Hello!

Let's get Monday started off right—SMILE!

Yes, smile.

From Tom Peters:

"Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better—not to mention the bodies and souls of those around you."

Feel better? I know I do!

Last time, I told you I'd be putting together for you a series of daily emails to help you take action in 2019.

After all, if you're anything like me (and I bet you are), you buy stuff, maybe read or watch it, and then move onto the next BSO (bright shiny object).

First, stop doing that!

Seriously, stop buying stuff. Only make a purchase if you're going to use it in the next 3 days. If you go beyond 3 days, there's a 99% chance you'll never take action on the information contained in whatever you bought.

I'm not kidding. You won't ever apply it.

And that's why you're "struggling." I put that word in quotes because you're really NOT struggling. You're farting around. Putting things off. Tacitly liking the status quo because change—even if it's good—is scary.

"What if too many people take my advice and email me their questions?"

1. Don't worry. If you emailed 1,000 people, you'd be lucky to get 10 people to respond with a question.
2. Let's say 100 people asked you questions when you offered them help. So? Give them answers! I bet you deal with hundreds of emails every day.

Here's how you deal with "too much success."

Odds are, out of those 100 questions, there will be 3-6 themes. Answer those themes with a video or blog post. And then send each of the questioners a link.

Or–if out of those 100 questions, they're all unique and you can't group them into a set of themes, answer them all–on your blog (either in text or video or both). USE THOSE ANSWERS as an FAQ category.

You won't believe how many people will find you in Google by using this method.

I know a business who did this: They answered a bunch of questions on their FAQ page and that effort drove massive traffic.

So, in short, look at every obstacle (even if it's a good one) as an opportunity.

Will doing the above require work? Of course it will.

If you actually still believe you can make money in your sleep without doing any actual real work, stop reading now, go back to sleep, and dream about your impending wealth ("Any day now." Tick tock.)

You don't need me. You need 10,000 people to give you a dollar every month.

And you can probably make that happen. I don't know how or else I'd be doing that and legitimately suggesting that you do the same.

Okay, moving on. We were talking about taking action. That's the theme for 2019.

Watch your email inbox. I'll be sending you an email a day with an actual tip that you can actually take action on. Actually!

Each tip will be "bite sized" so you won't have any reason to be overwhelmed. No need to think about all the bad stuff that could ("It will!") happen to you in case you take action.

There's this idea I learned in econ class years ago: Opportunity cost. I like to call it “opportunity lost.”

It's not just an economics term, but that's where I was introduced to the idea.

I had a professor in junior college (that's what we called it back then, 30+ years ago) who looked like Hemingway, called Milton Friedman “Uncle Miltie,” and taught the first econ class I ever took—and he hooked me.

He introduced me to that term. It means that when you make a decision, that decision has a cost to it—in terms of opportunity and opportunities lost.

That is to say, if you take one action, there is another action you couldn't take.

For example, if you decided to invest $1,000 in Boeing, you couldn't use that same $1,000 to buy a used car you need for your business.

Economics is the study of how society, as a whole, allocates its finite resources.

That thousand dollars is a finite resource. You can't just say, POOF, I need a thousand dollars. You actually have to do something to earn it. That could be as simple as emailing your interested subscribers (leads, prospects, and customers) an offer to buy something.

Believe it or not, if you build a quality email list (actual people interested in what you have to offer), you CAN make money in your sleep by emailing them right before you go to bed.

You wake up the next morning and find that you made a sale. Or ten. Or a hundred. Or more.

But still—you had to do a little work. You had to take a little action. You had to compose an email and press the “send” button.

It may not seem like a lot of work (it isn't), but it's still work.

The real work was in building that quality subscriber list in the first place.

And that's going to be one of the things I talk about in this daily email series I introduced in the last email.

Moving on...It's Monday, it's the first full week of 2019. Make a commitment today to take action. Know that by NOT taking action, you suffer an opportunity cost...

...that could cost you time AND money.

Cheers,

Bill

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