Productivity
How to Plan for Failure
Remember in college when you’d read a chapter from your textbook, shrug your shoulders, and say, “Done. I got this.” Then you took the test and got your ass royally kicked?
That’s because it’s easy to read and read and believe we “got it,” but when the rubber meets the road — when we have to actually prove it by IMPLEMENTING — we often fail.
I fail all the time — in fact, I have more examples on this blog than I should probably honestly admit. But I feel that if I’m not regularly failing at different things that I’m working on, such as: passive income experiments, partnerships, or copy testing … I know I’m not trying enough things.
In fact, I now plan for failure.
There is a poor public perception of failure. People think failure is a bad thing, which always makes me sad. Failure can be managed, planned for, and even eagerly anticipated.
Overcoming Failure
“Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson
The trick is to plan BEFORE you get rejected. You can treat rejection as a normal step in the process. Expect it. Manage it. Own it.
For example, I first started looking for a job right at the end of 2007 during the worst economic recession of my generation. I knew times were tough and the job market stunk.
For one position in particular – I went through 4 rounds of interviews, with 8 people total, only to find out I basically tied with someone else, and the other guy ended up getting the position. My first reaction was anger because they wasted my time and inconvenienced me for nothing…
I even went through an emotional dissonance phase when I started telling myself “yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to work there anyway…”
But then a day or two after I got the news, I was browsing a job search site when I encountered an entire forum of people complaining about how difficult the job market was, lamenting how the world was conspiring against them for a job. I was immediately embarrassed because so many of these generic people encapsulated my reaction – which from a third party lens looked completely pathetic.
I immediately sent an additional thank you email to the people who made the decision, explaining that I have a lot to offer, but that I understand there are many talented people to choose from in this job market. (Instead of feeling sorry for myself, this is what I should have planned from the beginning). About two weeks later, I pitched them again via email on hiring me as an intern, using all the info I gathered during the interviews to explain how I could add value to the company. I ended up getting a tentative offer which evolved into the full time job I have today.
This was a good lesson learned – whining and bashing a company to protect your ego is useless. I swallowed my pride and did something useful with the info I had gathered.
This is why you do more planning than your competition.
Example: Interview Preparation
- If ordinary people browse the company’s website for 10 minutes, you look up the bio of every executive and map any commonalities you have
- If ordinary people go in with a generic idea of how much they want to be paid, you go through your network/alum association to find people who’ve worked in similar positions, and get salary info before you walk in
- If ordinary people have a few stock answers for their interview, you find your best TEN friends and have them interview you with their ugliest, most difficult questions….videotaping it…then you do it again
If you’ve ever talked to a friend looking for a job, you’ve probably heard several variations of the story where he/she walks into an interview, thinks they’re a big shot, then gets angry at the world when they don’t get the job. I hear about people all the time who’ve sent their resumes “to 50 companies!!! and nobody will reply!!”
Yet how much preparation did they do? Are they really different than the MILLIONS of other people shot-gunning their resumes out to everyone else?
You get disproportionate results from being the best.
You get disproportionate results from doing the most homework.
And your planning for failure — proactively, before you fail — can make all the difference.
If you say you want something but haven’t done systematic work to achieve your goal in the last 14 days, you’re deluding yourself.
So your choice is either (1) start taking action or (2) acknowledge that your goal really isn’t that important, and give up.
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I don’t deserve the title of sexy asian man – not as long as Rick Yune exists
I’ve wanted to write this post for a while now. Rick Yune has sort of become a running joke between me and my friends. We looked him up on IMDb one day just to see what his deal was while we were watching The Fast and the Furious for like the 100th time and were pretty much floored at what we found. His bio blew my fucking mind. In college my part time jobs involved washing beakers and tutoring high school students – Rick Yune was the first Asian model for Versace and Polo Sport. Alright, not bad. He qualified for the Olympic trials at 19 in Tae Kwon Do. Ok maybe that’s mildly impressive. He graduated from Wharton School of Business which for those of you aren’t familiar with:
Wikipedia- The admissions process for Wharton’s undergraduate program is extremely competitive. Wharton’s acceptance rate in 2009 was 9%. Wharton’s yield, or the percent of students who matriculate after being accepted, is about 77%, a number matched only by Harvard (76%).[11][12] Princeton’s yield in 2009 was 60% and Yale 69%. Through its selective admissions process and consistently strong performance, Wharton has maintained its position as the top undergraduate business program in U.S. News & World Report, the most widely used undergraduate ranking table in the United States, since the ranking’s inception.[13]
Then he was a Hedgefund Trader on Wall Street for a while, making boatloads of money.
