If you’re the type of person to have a tonne of business ideas running through your head at any given time then you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve struggled with this my entire life.

2016 is going to filled with 30 day challenges.

Why? Well firstly, it’s to consistently incorporate a lifestyle routine for an adequate amount of time so I can judge for myself, through experience, if it’s beneficial or not. Secondly, they’re fun!

I’m going to kick it off with a 30 day Raw Food Challenge

Now, I tried this 2 years ago for around 3 weeks and I swear I felt like superman, (hence the name of the challenge). I’m not even lying.

My energy levels spiked, the lethargic feel I used to get all the time disappeared, I never felt sleepy and at any given time I’d want to go for a jog or an adventure outside.

I’d be jumping out of bed at 5am, as wide awake as an owl, ready to work. My focus was 100% and I honestly felt like I had been living dead this whole time.

So what exactly did I do?

I ate nothing but raw vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds for the full day.

No boiling, cooking, frying. No takeaway, rice, wheat, dairy.

The idea of it is that there are healthy enzymes amongst healthy, organic foods that get killed when cooked. Organic food is also created by mother nature, it’s not a concoction of chemicals and junk like packaged and tinned food.

I’m not going to get into the sciences, all I know is that it took me to another level and I want to go back there again.

I’m aiming for around 2-3,000 calories/day which works well with my boxing and cardio work I do almost everyday.

I’ve split my macros so I know how much fats, carbs and protein I need and have noted the necessary raw foods that I need to eat.

Going from a heavy meat and junk food eater, it was a big test to take but I wish I had taken it earlier.

Anyway, for the next 30 days, I’m going to have nothing but juices, smoothies, dried/fresh fruits. I’ll post pictures of what I’m eating, I’ll write about how I feel and what’s working and what isn’t.

Anyone’s welcome to join!

2015 was a year of experimentation. Trying different things and learning from experience. I did a lot of that a learnt a lot about what not to do. I grew as a business man inside and am grateful.

2016 is going to be a year of ‘getting things done’. I’m going to spend 30 days on all these ideas in my head and get them done. In a way, it’s going to be another year of experimentation but will be more systematic.

Hope you all enjoy new years eve, stay safe!

Mateen

Another year has flown by and just like every other year, I’m amazed at just how quick It’s over.

2016 is a new year. A new start at getting things right. I’ve been able to achieve most of the goals I’ve set myself to. I feel it’s due to the way I set them. With that in mind, I’m going to list my process on setting goals and how to go about achieving them.

First of all, you’ll achieve nothing by sitting around reading or watching youtube videos. ‘Researching’ as we like to call it. It’s ok to do a bit of it but a large part of your activities must include connecting your idea to your target market. This is true whether it’s a product, blog, service, forum, website or anything that requires a customer.

The most successful businesses were brave enough to put their products out there and work on continuously improving them based on peoples feedback. It doesn’t have to be perfect, perfection comes over time.

ok, let’s set some goals.

Starting with my own goals as an example, I’m going to keep it simple.

• My only goal is to reach 10k/month consistently with my online businesses.

That’s all.

This includes my blog which is around 3-4k/m right now.

Notice how I only have one goal? having only one goals makes it achievable. Having too many goals will confuse your mind and just like every other year you won’t achieve any of them.

That’s why athletes get so good at what they do. Their sport is their number 1 focus, their only focus.

I know people who have so many damn goals, years go by and they haven’t achieved any of them. Don’t be those type of people. You need to properly manage your mind and to do that focusing in is essential.

Anyway, so that’s the goal. Now we need to plan how we’re going to reach it. For starters, I already have a 3-4k/month business. It makes sense to try and grow this as it’s already working, has a good reader base and hasn’t really been worked on much. I’m going to try grow this along to around 10k.

At the same time I’ll be testing tonnes of new ideas and businesses every week till I find something that I’m satisfied I can grow.

By testing, I’m referring to validating my idea. There’s a simple way to do this.

Run traffic to a landing page, pitch your idea and track how many people are willing to click the ‘buy’ button.

Yes, we don’t really have a product at the moment so clicking the buy button will just take them to a ‘coming soon’ type page, but at the most part you’ll get an idea of how many people are willing to make a purchase.

Before, I would see how many would ‘opt-in’ but this is the wrong way to do it. People that ‘opt-in’ aren’t necessarily willing to buy something. You won’t buyers not readers so any SaaS or service businesses I want to test, I need to know how many are willing to buy.

I’ll be writing a lot more on this method in 2016.

The best way to achieve my 10k/m goal is to see who’s making 10k+ in the Internet Marketing blogging world and emulate their process. That’s what I’ll be doing for the most part.

At 3-4k/month, I’ll need to increase my monthly revenue by around $500 – $600 per month till I reach 10k/m by the end of 2016. Seems doable right? I think it is.

My activities for 2016 will include

• More frequent blogging
• Better funnelling
• More of a focus on email capture
• Implementing new ideas for blog and seeing what works
• Testing new ideas every day, (magazine subscriptions, websites, forums, etc).

I’m going to break these into weekly activities and continually work on them at the same time monitoring results.

Anyway, hope everyone had a great Christmas and have a happy new year!

Let’s make 2016 the year we finally achieve what we want.

