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Good health makes me a better blogger part 1

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Hello again; Its no secret that I believe my personal transformation started by getting in better physical health. First, I was convinced to have a sleep study. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and fitted with a CPAP machine. Later, I was persuaded to consider having gastric surgery. I listened to the information and decided to go ahead with it after finding out that it wasn’t the answer just a tool to help with long term weight loss. I had a successful procedure. Following that up with eating healthier and daily exercise I am now at my ideal weight of 255 pounds for a 6 ft. 4 man with a solid build. As I have gotten healthier I have come to have more energy, creativity, and passion. So, I want to share some of my recent experiences in hopes of encouraging you to also make your health a priority.

Some questions

Let’s start with a few questions. When was the last time you saw a doctor? Was it in his or her office, or was it at an emergency room? Did you go to have a regular check up or where you there for some sort of condition?

Do you have a regular primary care physician? Do you know them by name? When was the last time you visited them? And when you go do you have a conversation or just listen to their advice and get out of there?

I know going to the doctor is not much fun. I hear it is even less fun for women. And for those who get told this often, going there only to hear you need to quit smoking, drink less, or lose weight isn’t fun either. I used to be that guy. I would go to my doctor every six months but only because I had prescriptions that needed to be approved by a physician before they could be refilled. I would promise to try harder, and she would tell me I better. 🙂

Talking to my doctor

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Knowing your worth and setting prices

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Hello again; Today I want to talk about an important subject. I want to discuss the age old fear of are you good enough. This subject came to me as i was wrestling with another problem common to all bloggers and that is what to charge. I hope hearing my thoughts will help you with your own inner discussion.

 

When I first started blogging with the new website, I wasn’t sure people would want to read my posts much less hire me for coaching or speaking. I set the blog up on a free platform so i wouldn’t have to invest the time and money of choosing and filing for a domain name as well as creating a new site. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that not only do people like my posts but quite a few of my readers say they depend upon them and look forward to them. So, I moved over to word press and continue to be impressed by the response of my readers. But that brings me to the subject of coaching and what to charge for it.

 

I don’t have any formal training as a coach or mentor. I plan to draw on my own experiences to motivate and inspire clients. For this reason I decided not to charge for the service. I figured I can do it for free for a while and find out if I like it and if I am any good at it. I put it out there that I was available. I especially promoted it among the blind and visually impaired community. So far, I have had only one response, and he did not return for a second session.

 

Investing in yourself

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List building without realizing it and getting an auto responder

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Hello again; I apologize for being a bit behind with this week’s post. I had been proud of myself for publishing a post each friday. I consider the guest post on Harleena’s site my own post for that week. But this week I was sick with a fever for about three days. That combined with this oppressive summer heat had me thinking about skipping this week all together.

But then I remembered the people who had told me that my posts had motivated them to keep going. I thought of others who said they look forward to my weekly sharing. And I thought what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t keep of my schedule. So, I hope you enjoy this week’s effort.

The problem

In the early days of my business as an amusement equipment broker I had trouble getting people to return my phone calls or answer my emails. I understood that it would take time to get established. I also knew that my idea of running a commission sales site would be a tough sell competing against several free classified sites with longer track records and more well known names. But I wondered how I could overcome this. I thought there has to be something more I can do to get people to listen to me.

About this time I started reading posts online about promoting your website. There were a lot of posts about how you have to give people things to get their attention and as a result their traffic. . I thought well I don’t have a lot of money so what can I offer for free. I thought well I would love for people to add a link to me on their site. I figured I cant be the only person who wants more traffic.

The big idea

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Learning to maintain my site and switching to a mac

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Hello again; Today, I’m going to pick up my story where I left off. If you remember, my brother had left me to take a high paying job with Floyd and Baxter. I didn’t have the money to hire a webmaster, and I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable turning over the keys to the car to just anyone. I didn’t even know what html, php, and java all really meant. But I had a business to run and a website to maintain. So, I knew I had to learn how.

last version of the site before switching to word press

This is a screen shot from just before I moved the site to word press. I told you it was bright. 🙂

Learning to manage the site myself

I told my brother I didn’t know where to start. Michael said to start small. He advised me to find a ftp, file transfer protocol, program that I could access with speech and download the current version of the site to my computer. Then, he said and this is critical max make a copy of that folder in another place on your hard drive. He couldn’t be more clear that doing this would save my life at some point. I believed him and followed his instructions.

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honored with guest post successfully migrated to word press and won OBSS contest 3rd prize

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Hello again; This week, I decided to share several pieces of good news for me and the website. In the last two weeks I had a guest post published on Harleena Singh’s site Aha Now I successfully transferred my site from blogger to word press, and I won third prize in the Online Business Superhero Summit Contest.

The contest

Its no secret that I love Adrienne Smith. She has taught me a lot about blogging especially the power of blog commenting and the value of building relationships. So when she has a new post I follow her suggestions. Back on July 10th she shared a post called How To Learn From A Superhero She explained that it was a two week long series of presentations from superheroes of the online marketing world. She included a link that would take us to their site and give us access to the line up of speakers, a way to watch previous broadcasts, and where to enter a contest to win some cool products or an opportunity to learn from one of the superheroes.

Why I entered

Well, upon visiting the link, I found out that you had to enter the contest in order to gain access to the webinars. So, I entered the contest not thinking anything about winning. I knew that some of my friends might also enjoy watching these broadcasts, so I shared the link on my social media networks. After that i went to listen to some of the replay shows and didn’t think any more about it. I did have some trouble getting started watching the replays, but Adrienne sent me a direct link to them, and I was off and running listening to these giants of the online marketing field. I had a full weekend where I learned some new concepts and began thinking in some new ways concerning how I market myself and my website.

surprising progress

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