#094: Pure Randomness: What I'm Doing and Thinking About

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Well, hello there. Thank you for joining me for episode 94 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find a detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com Episode 94 okay, so this episode is going to be very different from what you're used to hearing from me. I'm going to take you on a random journey, if you will, of what I'm doing, what I've been up to lately, what I'm currently enjoying, and a few things that I'm planning this year. And I'm thinking about this year. Many of you asked me from time to time I get, I do get email people wondering, you know, what, what I'm working on, what's, what's, you know, what am I up to this year, what, what I have planned, what I'm reading, what I'm enjoying, people asking me for various tips all the time. And yeah, I wanted to just took some time today to just kind of compile a lot of this stuff and just share some things that I think could benefit you. So again, this is just completely random, just kind of a brain dump of where my head is at right now and kind of what's making a difference in my life. So the first is actually I got a couple of app recommendations. Now those of you who know me, if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm not really a gadget person. I mean, I really try to limit the number of gadgets and apps that, that I, that I engage with. It's just to me, less is more most of the time. And I don't like getting into this trap of using tools as a crutch because then the tool becomes kind of the objective and learning a tool becomes the objective and then you forget why you bought or downloaded the tool in the first place. So I try not to get sucked in to the whole app and gadget craze, but sometimes, sometimes it's hard. But anyway, I'm very particular about what I even try. Now I will give some things a try, but I won't just try everything. So I really need to have a strong reason for even giving something a whirl. And there's an app that I've been using just honestly, just starting this week that I'm already in love with. And it's called the Way of Life app. Way of Life. If you've ever heard the story about Jerry Seinfeld and a young comedian who asked him, hey, how did you become so good? And supposedly the story goes that he told this young comedian that he writes comedy every day and he doesn't miss a single day. And the way he does this is he's got a poster on his wall with little blocks. Each block represents a day for the month. So the poster has 30 days. And the whole idea is to get into the habit of writing comedy every day. Every time you're done wr writing, you fill in a block or you put an X or a check mark in that. And the idea is not to break the chain, right? Because if you skip a day, you're going to have a hole or a break in that chain of activity. So whether that story is true or not, I have my doubts as to whether Jerry Seinfeld really said this or use this technique. It's very effective. However, every time I've tried it, I just forget. I forget to. Even though I have the big sheet of paper on the wall, I just forget to fill it out. So it kind of loses effectiveness very, very quickly. This app takes that same concept and puts it on steroids. It uses color coding. I think one of the best things about it is that it prompts you at the end of the day to go ahead and update the habits that you're trying to form in terms of activity. Did you do this today? How did this go today? How did this go today? So it prompts you. You tell the app when to text you. It'll send you a text. And for me, it's 9:30 at night. I will get my text. I may play with that time a little bit, but in right now, I'm using the free version of the app, which allows you to track three habits or three activities or actions that you're. You're trying to do consistently. And, yeah, so it's. It's been very, very effective, actually. I'm surprised by how effective it's been so quickly. For me, it's great for accountability. And what I like about it is it goes beyond just the visual chain of action. It enables you to get some analytics out of it and see patterns and filter things out and. And slice and dice the information many different ways. It's really, really cool. I don't have enough data in there. To do that. But I can already see how this will help me stay focused on some of the habits that I'm trying to develop and solidify. And again, it's surprisingly effective for someone like me who's not a big gadget geek. So if you are a gadget geek, I really think you're going to love it. And if you're not, I still believe that it's worth a shot. So I believe it's in the Android app as well. I have an iPhone. It's definitely in the, the Apple App Store, so check it out. The free version will give you a really good sense for and it gives you a lot of ideas on things you can track and do. So some of them I hadn't even thought of. So I think I'm going to give it another week and then I will probably go ahead and upgrade. In fact, I'm going to upgrade before that. I'm already convinced that I'm going to go ahead and upgrade. It's only 4.99. I think it's totally worth it. And I can see how it's going to help someone like me who tends to get caught up in the day to day stuff and, and forgets to, to take action on some of these things that I need to take action on. The next app that I want to tell you about is called Headspace. And Headspace is a guided meditation app. So you know what? I've tried meditating for a few years now and I've been on and off this habit for a while. When I, when I try to meditate on my own, I find it challenging. I think many people feel the same way and it's okay. I still think that any type of meditation is better than no meditation at all. I know I get benefits even when my mind wanders for a long time and I have to pull myself back in. But I do want to get more out of this practice and I want it to be a little bit more focused because I was finding myself if I didn't use a guided meditation, just, just kind of getting lost in feeling kind of anxious at the end, not sure if I was really doing it right and getting the real benefits from it. So, you know, I've tried using guided meditations and it's been more successful generally than just trying it on my own. For a while I was using the Ambana app from Mindvalley, which is pretty good. I really do like it. There's some, some wonderful meditations there. But I find Headspace to be much better, a much better app and tool for guided meditations than Ambana. It's first of all, it's much easier to use. It is more structured and it starts you with a series of 10 meditations, one per day for 10 days. And each of those meditations is only 10 minutes. That's part of their free trial. So when you download the app and you activate your account, it just every day you do one of these 10 minute meditations. I will admit that I, I did one and then I forgot for a couple of days. I think it was actually the weekend, so I, I, I skipped a couple of days. But I'm now on number seven. So this is new for me. I just did number seven this morning. I love it, I love it, love it, love it. So Headspace happens to be, and I just learned about it recently, I believe last month and I finally downloaded it about 10 days ago. But it's the world's most popular meditation app. It has more than 4 million users. Just surprised that I hadn't heard of it until now. And again, I think it has a, it's just easier to use. It has a clear use path when starting out, which I think is the key time on Vana and some of these other apps, there's just so many things in there, you're not sure what to do first, how to go about it, what structure to use. And for someone like me who just really wants clear instructions when I'm learning something new, it's much more uniform and easier to get into. I found it to be surprisingly relaxing and effective from day one, which is rare for me. In the past, everything I've tried, it took a while to kind of just feel like I'm getting something out of it. I mean, I'll tell you, even the first one, I noticed a significant change and I'm already starting to see benefits from doing this on a daily basis. Even after just seven guided meditations. I'm very impressed with how easy it is to stick to it. And I find that Andy, who's the guy who, he does all the meditations, his voice is very pleasant, very soothing and I appreciate the fact that he understands that most of us get easily distracted during a meditation. So he keeps pulling you back in. It's actually kind of funny. It almost feels like he's in my head and he understands exactly what's going on and then I'm just wandering off. So give it a whirl. It's definitely worth signing up for that tent free 10 day trial. Give it a try. I think you'll see what I mean when you start using it. I'm very impressed. It's fantastic. So the other app that I use, and this is less of an app and really more of a service, is one that you've heard me talk about before and it's Focus at Will. So for those of you who are not familiar with Focus at Will, this is a service that plays music that's scientifically designed to boost focus and productivity. Honestly, I can't live without it. There's about 10 stations there. There are always a few experimental stations you could try. I love the Up Tempo station, the Alpha Chill and the Focus Spa. It's on. Throughout the day in my office. I'm. If it's. If I'm doing work, it's on. If I'm reading, it's on. I love the fact that it has a built in timer for my 50 minute focus sessions. So that way I don't need a separate timer. I time myself and I do work for very focused periods of time. I even use it for the 20 minute breaks that I take. I will put it on the running water station which is very soothing. And when the 20 minutes are up, it just dings. I'm usually in the room reading or just drawing or doing something away from my desk and it just reminds me to just come back. It's fantastic. I use it again to do all my work. I use it to read. You can start a free trial at Focus at Will and I got a link here in the Show Notes so you can check it out. I will tell you that's an affiliate link, which means that if you decide to do the free trial and from there you decide to sign up for their full service, which is extremely reasonable by the way, I may earn a small commission that helps pay and support this show. So check it out. If anything, just do the free trial. I think you'll get a really good sense for whether or not this is something that could help you. I love to have music playing in the background, but I could never find the right playlist or station in Pandora or other music service that wasn't disruptive. That actually helped me stay in a period of flow that helped me get in the zone and stay in that zone. So it's definitely one that I cannot live without. I've been using it for a couple of years now and I absolutely love it. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is about an important change in my morning routine. So those of you who've been following me for a while know that I'm really big on this idea of having a morning routine and not just checking email and going to work as soon as you wake up. It's just you really need a period in your life when everything's quiet to do some things that are going to set you up for success for that day. So what I'm experimenting with right now is still starting my day with a gratitude list. I'm not doing as long of a gratitude session as I used to. I'm now limiting it to about three minutes and I don't time it. But essentially I'm writing anywhere between three and 10 gratitude statements and I just write them out exactly like this. I am grateful for. Blank. I am grateful for. So it's not a laundry list of nouns, it's a full sentence for each item. I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that. It's just stream of consciousness. I'm not trying to necessarily be balanced. And you know, start with health. Sometimes I start with something else. Almost always I am grateful for my health. It's. And I am grateful for things even if they are not currently that way or appear to be that way. So going using the health example, even if I have a fever or don't feel so well or I have a cold, I will still give thanks for great health. So I am essentially trying to talk about a situation that I want to be in, not necessarily the situation I happen to be in right now. And I find that, that, that helps. So many times I'll give things thanks for things or situations that I'm not currently in or things that I don't currently have. It doesn't matter. I'm thankful for them as if they already exist in my mind. They already exist and they're already on their way to me. I'm just giving thanks in advance. So I start with a gratitude list and then I open up Focus at will and play the Focus Spa station for a medium intensity for 30 minutes. I read it for exactly 30min. What was happening there for a while last year is I had gotten away from actually scheduling reading time, which sounds silly, but when I get busy sometimes that's one of the things that gets forgotten. So I will read for exactly 30 minutes and one book at a time. I'm trying not to open too many books at the same time because it gets out of hand. I really want to focus on one book at a time and I'm going through books very quickly that way. I'll tell you more about that in a second. So once that's up. I'm at about the 33 minute mark. And then I open up the Headspace app on my phone, I put earbuds on and I do my meditation for that day, which is only 10 minutes. And so really you're talking about a 45 minute morning routine. I like doesn't include journaling. Right now I'm taking a little bit of a break from that and will very likely add journaling back to my routine here in the next couple of weeks. But I wanted to try kind of a different twist on this and see how I liked it. So that's what I'm currently doing. First things first thing in the morning. I'm still waking up very, very early. That way I have plenty of time to get that done. After that, I will go ahead and look at my calendar, see what I have going for the day, what task I have listed in my capacity planner, and I go ahead and schedule my day hour by hour. And I won't do anything else until I've done that. I find that if I start my day without having planned it, chaos ensues very, very quickly from there. If I have a little bit more time, I'll get a little bit organized and then I just wake up the kids, get them fed, get them ready for school, and after that, then my workday starts officially. All right, so this is the next thing I want to tell you about is that I'm going to be resuming my Fridays off policy starting next month. So I have gotten into the practice throughout the years, on and off of taking Fridays off. And lately things have been so out of control and mostly, you know, self induced, honestly, that I have gotten off that habit of taking Fridays off. And I'm finding myself working a full day on Friday, which is not fun for me. I need to have downtime during the week. I try not to work on the weekends. I rarely do work on the weekends, in fact, but I find that the weekends are different, weekends are family, and I need a day or part of a day just for me. And that's what Fridays are all about. You know, it's just been insane around here. And again, mostly because I've let it get that way. And I find that forcing a Friday constraint causes me to be more efficient and resourceful with the time I do have leftover now that I've taken Fridays out of the equation. So for me it's just a. It's a great way to maintain higher levels of focus Monday through Thursday. But it won't happen unless I Give myself no choice unless I really block out that day. So my current plan is to use Fridays. Now, it sounds like right when I say Fridays off, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm just goofing off, although I think that's a very healthy thing to do. Doing a combination of things. I'm doing things that I typically don't make