better. With a good pitch and organized information and assets, it’s a much easier decision for them to talk up your project.

Here’re some tips for crafting your emails:

• Keep it short, sweet and personal. Do not mass email these people, you should craft each email to the individual or blog you’re approaching.
• Link to a folder of professional assets (images/text/video etc.)
• Name and Date of project launch with link (to either preview page or landing page)

My doing all of these things you will automatically put yourself way in front of most people that they receive emails from, and you will be considered professional.

4. Set Up Google Analytics

Kickstarter just integrated with Google Analytics last year which is awesome for tracking conversion, traffic and digging down to what’s working.

For a detailed guide on exactly how to do this, check out this post by Spellforge games.

Tools Used so far:

KickTraq: Great site to track your project as well as researching similar projects before launch.
Leadpages:: Great for landing pages to build our list before the campaign, we used them extensively for building our 3,025 prelaunch list.
ConvertKit:: Great email marketing software for building an email list. Autoresponder to send out shareable PDF.
URL Builder: For creating custom links quickly to measure which traffic sources are driving the most pledges/conversion/email opt-ins.
Bit.ly: A URL shortener that makes it easy to track the links you send people, you can use this in conjunction with URL Builder
Dropbox:: To keep all the professional assets and project documents in one place
Epidemic Sound: Royalty Free Music for your video
Followup.cc:: A great tool that sits on top of gmail to schedule your emails in advance.

Part 2: Coming next week

In the next part (coming next week), I’ll be diving into what we did while running the campaign. This includes:

• Driving Traffic
• Content Marketing
• Backer Interaction
• Fulfillment
• Next steps

Let me know if you had any questions in the comments below

One of my goals for 2016 is to take my blog more seriously. In fact, I have accountability setup with Bryan Harris wherein if I don’t post once a week he will charge my credit card $500 (for charity he says). Either way, that’s a negative consequence that will keep me consistent in my writing habit.

I’ve been using WordPress for years now; I’ve wasted many hours messing around trying to fix things. Over the past six months I’ve found 3 tools that I’ve fallen in love with:

1. Marketer’s Delight
2. Convertkit
3. WP Curve

The Reasons Why I Love Thee…

Marketer’s Delight:

Marketer’s Delight is the BEST WordPress theme I’ve ever found. If you’re a blogger/marketer or have a personal brand, it was designed specifically for you. I use it here on LittleMight, and we used it over at BestSelf before we switched to Shopify (for our online store.)

When my business partner Allen came to me last month looking for a theme, it was the only one I could recommend 100%.

Here’s everything you can do with it:

1. Create forms that look great & connect to your email:

It’s this simple:

Right now MD connects to AWeber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign , ConvertKit , and your own custom email form code. More in the works.o

2. Add feature images to your titles to make it pop:

Makes styling beautiful blog posts super easy. Like this:

3. Custom design pop-ups show up at the right time:

A new feature just added allows you to design custom forms for opt-in + exit captures:

4. Looks awesome across all devices:

5. Amazing support (and constant updates):

Not only is the product amazing, but it is also constantly updated with new features, and the support is second to none. Not convinced? Check out this random email I got from the creator, Alex:

Don’t think I’ve ever bought anything that offered that level of support before. If you’re interested you can grab it for a one-time cost of $79 here.

(yes he’s charging way too low for this, but shusshhh don’t tell him… )

2. ConvertKit:

An email marketing service that turns complex into simple. Don’t believe me, check out their 5 min demo. I’ve previously used every email provider from Mailchimp to Aweber to ActiveCampaign. As someone who wants to get stuff done and doesn’t enjoy messing around with platforms, Convertkit made it easy to stick to and actually want to use. Here’s why:

1. Beautiful opt-in forms & Landing Pages

I’m a stickler for design and don’t like to use products that don’t look good… it makes me feel bad, seriously. Convertkit opt-ins are sexy, minimal and responsive, so whether on a homepage or sidebar – they look awesome.

So many choices…

Beauty comes in many forms:

2. Tagging & Segmenting

Convertkit uses a tagging system that is super simple to use and is based on an opt-in form, clicked link or other automation feature. It makes crafting content for particular audiences easy. For example, if someone opted in for something Kickstarter related I can send them Kickstarter relevant content rather than someone who is interested in productivity.

This segmenting/tagging can be done across all your subscribers regardless of the forms/lists they’re on.

3. One email address = 1 subscriber

This seems like common sense but unfortunately not, previously when I used Aweber and MailChimp if someone opted into two places they counted as two subscribers. So in cases, I would have the same person being counted as two different contacts solely due to them being on different segments of my list. For big lists, this can really affect your billing if you’re paying for one subscriber multiple times.

Pat Flynn with an email list of over 26,000 recently moved from Aweber to Convertkit and realized he had some subscribers opted into as many as five different places (5X the cost).

With Convertkit one email address counts for one email.

4. Easy form statistics

Convertkit forms allow you see quick stats of where you are and which forms are working best. They show you how many have seen it, have opted in, and what the conversion rate is. Since I’ve started with ConvertKit I’ve stopped needing to use Leadpages completely.

Here’s how the dashboard looks:

Want to win a year’s subscription to Convertkit?
Check out this giveaway from my friend John Meese.

3. WP Curve:

WP Curve is the WordPress personal assistant that I never knew I always needed/wanted/dreamed of…

It’s a monthly service that I use to do all things WordPress. Can you imagine never having another WordPress a headache? WP Curve will do an unlimited number of small jobs that take 30 mins or less for $69 a month. That’s 30 mins for experts, which means about 5 hours in my time. Now something that used to take me hours I now offload it to them in about 5 seconds, which is how long it takes me to send them an email.

For example, yesterday I noticed my theme for the blog looked different than what I wanted on mobile. Instead of even looking into why that was (yes, I’m lazy) I screencapped my phone and sent them this email:

They fixed it and emailed me back within 6 hours. Booosh!

P.S. That email I got from Alex from Marketer’s Delight with design changes, I forwarded that puppy right over to WP Curve to take care of. 12 hours later and voila, happy Cat.

There it is, everything you need to get ahead in WordPress.

Got any questions about Marketers Delight, ConvertKit or WP Curve? Did I miss something you are wondering about? Ask away in the comments and I will let you know.

If you want to know my other top tools, you can sign up for that PDF below: