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Tips on celebrating success and what I’ve learned about podcasting after doing 100 episodes by Doug Morneau
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Thank you to listeners, guests and my team.
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How do you celebrate success?
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People are watching and you may be inspiring more people than you know.
- What do you wanna do? What goals do you want to accomplish? Just do it!
- I wanted to meet and connect with people who are the very best at their game. That’s why I started this podcast.
- I have connected with companies that lineup guests for my podcast.
- How to get booked on a podcast and be a great guest.
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Rant: Taking out the trash. My goal is to build an audience of engaged people.
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The five most impactful books I’ve read in this past year.
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If interested, join my mailing list – what’s working – no pitches!
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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Doug Morneau: So, what I don’t want you to get the feeling here is that everything shiny is not gold. It wasn’t an easy process. It wasn’t like I just flipped a button and all these things magically came together, and they came together seamlessly without any problems.
Well, welcome back, listeners, to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast, and this isn’t just any episode. This is the 100th episode of Real Marketing. So, as a new podcaster or new to this space, I’ve been podcasting just a little over a year, and super excited to talk to you in episode 100, and I want to share with you some of the successes I’ve had, some of the challenges I’ve had, but more importantly, just get a little bit vulnerable, and just pull back the covers, and let you see inside, behind the curtain, what we’re doing. I want to start out by first saying thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Those of you who have left reviews, thank you for leaving reviews.
Today’s episode really is about inspiring you to keep moving, to keep trying, to be your best, to achieve your goals, and to learn from my mistakes. I’m going to share one of my biggest weaknesses with you, but first, here’s some great ways to celebrate success, both big and small. After a big success, we should take a deep breath. We should share with friends, family, and colleagues. In this case, I’m sharing with my audience on our podcast. Then give your goals a rest or a break for a day. Take a look back at the path that you’ve taken to get to your success. Then write down your successes and put them away somewhere where you can see them every day.
Sometimes I have to look back and kind of reflect on what’s gone well or the areas that I’ve had success in my life when I’m having those bad days, or a bad week, or hopefully it’s not a bad month, but it’s good to reflect back and see the progress that you’ve made. So, again, thanks for everyone who’s listened. Thanks for supporting. Thanks to my 90 plus guests. Over the course of this last year and these 100 episodes, I’ve had to reach out to a lot of people that I didn’t know, introduce myself, and ask them to come onto the podcast as a guest.
I want to thank my team. You know, this effort of setting up, and operating, and promoting a podcast is pretty tough to do in isolation. I think by being involved in several different community groups, and podcasting groups, and masterminds, you know, I have listened to other people who have struggled to do it all themselves. For me, I simply could not have launched the podcast by myself. I don’t have the technical skills, nor the desire to learn the skills on how to edit and create the audio files that are required to produce a podcast.
So, just a quick thank you to Melissa, and Catherine, and Charlie, and Mark, who all work with me remotely, Rod, who’s my project manager and helped me to get the podcast up and running, and then my wife, Heather, who keeps the house quiet on those days that I’m interviewing. You know, I try to batch my interviews on Thursdays, and often we’ve got grandkids and the grandson’s going to come over and hang out. He’s two, so he’s full of energy, and he’s not always super quiet, but Heather manages to keep quiet, get him outside, so I can record the episodes that I need to.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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For some of you this may not be obvious, and for others, you know, this has been more than obvious. In my life and my business, my approach to life is pretty simple and pretty focused, and I’m either on or off. I tell people it’s like a light switch. There’s nothing in between. I’m either fully on, or I’m fully off. Some may say that I’m a fanatic. I’ve been called obsessive, you know, a driven workaholic, and there are many other descriptions that I’ve heard that I can’t say on the podcast, because that would ruin my Apple rating in terms of keeping it PG-13. But I’ve been a serial entrepreneur now for about 37 years, so I would have to say in fairness in my life we all have seasons, so some or all of those descriptions have been true at one point or another.