time for or I don't give myself permission to do many times, or I've been ignoring. So my current plan is to use the morning for brainstorming for strategy for what I call self debriefings. Just kind of thinking through recent projects that I've completed, different things that I've put out there and different campaigns that have wrapped up and just kind of getting a sense for how things went, what went well, what didn't go so well, what I could change. That sort of thing. It just requires quiet time, you know, reading. So doing some extra reading those mornings, book reports. And I'll tell you more about that in a second. Any self training. So things that maybe a course that I bought that I need to go ahead and start delving into, taking a long walk just to kind of let ideas percolate and just to kind of get away from the office. So that's mornings. And that's just my energy is, is. Is best suited in the morning for that kind of work, if you want to call it that. To me, that's just not work. And then the afternoons need to be about something just even more fun than that. So golf. Playing golf. So a buddy of mine and I haven't played golf in an embarrassingly long time. We played over the holiday break and we both agreed that we need to do this more often and just get out there once a month. So golf will definitely be part of this. Going out on a hike if it's a nice day or if it's a nice day. Also going maybe on a long bike ride, going to a movie. I rarely go to the movies anymore. My wife hates to go to the movies. She says that people talk and interrupt her. My son likes to go to some movies that I like, but many of them are not appropriate for him. And my wife, again, she doesn't like going. So it's. I end up having no one to go to the movies with. So you know what? Forget it. I'll just go by myself if it's a really good movie that I want to see. So. But I don't give myself permission to do that. So that would be an afternoon thing, going out to lunch With a good friend or a colleague. I've had people that I've known for years. We rarely see each other. This is a great excuse to reconnect, to go out and break bread. In fact, I'm doing that this week with someone that I haven't. An ex boss of mine that I haven't talked to or seen in about six, seven years. So any of those things, that's definitely good stuff for, you know, noon to late in the day. And yeah, that's going to start next month. I have some things that I'm wrapping up here this month, so probably not going to start until the first Friday of February. But I'm already really excited with anticipation for giving myself that break and giving myself that time in terms of what I'm reading. So a couple of books, one of which I had read before, but I just picked up again because it's really short and it's called U Squared, a high velocity formula for multiplying your personal effectiveness and quantum leaps. And it's by Price Pritchett. This is a very, very small book. In fact, it's, it's like a little pamphlet, almost a little booklet. It's just stapled there and the binding is just two staples, really. And it's, you know, it doesn't have extremely practical advice. So it's not a how to or a step by step book, but it really gets you thinking differently about what's possible and about the fact that most of us just kind of default to incremental thinking instead of exponential thinking. So when I read it a couple years ago, it was very impactful and I find that picking it up again, I'm seeing new ideas and in applications that I hadn't thought of before. So I think this is going to be one that I'm going to pick up once or twice a year and just reread. You could read it in less than an hour, in about an hour. And it's powerful stuff. I really enjoy that book. And I'm also reading a book by Raymond Holliwell called Working with the Law. So this is one of these old books that, you know, kind of like Secret of the Ages, Think and Grow Rich kind of in that realm. It's, it's good, it's. It's good. Especially if you like these older books, books that were way ahead of their time when they were talking about things that are now more mainstream today. Back in the day when this is very, very few people even understood this or were attracted to these ideas. So just for that alone, I think it's really an interesting read, but it's really cool to read that now after all this new stuff has come out in the last 20 years or so and how applicable and how, how new these ideas still sound. So if you like a lot of these older books, if you've, if you've enjoyed those, I think you'll, you'll like this one. I'm 3/4 of the way through. It's good. I wouldn't say it's excellent. I would give it maybe a 7 out of 10. And I'm definitely glad I'm reading it. So it's good stuff. So, so yeah, that's, that's books and I got a stack of them that I'm going to be going through here over the next couple of months, in fact. So here's my plan for getting more out of books this year. Definitely reading more books is near the top of my list. In fact, I have a goal to read 25 books this year because last year I read only 10, and that's not good. Now I read more. So I read for pleasure at night. I will not read any business or personal development or professional development books at night. They, they don't let me sleep well because my mind starts buzzing. So I read novels and biographies at