Mateen

Anything of real value in this world can only be achieved through hard work and persistence.

Notice the ‘and’?

We all get our sudden rushes of motivation and can work a day or three at maximum capacity but when our minds give even the smallest hint of disinterest or results not going the way we thought, we start to give up.

2016 is going to be a whole different year. It’s time I, (and we), start achieving things.

I’m going to start doing 30 day challenges. Most will be business or work related but whatever they are, I’m going to commit doing things for a whole 30 days straight.

Many of us have read up on habits. They’re important because they make us consistently do the work or activities we need to. There have been studies that indicate it takes 21 days to form a habit. This number might be up or down a week but the bottom line is, it takes the mind a certain amount of time of doing something everyday to consider it a permanent addition to it’s routine.

Let’s compare 2 working scenarios,

Motivated: 12 Hour days for 1 Month straight. Most people stop here because they just get burnt out. There’s no way you can work this much in your own business especially online, for too long. 12 Hours a day for 1 month straight is 240 hours. We’re only considering week days.

Motivated but Smarter approach: 6 Hours a day for 3 months. Considering only week days, that’s approximately 360 hours of work.

As you can see, the second scenario will ultimately give you more progress and you’ll be at a comfortable working pace so you won’t be as burnt out. Most likely, you’ll be able to continue with it.

30 Day challenges don’t have to be extreme. The trick is to make them small but achievable. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself to the point that it’s too much of a lifestyle change.

It might be something as small as waking up at 6am everyday.

Or drinking at least 2 Litres of water a day everyday.

Or go for a morning jog for at least 20 minutes, everyday.

I’ve noticed a pattern in the things I’ve achieved compared to things I haven’t. The main ingredient is to be able to continue with it at a generally good and steady pace for a long while. I used to give things a maximum of 3 weeks till I expected results.

Now it’s more like 3 months. It takes time for us to get better at things. We might not notice but our body will continually improve at small increments as we do a certain something repetitively. The problem is that we expect results way to early.

My engineering degree took 4 years to get.

It took me 50 Teespring campaigns o find a single profitable one.

It’s taken me 6 months of boxing to learn the basics and even then there are holes everywhere in my technique but I’m definitely way better than when I started.

Two years into my work career and I was only just feeling comfortable with my role.

The point is, it takes a lot of time to get to a stage that’s ahead of most people. You’ve got to be willing to continue with something for at least a few months before you even analyse your progress or compare it to others.

I always find it interesting how much people achieve in AffPlaybook when there’s a 30 day challenge happening. Many find a profitable campaign or small business which they continue on for much more than the initial 30 days.

30 Day Challenges are to build consistency and that’s what we’re going to do next year.

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Routine is a word not many people like. Maybe it’s because the word is mostly associated with working a 9-5 job or a relationship that’s become boring but in business, routining can be a way to consistently see results.

When employed or studying, our routines are more or less handed to us. We’re told when to work and when to stop, what to wear, when to take breaks, etc. Personalised routines hardly exist and even when you get back home from a busy work/school day you still need to do your post-work routines.

When working for yourself, making a healthy routine is an enormous challenge. For me it definitely was. Finding out the optimal times my body would work, what foods contributed to my focus the most and where I can fit in time for friends and family was a gradual realisation and was found through a lot of trial and error.

Routines make sure things get done. The whole reason you start and finish work at a set time is because if it was left up to choice, you’d probably never go. Keeping it the same, programs your mind to get into the work zone when necessary. I hate applying full-time work principals to entrepreneurship but this one is important.

I only started to see results when I started to implement routines. Why? Because they built consistency into my life. Instead of going hard for 4 days at 10 hours a day and then being too burnt out the next 2-3 weeks, I’d work 4 hour weekdays at a set time period. I started to realise that full-time work routines are there for a reason and at the end of the day, they’re focussed on getting people to do work that achieve goals. Isn’t this the same thing we are trying to achieve also? Yes it is.

I now work, eat, nap, play at set times. Give or take an hour here or there, everything more or less happens at a time my body has adjusted to.

I’ve experimented with a tonne of different things from polyphasic sleeping patters to working 10 hours straight and have found a routine that works the best for me. Something that allows me to achieve my personal, sports, work and relationship goals.

I remember when first starting entrepreneurship I had no idea when to do what and each day would be different. Every day I’d make sure I would get something done but exactly how much work was I doing? What doesn’t get measured doesn’t improve and if you don’t know the analytics and numbers of your work contribution during the day then it will be difficult to figure out what’s working for you and what isn’t.

I’ve cut back my 8-10 hour work days to a small 4 hours. Four of the most productive and distraction free hours I can possibly put in. I start to zone out after doing that much work and have realised it’s better to focus my attention else where. Unless I’m really in my element and am in the middle of something I can feel I can work through, I’ll stop at 4 hours of work.

Then I’ll nap, prepare my meals for the rest of the day and for breakfast the next day and go to the boxing gym around 5-7.

Having this routine I’ve been able to improve in the areas of life I want to at a consistent and steady pace.

If you don’t have a routine in your life, I would suggest you get one. it can be as simple as working half an hour on your part-time business at a set time during the day. Even something so small can be effective when applied consistently.

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