What is this big weakness that I wanted to share with you? Well, I quite frankly suck at celebrating my successes. So, I don’t know about you, but I set goals daily, weekly, annually, and I work hard to reach my goals. Often I don’t reach my goals. Stuff comes up. Life comes up, or sometimes you change your goals, because you realize the goal that you’re pursuing in one particular area or maybe one project isn’t going to be a fit for you, so you change direction, but what do you do when you reach those goals and you reach that level of success?
I’d be interested to hear back from you readers, or you listeners rather. Put a comment at the bottom of the post and let me know what you do to celebrate your success. You know, this has been really tough for me, and I really don’t know why I am this way. I was making some notes because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t ramble and go off in too many rabbit trails in this episode. I was thinking, “Why don’t I celebrate success?” When I achieve a goal, why don’t I take a minute, as I shared with you above, take a breath and say, “Wow? That’s really cool,” or do something, even if it’s something small?
I wonder if some of that wasn’t rooted in the way that I was brought up, in the house that I was brought up, where I was discouraged not to shine more brightly than a couple of my cousins who came from the right family, lived in the right side of the tracks, went to the right schools, had all the right things, but that’s not where I grew up, and that’s not where I came from. My dad was a working guy, like everybody else. So, maybe it was that discouragement of not shining too brightly, letting people know that things are going well.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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Today, my goal here in this episode is really to share with you kind of what I kind of call the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, you may ask, well, who cares, and why do I want to share this with you, and why now? Honestly, it helps you, and it helps me, so it helps me to work on that bad habit or that area of weakness in not sharing my successes by actually sharing them. You know, I think it helps you, maybe not all of you, but I know it helps some of you because I get private messages from people often that are watching and lurking in the backgrounds.
So, those of you who are entrepreneurs, or marketing types, or own a business, what you need to realize is that people are watching. There are people watching on the sidelines. There are people watching your social media feeds, and they may say, you know … They may not be saying anything ever, or at some point, they might step forward out of the shadows and say, “Hey. I was in a really dark spot, and I read your post, or I saw you do X, and it really inspired me to keep going.” Now, I know this has been the case on my health and wellness journey. I was quite sick and nearly died, and I shared kind of my progress as I worked my way through that to be back to full health and better than I ever have been.
What was interesting was people privately would come along and say, “Wow. You’ve really encouraged me with what you’re doing.” I think that’s another reason why we need to share our successes with the intention of helping people and celebrating not with the intention of bragging, because my desire here is in no means to say, hey, that I’m any smarter than anybody else. This is my life. This is what I’m doing. I’m doing it for my reasons, my why, and I’m just going to keep plugging ahead. The year’s starting to wind down, and for me personally, this is a time when I actually turn up the heat. You know, I had a conversation just the other day on the way home from the gym. I had a conference call, and I said, “When I drive, I’m kind of the guy who wants the pedal to the metal. I want to keep my hand on the nitrous button because I want to go full out, full speed.”
My question to you is what do you want to accomplish in the next three months, or the next six months, or maybe the next year, or maybe the next couple of years? Here’s some advice I would share with you. You know, if you want to have a podcast, you want to start a podcast, then I’d say just do it. Do you want to write a book? Then I’d say just do it. Do you want to be a guest on a podcast, like this podcast or another podcast that’s more suitable for your target audience? Then I’d say just do it. What I need to be really honest and upfront with is that most of the goals that I’ve set in my life and have set on my business I had no idea how I was going to accomplish them when I set them. I just want to repeat that.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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Lots of times we get hung up when we set goals, trying to think, “Well, I don’t know how I’m going to get there,” or, “I don’t have the money,” or, “I don’t have the knowledge. I don’t have the technology. I don’t have the people.” I think that prevents us from setting the goal. My approach is set the goal, and then what I’ve found is all the pieces that you need to make it happen will show up. I set some really ridiculous goals last year. I set a goal to write three books, start a podcast, and rebrand my own personal website. For some of you, you might say, “Well, that’s not a big deal.” For others, you say, “Well, that’s a lot of stuff.” How did I make out, now that we’re winding up the year for 2018? How did I do?