night. So I did read more than 10, but in terms of professional development, business, that sort of thing, only 10. That's not good. I have a goal to read 25 this year. I'm also going to be trying something different this, this year with, in terms of capturing more of the information from the books I read. One of the things that really bothers me about books and the way we read books is the fact that we go through them so quickly and then we put them away. And I don't need to tell you how easy it is to forget 95% of what you read within just a few months of reading it. So one way that I'm going to combat that is to start writing book reports for the books that I feel are worthy of one. And I'm envisioning kind of a one to two page summary of the key points from the book. I think just going through the maybe notes that I have on the margins, key items that I've highlighted in a book, will do two things. First of all, it will help me recall the information and kind of engrave it in my brain much more effectively. And secondly, it will give me a record of the book that I can easily access without necessarily having to go through the book again. So the Summary will become, you know, really the Cliff Notes that I can easily digest and retain and help me retain more of the material that was worthy of retention from that book. So I'm going to give that a try this year again, not for every book, but for the ones I think are worth doing this with. And I'm going to focus on reading faster by focusing on capturing the essence of each book and not getting caught up in the details. So just kind of moving through. I found that when I. When I preview each chapter, when I start going through kind of the first sentence of every paragraph, read bullet points, look at illustrations and so forth, before I read the chapter, I can zoom right through that chapter. And I haven't found or noticed the difference between doing it that way and reading every single word carefully. I find that I get pretty much the same information by just cheating a little bit and getting ahead. So I'm going to. I'm going to focus on reading faster. And I think just having that goal of 25 books a year, which kind of in my mind is, you know, a book every two weeks, that's not going to be a problem. But I'm going to have to focus on moving on and not getting bogged down in some of the detail. All right, so in terms of happiness, you know, one of my themes for this year is being happier. And one of the ways that I plan on doing that is by focusing 80% or more of my time on projects and tasks that leverage my biggest strengths, which are things like conceiving and experimenting with new strategies, with new approaches, creating training, coaching, teaching, growing my business. So working on the business, unless in the business. So the. One of the ways I'm planning on doing that is just delegating more tasks that are not in my core skill set to my amazing staff. So we're growing your staff here. Get some wonderful, amazing people. And I need to let go of some of these things that, frankly, have become habit, but they're not part of what I do best. I'm going to continue to hire good people as needed to take on increased workload. And, you know, in terms of how this applies to you, I'll tell you that no matter what you do, even if you're a solo professional just kind of starting out, there are always simple things you can delegate. I've talked about this in the show before. Things like proofreading, transcription work, some administrative work, even things like errands and so forth. You know, when you can pay somebody $10 an hour to go to the post office, Run a few errands for you, get some, get some help around the house in terms of, you know, cleaning, yard work, things, especially things you don't enjoy doing, it can make the biggest difference. It's, it's remarkable how impactful it can be and it doesn't always have to be hiring somebody else. I'm surprised at how many people just forget about the ways that technology can save us time. You know, depositing checks with your phone. So many banks now have apps that enable you to deposit paper checks into your account with your phone by taking a picture of it. You know, if I can save a half hour driving to the bank, standing in line and driving back home, and I can, I can do that in 30 seconds with my phone instead, man, you know, I think it's just so much smarter to do it that way. If I can have the post office, the mail carrier pick up some packages for me because I've pre printed postage here at home and you know, put my packages by the mailbox, if that can save me a trip to the post office, which every time I seem to go to the post office, there's a line out the door. I don't know what people are doing, but they have very complex things to do for some reason. You know, all I want is just to ship something really easily. Then you know, why not do that? Why not use technology to save time and do things that you know are going to be mostly a waste of your time, time that you could be spending growing your business, working on billable work or doing more enjoyable things, things you actually want to do. So that's going to be a big focus this year and in terms of what's ahead of for high income business writing. So I'm going to be making, and already making some, some key changes this year. One of the things