But of course when you’re Rick Yune and you’re the best at everything, even that gets tiresome after a while. So what does he do? Decides he wants to be an actor and goes and lands himself some big movie roles like it aint no thang. Like he absolutely has to be the only human alive to go to the Olympic trials, work on Wall Street, and be in a P.Diddy video right? Unreal.
I’ve already decided that he is like an Asian Chuck Norris. His life is ridiculous. So whenever I’m being lazy, procrastinating, just not getting my shit done, I think and ask myself “what would Rick Yune would do?”
5 Ways to Generate Content for Your Niche Site…Right Now
A lot of times when I’m starting a new niche website, I have a hard time figuring out the content I should write about. I used to sit down and struggle, trying to brainstorm different topics that I was interested in, even trying to imagine the topics that other people would be interested in learning about.
But then one day I realized – I shouldn’t be the one dictating what my readers should read. I should let the market tell me what my users want, and then simply provide the information that they’re looking for. This makes content generation infinitely easier, because #1, I no longer have to come up unique content of my own, and #2 there are so many tools readily available on the internet to help with my market research.
The following lists my top 5 favorite sources that anyone can put into practice today – and discover what content your target audience actually wants to read about.
1. Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool
If you are reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the Google keyword research tool. This is the most popular market research tool. The information generated is incredibly powerful because the data comes from Google’s massive audience of people that use the Adwords network. A few tips that I’ve learned when using the Google keyword research tool.
- Get a more accurate approximation of search volume by using the “phrase match” option
- Add the “estimated Avg. CPC” column. This is important because not only do you want a lot of traffic, but ideally you want to find the really profitable keywords
- I always sort by “global monthly searches.” I find that this is a good metric to start with because my top priority is to write content that will generate loads of traffic. I start with the high traffic keywords and filter out words that are too competitive or have horrible CPC.
2. Seobook Keyword Suggestion Tool
You actually have to register with the SEO Book website in order to use their free tools. But registration on this site is free and a great idea because SEOBook.com actually provides a ton of free and high quality tools. I usually take the top 20 keywords generated from this keyword research tool and add them to the list I’ve generated from the Google keyword list, deleting any duplicates.
3. Google Search Bar
Another great way to search for interesting and relevant content to you niche site. You can start typing relevant queries directly into the google search bar, adding a “~” in front of your search in order to spot any auto-complete keyword suggestions that are representative of what your target audience is searching for. You can even use the keyword list generated from methods 1 and 2 above to start a more defined market search.
The biggest downside in using this method is that you don’t know how much targeted traffic you’re getting based on these long tail keywords. You just have to assume that there should be some decent search volume if the suggestion is showing up.
But the biggest positive is that the suggestion tool uses live search data from Google’s massive user base of people that use the search tool. Contrast this with the Google keyword tool, which uses information from how advertisers target keywords in the Adwords network.
4. Wordtracker Labs
Another great tool to ascertain relevant questions in your target niche. This tool is pretty self explanatory.
5. Forum Search
Finally, this is the most time consuming method, but it is a method that I personally find the most useful. If you type in the search phrase “forum: <keyword>” Google will scour the internet for related online forums that are relevant to your keyword. From this point forward, you can do a number of things. You can browse through current forum threads and start documenting common questions. Or if you want to take this a step further, you can register at the more popular forums and actually get involved with the community. This is ideal because these forum members are your exact target audience, and there is no better method to get inside the head of your customer than by straight-up talking to them.
I’m a firm believer that despite all of these wonderful market research tools available, there is no substitute for going out and just talking to your potential customers. Because this is the only guaranteed way you can really find out what kind of questions and “pains” your customers are suffering and how our product/content can help them.
Additionally – as you get involved, most forums will allow you to place a link in your signature. If you can successfully position yourself as an expert and provide quality content, forum members can turn into an amazing source of highly targeted traffic, and you can develop a huge following without implementing any time consuming SEO tactics.