Well, I did publish one book. I published a book called Three Big Lies: The Real Truth About Renting Email Lists to Generate Targeted Leads and Sales, and that became an international bestseller, so it became a best seller in the US, Canada, Europe, and I think in Australia. I wrote a second book, which basically has been sitting on my publisher’s desk now for 11 months. He’s giving me a bit of grief for why I haven’t released it. That’s my book that really talks about my life story, on how I got sick, and how I got healthy, and what I learned through that process. So, book number two got written, did not get published.
Book number three is a biography, and what’s interesting is when friends, and family, and business associates heard that I was writing a book, they were all most excited to get the book. I said, “You’re probably not going to enjoy my first book, because it’s about email marketing.” What everybody’s anxiously awaiting is the tell-all, the biography. So, that is on my goal list. I’ll move that over to my next year. This year we had some really cool stuff happen. We had our second grandson, so now we’ve got a two-year-old and a two-month-old, so that changes my life. It gives me a new perspective. It’s really exciting to be a grandad, and I’m excited to be a grandad, to be able to hang out with my grandson and have good health, be able to chase around the yard, swing the golf club with him, kick the soccer ball.
When I started my podcast, I didn’t know how to podcast. I had no idea. When I decided to write my first book, actually I set a goal to write one book, and after meeting with the publisher I agreed to write three, which maybe was a bit of an aggressive goal, but again, I didn’t know how to write a book. Again and again I’ reach these goals, but I didn’t celebrate those successes. I just couldn’t figure out why people kept making kept making such a big deal, so 100 episodes, big deal. Well, what I learned very early on in podcasting was I had read that most podcasters stop before their seventh episode. They just quit. It’s just too much work. It’s too overwhelming, and they don’t see results.
Well, podcasting, and this is my opinion, and I’m sure that some of the experts would agree, it’s a long game. It’s not a short game, so I just kept going. I kept plugging away. Lots of people say, “Okay. Fine. You’ve done the podcast. Well, why did you start the podcast?” Well, really simply, I started this podcast, my goal upfront is the same as it is today, now 100 episodes in, and that was I wanted to meet and connect with top leaders in sales and marketing who are the very best at their game, the best at tactics, the best at technology, the best with tools and innovation, and the best with solutions that help us to grow our business through sales and marketing.
You know, I did not have a monetization strategy, and some people said, “Hey. You need to have a way to monetize your podcast.” What you’ll know by listening to my podcast now for this being the 100th episode, my monetization strategy is not running ads on my podcast. Many podcasters do, and that’s their business model, but my business model was about getting access to the smartest people in their field, those who have a superpower that they’re using, that are making a difference, that is moving the sales dial, have an opportunity to connect with them.
Here’s just a little bit of insight on the backside of that. I have a chance to talk to the CEOs and founders of companies, so not a sales rep or somebody that’s forward facing to the business community, so I have a chance to talk to them through email, to have a 5 or 10 minute conversation before we get on the podcast, to spend 30 to 45 minutes talking to them about their superpower and their business. Often we have a discussion that will go 10, or 15, or 20 minutes after the podcast is done. Then because I very aggressively promote their episode, there’s this reciprocity there. There’s this opportunity to continue connecting with them. In reality, I look at these people that I connect with as potential partners that I can work with to help grow my business and look for tools before they’re commonly known and available, so I can share them with my clients. So, I guess that’s one win, so I can celebrate today’s 100th episode. That’s done.
One of the other things that I got in terms of recognition as a podcast … So, this is just a different way of viewing monetization. You know, I’ve met a bunch of really cool people. I’ve built relationships with some of them that’ll go well beyond the podcast, but I was chosen to be an icon of influence in the new media space. I was invited to San Diego to hang out with 39 other new media icons, all of whom had significantly more experience than me podcasting. So, it was really a cool opportunity for me to go down there and then to also meet 100 or 150 people that were interested in podcasting and learn how to be guests and to be one of their speakers. Several of those people now are my friends. I’m in a mastermind with a couple of them, so that’s very cool. I’ve been interviewed on a bunch of podcasts. Again, an area that I knew nothing about, but really, really enjoyed.