that I'm committed to doing is to publishing more free content for you guys this year besides the podcast. So the podcast will stay, will likely stay on an every other week frequency like it is and has been for a while now. But I want to give you more free content and also give you more written content. So a lot of you guys have asked for more written content in the way of PDF guides, in the way of articles, blog posts, checklists, that sort of thing. Definitely going to be working on a wide variety of free content for you this year. I want to help you every way I can to earn more and less time doing work you actually love for better paying clients. That's, that's the mission here. I will Work on already working on improving the quality of our of our training, both free and paid. So improve and maintain what we have. We've made a big investment in a new technology platform that will enable you to in one location. So we're already working on improving the quality of our of our training, both free and paid. So improve and maintain what we have. We've made a big investment in a new technology platform that will enable you to. Now if you have, let's say four different training programs from us, you have to go to four different websites and have four different sets of logins, which is a real pain. Unfortunately the system we are using, which is very effective, didn't have another very clean option. So we've completely revamped that. We're in the process of changing this and we're gone to a system that will give you one login, one location for pretty much all the programs that you've purchased from us and they'll all be there. That way you have to maintain and track just one set of login credentials. The interface will be better, it will be mobile, responsive. There are other benefits to what we're moving into. I think you guys are really going to like it and this has been something that many of you have written us about and told us you wish we would improve. We listened to you and in that change is coming, so be on the lookout for that. We're going to be sending out email announcements about this change. Also going to be planning a rebranding effort later this year. I'm going to be, you know, our websites are in bad need of definitely visual rebranding. It's something I've been aware of for a long time, something I've been wanting to do. Just so many other projects that have seemed to kind of take over and that has, has been one that I have. The rebranding has been one that I've unfortunately ignored and that's not good. So gonna definitely be doing some rebranding this year. We're going to be focusing more more on serving writers and copywriters exclusively. Although I will tell you that most of what I'll teach will still apply to other creative professionals. I found that we have a large following of designers, translators, software developers and so forth because a lot of what we talk about here is very applicable still. So there will probably be a significant shift in focus to in term at least from a branding standpoint to more writers and copywriters. Now I'm going to be continuing to offer and refining my two group coaching and training programs which are for writers and copywriters and B2B business launcher is one of them. And that's for those starting out in freelancing and the 2x project for those who already established and earning 30 now, I'm going to be continuing to offer and refining to $80,000 a year, but who want to double that in the next 18 months. So we'll continue offering those this year. In fact, the application window for the next 2x project opens soon, so stay tuned for that if that's something that you've been thinking about doing. In fact, if you want to be one of the first to be notified when I make the application announcement, make sure to get on the early notification list for the 2x project and I'll include a link for that in in the Show Notes. I'm also starting to offer a one on one coaching option which is my first one on one option in almost three years. It's a very focused one day strategy and planning intensive. So if you're interested in hearing more about that, we can certainly send you some information with no obligation whatsoever, just email support and we'll send that information to you. And finally, we're going to be rolling out something next week that I am crazy excited about, so you're going to want to stay tuned for that. It's something we've been planning here for several months and we're really excited to put out there in the world. So won't tell you much more than that other than just stay tuned. Watch your email. And it's coming, it's coming here in the next week to 10 days. So that's, that's what's up over here. That's what's up with me. I'd love to hear from you. In fact, I'd love to know what you're up to this year. What, what are you going for? You know, what big things are you changing in your business and in your life. So let me know. I'd love to hear you from you in the in the comments area here in the Show Notes page. Let me know you're out there. Let me know what you're up to. And folks, that's it for today. Again, you can access the show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com forward/episode94 I thank you very much for listening today and I hope you have an awesome day. Take care.

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