What I don’t want you to get the feeling here is that everything shiny is not gold. It wasn’t an easy process. It wasn’t like I just flipped a button and all of these things magically came together, and they came together seamlessly without any problems. I hired a couple different consultants to give me advice and to help me get my podcast up and running. I joined a group online called Podcaster’s Paradise. That’s run by John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire and his wife, Kate. Now, they are a great resource, but I hired a couple local guys, touch and feel guys, that would help me walk through the process, and what I learned was, after I hired them, that I had about half of what I needed to actually run the podcast, but that’s okay. I had enough to be able to get the equipment fired up, start inviting guests, and start interviewing.
That was kind of the beginning. Full confession. I take action as much as I can and push as hard as I can, but I had the podcasting equipment for two years sitting in my office and had never set it up. There’s a big, long list of stuff that I didn’t get done this year that were on my to-do list with regards to my podcast. So, I didn’t get the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast Instagram account going. I had created the 20 posts to pre-launch. I just never launched it. I stopped producing and recording, and publishing my podcast for about two months this year due to lack of time and resources.
So, there came a time when I was just overwhelmed, didn’t have all my systems in place. I said, “Man, I just can’t prioritize this and do this. I need to focus on my business, my core business, and just set this aside,” but for me, that’s a really big deal because I had to give myself permission to look at this as an I’m taking a break. This isn’t a failure. I’m not shutting it down. It’s like I’m going to shelve this for a bit and then going to come back to it. I just started a Twitter account for the Real Marketing Podcast, but again, it’s not fully functional. I stopped posting articles on LinkedIn for the podcast. That’s something I need to restart. I haven’t started running any ads for my podcast to promote my guest, so there are lots of things that I didn’t do, but I did make it to episode 100.
So, here’s some good news in all the things I did do and I didn’t get done. Now that I have 100 episodes of content behind me, I can get my team to repurpose this. I can get them to reschedule it, and then we can really kick some butt by having a really good content strategy plan and have it calendarized, and execute. I’m sure you’d agree, those of you who create content and use content for your business today, recognize how difficult it is today after day, week after week come up with content. So, here’s the upshot of not having accomplished all the things I wanted in the first year. I now have 100 episodes of archived data.
I have each podcast when it’s transcribed is about 5,000 words. So, all that information is there, and now I can use it. I can hand it off to my staff and my team, and I can have them build this out and not only publish what’s current, but they can go back, and we can repurpose those other 100 episodes that were released earlier. This might sound trite to you, but if you really know me and my history, that’s a huge win for me that I can just say, “Okay. I’m not going to sweat the small stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff I didn’t get done. I had to take a break,” but that’s the reality. That’s the reality for me. I wasn’t always that way. The fanatical, driven, and those comments at one point would have been true. Now, I just take a little bit more relaxed approach to what I’m doing, because it’s really not worth having a heart attack over.
Here’s another big win. This was totally unexpected. This is what I mean when I said when I started my podcast, I didn’t have all my ducks in a row. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I didn’t know all the steps I was going to need to take, but here’s what caught me by surprise. There are companies out there that do guesting for podcasters. What that means, that if you have a business, or you have a company, or you’re an entrepreneur and you want to be a guest on a podcast, like mine, or Entrepreneur On Fire, or any other other podcasts that are out there, you can hire a guesting company or a PR agency that will reach out to podcasters like me and get you booked on the show.
I didn’t know that service even existed, so there’s exactly an example of my point that gets started before you know all the answers because you won’t know these answers and you won’t know that these opportunities exist until you actually get going. They don’t show up out of the blue. You know, so that was one big surprise. That was not only a big surprise. That was a huge win for me, and I’m going to talk a little bit about that a little bit further down in this episode, so you get an idea of why that’s a win as a podcaster.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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Here was the next big bit of surprise I got from the guesting experience. So, now I had podcast guesting companies reaching out to me very professionally, introducing me to potential guests that they thought would be a good fit for my show and my audience. Then after the show, they were asking me for feedback on the guest, and they were asking the guest for feedback on me as a host. You know, maybe this shouldn’t have caught me by surprise, and I don’t mean this in a boastful way at all, but what I was surprised at was the comment that I was professional and that I was organized.
If you’re thinking of starting a podcast, just realize that not everybody runs it professionally like a business. It’s like any other business. There are people who do it really well, and there are people who don’t do it so well. I was really surprised that that was the feedback I was getting. I got comments like, “Well, you don’t cancel. You were on time. Your equipment was good. Your follow up was good.” Again, two big wins that came totally unexpected.
Finally, now that I’ve published 100 episodes, just recently, within the last couple of episodes, I’ve managed to hand off the last piece of my podcast that I was still doing myself, and I’m truly now down to just doing the most fun part of the podcast, and that is interviewing guests and talking to people. In terms of setting the appointments and all the pieces that lead up to that, I don’t have to do that. In terms of prep for the show, obviously I do prep for the show, because I want to know who my guests are, and I want to connect with them on social media, and I want to see what they talk about, and I want to visit their website, so I’ve got a really good understanding, but that’s the fun part of this business. The other side or the biggest fun area in podcasting is now I get a chance to hang out with these guys and talk to them for 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and my team does the rest of it.
So, I want to cover off some of the stuff I learned podcasting personally. If you’re thinking of podcasting or you’re thinking of being a guest, here is the what I said, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve had some really bad guests that have been difficult to deal with, that haven’t shown up on time, or that simply haven’t followed the rules, and they thought that they be there to promote their business, instead of sharing information with you, my audience. Those types of episodes don’t get aired. I’ve had some really bad pitches, like, “Hey. I’m really successful. I’m really great. Your guests will love me. Look at me. Look at me.” Again, those guys don’t generally make it to the podcast, because my thinking is that if they are that self-centered and self-focused on the pitch, that’s how the conversation’s going to go when we record it, and again, that’s not good for you or for me.
I mentioned guesting and having an agency send me potential guests. Well, one of the things that I realized when I started was I was told I needed to batch and have a bunch of different episodes ready to go. They said to have four to five episodes ready to go. Launch with four episodes, and then pick your scheduling. I had decided early on that I was going to publish twice a week. Now, again, that might be a bit aggressive, but that was my choice. That’s what I wanted to do. Every Tuesday and every Thursday I was going to release a new episode. I had probably a dozen episodes in the can. I released the four. I had a bunch in there. Then what I realized as a new podcaster, there was a big learning curve to kind of get the flow and understand how to make this work, but there was also a time lag in getting guests.
You had to identify potential guests. You had to reach out to them cold. You had to introduce yourself and ask them to be on the show. Then you had to book them. Some of the people never answered at all. Some people were slow to answer. Some of the guests canceled. Some of the guests rescheduled. What I found myself was, uh-oh. I’m looking at Tuesday. It’s Sunday night. I don’t have a guest for Tuesday. Admittedly, a few of my first solo episodes where out of necessity, because I did not have a guest. Now, I think, for me anyhow, personally doing a solo episode is the most concerning. I’m the most afraid of doing a solo episode, but here I am doing it anyhow.
The other interesting thing, if you’re thinking of being a guest, is I’m always surprised by how many of the guests don’t reciprocate and connect on social media. It’s free. It costs zero dollars to connect with me on LinkedIn or connect with me on Instagram or Twitter, but they don’t do it. That’s fine. I just think it’s a poor way of doing business because we invest a lot of time sharing their episode on social and tagging them in everything we do. That brings me to another point.
If you’re thinking about being a podcaster or you are a podcaster listening to this, some of the guests don’t share the episode. I’m not sure why. I mean, they made the effort to get on the show. I might have invited them, or they may have pitched me, or one of their booking/guesting agencies may have booked them, but they don’t share the episode. Now, the one thing I would say is that most of the podcast booking companies that I’ve dealt with, and there’s three that primarily send me most of the guests, they make sure that the episode’s shared. Not only do the guests share the episodes, but their agency, or their agent, or the person they’re dealing with there that are booking them on the shows also share it.
Now, on the other side, the bright side, I’ve had some really good guests. I’ve had some really great guests. I’ve had some guests that I’ve become friends with, some guests now that I will travel with, and I have probably purchased products from no less than five of my guests. I mentioned at the beginning what the purpose of my podcast was, and that was to identify and connect with the smartest people with the best practices in the sales and marketing industry, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that out of the guests that I have hosted on my show, that I’ve become a client of theirs and been super happy with the products and services that they offer, and there’s several more that I will purchase their products and services and use for both myself and my clients, but in a timely fashion.
So, what I’ve come to realize is that people are people. We’re all busy. There are some people that are lazy, and there’s others that are self-centered, and there’s others that are givers and just want to deliver value, but I can’t control any one of those things. I can just try to do my best to work with the best people I can find and promote their episode the way that I can. Just a side note … I want to come back to them if you want to be a guest on someone’s podcast. So, here’s a few quick tips. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. There’s a number of podcasts out there that talk about it. I think I’ve got a previous episode as well on the same topic.
Connect with them on social media. That’s a great place to connect. I’ve actually got some guests from social media, so instead of sending a cold email, I’ve sent them a direct message on Instagram or Twitter to connect with them. Connect with them on social media. Give them a shout out. Share some of their stuff. It’s free. Listen to a few episodes of their podcast. Leave a review on iTunes. Again, it’s also free. As a podcaster, in case you don’t know, an iTunes review is a big deal. It’s no different than an Amazon review on a book. I published my first book. The best thing that anyone can do for me to thank me for publishing the book is write a review, and it’s the same thing for the podcast.
If you want somebody to have you on the show … There’s no guarantee that, if you’re not the right guest or the right fit, that they’re going to have you on the show because you’ve done those things, but it’s still about building relationships. There’s an opportunity there that they might be able to refer you to somebody else that’s on a podcast. Then figure out how you can share your episodes. If you are on a show, figure out how you can share it. Think about this in advance. If you do end up having a pre-interview or a conversation with somebody that’s a potential podcaster, share it.
I just recently received a pitch from somebody that was very well done, you know, the way they set it up, and one of their closing comments was, “I have a subscriber list of about 360,000 people on my list that I think would love to hear my episode with you shared.” Well, is that the only reason I would have them on the show? Definitely not. I mean, if they’re not a fit, they’re not a fit, but that does add some weight and some credibility to a potential guest, the influence that they have, and the fact that they believe they’re a good enough fit that they would share it with their list.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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So, this episode wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t have a rant. So, actually, I’ll try to keep it to one. One of the things that I’m doing this year that I’ve just recently started on my social side is I’m calling it Taking Out The Trash. In terms of connecting with people on social media, I’m all for that, but my strategy is really simple. I connect, and I do business with people who support me and the people that I’m connected with, so the likelihood of me having a conversation, or a deep conversation, or a dialogue and doing business with people who are not connected with me in social in some way is slim. I [inaudible 00:28:07] say that it’s zero percent, but it’s slim.
This is why I call it Taking Out The Trash. There are agencies out there that believe that the best way to build your audience and look good, and have influence is the follow, unfollow game. What that means is they follow you on Twitter. They follow you on Instagram, and then after a few days, they unfollow you. Well, for me this just tells me that they’re very selfish and they’re very narrow-minded, and they’re really only interested in numbers and getting something from me. They need my numbers to boost their account, and that’s perfectly fine. I get that. You know, you can operate your business, whoever you are. So, if one of you guys listening, that’s your approach, that’s fine. I’d be interested to find out honestly from you how that works.
What I do now is I’ve got some software that just basically every day goes in and disconnects me from anyone who’s unfollowed me, or if I’m following people and they haven’t reciprocated after a week, I’m just going to simply unfollow them. My goal is to build an audience of engaged people. I will have a conversation. If you send me a direct message, you may be surprised that I will respond to your direct message. I had a direct message on Twitter at one point, and the person I was speaking with, they said, “Is this really Doug, or is this Doug’s VA?” I went, “No. This is really me. I don’t let any of my staff or any of my team have a conversation with you if you’re on social.” Anyhow, that’s my rant. Let’s get back to business.
Here are some of my goals. I’ve been working on my Twitter account. Those of you who are Twitter fans, hurray. Those of you who aren’t, just listen for a minute. I’m getting close to reaching one of my goals by the end of this year, and that was to have 20,000 followers. I think when I was making my notes and preparing for this episode just the other day, I had 18,315, and when I logged into this morning, I realized I had crossed over 18,400. So, I’m currently growing my Twitter account at between 400 to 500 connections a week. My LinkedIn account now is sitting at 22,536. I haven’t looked in the last couple of days. It’s probably up again, but I set these goals and slowly work at them. This isn’t to say that any of these numbers I’m giving you I’ve built overnight. This took a while to develop.
My LinkedIn story, if you’ll bear with me, was basically done a little bit out of ego and a little bit out of spite. There’s a fellow marketer in the Vancouver area, I won’t mention his name, that held himself out as a LinkedIn marketing expert. I looked at his LinkedIn and realized that he only had about 500 connections. I did a little research on LinkedIn, and they said that 500’s a big threshold, that most people don’t get over 500. I initially set out to get to 500, and then I reached 500.
As I’ve shared with you before, I don’t celebrate my successes, so what’s the next logical thing to do? Well, let’s go for 1,000. I got 1,000. I don’t celebrate that success. What’s the next thing to do? I want to go for 5,000. I got to 5,000. I said, “Well, what’s next? Well, let’s go for 10. Let’s just keep doubling up.” I got to 10, and then I got to 20. So, I don’t have any more LinkedIn goals. LinkedIn, I use that to connect. Again, I connect with all the guests that I have on my show. I shout out all their stuff. I follow their material. I engage with them. I reach out to companies that I want to do business with. That’s what I use social for is actually to be social and not … I don’t use social media as a broadcast tool. My Instagram accounts been slowly working away. It looks like I’ll eventually get to about 2,500.
So, those are some of my goals. Those are some of my wins for this year. I want to just kind of summarize, and wrap up, and share just a couple more things with you. I’m an avid reader, so one of my goals this year was to read a book a month. We’re coming to the end of the year, so I’ve read more than my … about a dozen books, but I want to share the five most impactful books that I’ve read in this past year. This information will be transcribed in the notes, so you don’t have to take notes. You can go there and have a look. I don’t have an Amazon link. Maybe I should. If you want to buy the book, just go buy the book.
The first one is called The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. In Jeff’s book it really just shares about doing the small things every day that are easy to do, and the downside is because they’re easy to do, they’re easy not to do. It’s a great book, huge book for me this year. The second book I received as a gift, and it was called The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fears and Take Life to the Next Level, by Gay Hendricks. Again, a great book and it talks about how as people, as we set goals in our business and we move forward, how we have limiting beliefs and how we self-sabotage. It was really interesting going through this book and trying to figure out where did I fit? What areas do I self-sabotage and have low self-esteem? What can I do to kind of breakthrough that and take that to the next level?
The next book, book number three on my list of most influential books for me this year is called Hunger in Paradise. It’s got nothing to do with food. It’s How to Save Success From Failure, by Rasmus Ankersen. Now, I heard him speak at a conference that I was at down in the US, and admittedly he’s a young guy, and he’s got a lot of energy, and he started talking about football or soccer, which I don’t follow, but his story really resonated with me, so I immediately went out and I bought his book. I read his book, and I’d have to say that if you’re in business, you have to read this book. It really talks about how complacency can kill our business and how our competitors can basically eat our lunch. It’s really changed my thinking about my business, the direction I’m going, the goals I’ve set, and kind of where I see the business opportunities going, where my competition is, where they’re going. Super good read. Great book. Easy read.
The other book I just finished reading actually in the last month was One Million Followers: How I built a Massive Social Media Following in 30 Days, by Brendan Kane. Now, Brendan Kane recommend to me by one of the podcast booking companies, and I had a great conversation with him, but before I interviewed Brendan like I do with all of my guests, I did some background research. I was so impressed with what he was doing that before I got him on the show when I was actually waiting for him to log in, I went in and signed up for his mastermind.
After I interviewed him on the show I went out and bought his book I read his book. It’s a great book. I really think it’s painting a picture of what the future of advertising and marketing is going to look like for small business. Now, the reason I say what it’s going to look like for small business is that the big businesses, the really big businesses, already know this, and they’re already doing it, so it’s really time for us to catch up. I would suggest that you go hang out and have a look and see what Brendan’s doing.
The fifth most impactful book that I’ve been reading this year, but not only this year, for quite a while, is the Old English standard version of the Bible. For me, I don’t know where your faith is based, but for me, it tells me where we’ve come from, where we are, where we’re going. More importantly, I’ve been studying a character in the bible by the name of Daniel, and in that character what has been made really evident is that there’s no promise that life’s going to be easy. He was tested for his integrity and threatened if he didn’t comply, and he was thrown in a furnace. He was thrown to the lions. So, clearly this life was never meant to be easy, and it’s funny that people say, “It’s so hard. It’s so tough.” I just really don’t know where it’s been written anywhere that life’s supposed to be easy. We just need to keep plugging away and working hard.
Anyhow, those are my five books. I would encourage you to pick up a copy, have a read. If you want to reach out after you’ve had a read through the book, feel free to do so. I mean, I’d love to have a dialogue. These are really good reads. I’ve learned a ton. It’d be interesting to see, you know, what pieces of these books spoke to you most. I mean, there are certain characters or chapters that really spoke clearly to me and that I’m going to implement in my business. Again, I’d be happy to have that conversation.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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So, where do we go from here? Well, I’m super excited about 2019. I believe that there’s never been a better time to be in business. I believe there have never been more opportunities in the marketplace, in the world that exist today. Right now, I’ve been testing some really cool tools to build my social media. I just shared with you about my Twitter account, because I did very little with it for a very long time. It just sat around 5,000, didn’t really grow. I was looking for a way to build it that was authentic and compliant obviously with Twitter, so if you want to know what I am doing to build my account, how it works, and you want to see the results that I’m getting, wait for it. Here’s the catch.
Get on my mailing list. On my website, you can sign up, and you can sign up for the Real Marketing email list. It’s an email that I send out … Well, I was going to say weekly, but that’s not truthful. I have not sent it out weekly. I’ve sent it out when I get around to sending it out, but I’ve got a couple more writers working with me that’ll free my time, and I’ll send it out more often. What you won’t get is you won’t get pitches. I’m not going to send you an email every single day saying, “Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff.” What I’m going to send you is what I’m doing, what’s working, and, yes, once in a while I might say, “This is what I’m selling,” but that’s not the purpose of the list.
I’m also testing some new technology in lead generation and co-registration technology, so if you’d like to know how to have somebody else pay for your lead generation, what’s the answer? Wait for it. Get on my mailing list. I have one ask for you for listening today, and that is go to my website, DougMorneau.com. Sign up. Put it in your email, and then when you get your welcome message, just do me a favor and reply. Let me know what topics you’d like to see covered on this podcast. Let me know what guests you’d like to see me have on the show. Let me know how I can help you, what your biggest marketing struggles are.
That’s all I’ve got. Welcome to episode 100. Thank you for listening. Thank you for letting me vent a little bit. Thank you for letting me share my successes. I hope that there’s been something in this for you that inspires you to take action, to be bold, and just to keep moving forward and make this next year the best year ever. Thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to serving you on the next episode.
That’s all for this episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Now, it’s time to take your marketing to the next level by visiting DougMorneau.com and downloading our advanced marketing white papers, as well as exclusive resources based on today’s episode. That’s DougMorneau.com. Until next time, we look forward to serving you right here on Real Marketing Real Fast.
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CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
CELEBRATING SUCCESS – EPISODE 100
How do you celebrate success?
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Get in touch with Doug:
- Web – Doug Morneau
- Doug on LinkedIn
