December 26, 2005

My TOP 5 List...

The TOP 5 books I read in 2005

  • "The Lazy Way To Success" - It showed me exactly WHERE I was going wrong... and it was in my THINKING!

  • "SOROS - The Life & Times of a Messianic Billionaire" - An eye-opener into the mindset of a powerful financier who "broke the Bank of England"

  • "TRUMP - The Art of the Deal" - Simplified my thinking about complex deals. Stuff I hope to use effectively in the years to come.

  • "Hyperspace" & "Parallel Worlds" by Michio Kaku - Absolutely mind-expanding. Soaring across the vastness of the cosmos, these 2 books reinforced something I had intuitively believed in for many years - and gave it a scientific base.

  • "It's NOT About The Bike" by Lance Armstrong - Amazing, inspiring, energizing. If Lance can do it, why not me!

The TOP 5 IM-related things I bought in 2005

  • iMac G5 - It kept me working longer than I wanted to. After all, who'd want to walk away from such a cool machine?!






  • Yanik Silver's 'Underground Seminar' recordings - Just the bonus CDs of Dan Kennedy's 'Platinum Group' meeting was worth multiples of the price.

  • Olga Farber-Becker's "Blog Auto-Publisher" - I've only started tapping the power of this tool - and look forward to doing more with it.

  • Mike Sin's paid newsletter - It's no longer open to subscriptions (as far as I know), but what I've got from the 2 issues until now are worth a small fortune!

  • The Warrior Alliance - Great products. Great people. Great value.

The TOP 5 things I did online in 2005

  • The Heart Kids Blogathon - 24 hours of non-stop blogging on August 6th-7th brought in $7,148 to sponsor heart surgery for poor children.

  • "How Long Does Success Take?" - One of the best special reports I've written,it has been downloaded and read over 3,000 times.

  • Experimented with Adsense - While it won't replace my other efforts, it's a quick and easy way to leverage a lot of my under-utilized content... and spun off some new products.

  • Went the Membership Site route - In 2005, I launched 4 memebership sites (or subscriptions). One was "Quick Niche Profits" - The biggest, highest ticket item I had created until now. It did well - and brought me into contact with 3 great partners. It was fun. Should have done it sooner!

  • Tapped hidden resources in my list - All I did was ask. They responded... my subscribers and clients. And I tapped into some amazing talent lying latent inside. Will do a lot more of it this coming year.

The TOP 5 things I achieved in 2005

  • Funded EIGHT operations on children from poor families with heart birth defects in our partner hospitals.

  • Read a lot of books, studied many experts, and steadily grew my knowledge about many different things.

  • Started building teams and outsourcing portions of my projects. At first, it was tough. It's getting easier.

  • Attended my first IM Seminar at Detroit (Stephen Pierce's 'Unleash Your Marketing Genius') and met some amazing folks. Worth the 22 hour flight - each way!

  • Got the confidence to take on big projects. One I'm doing involves managing one hundred blogs. Another involves 50 partners. It's a different experience.

The TOP 5 mistakes I made in 2005

  • Trying to do too many things. Despite a promise to myself to stick with 3 big projects, I found myself on familiar terrain - juggling more than was good for me! Not next year - I hope!

  • Trying to do most of them on my own. That's no way to grow big. Lesson learned. Teams are being built as we speak.

  • Focusing short-term rather than long-term. I didn't have to. Which makes it worse.

  • Buying stuff I couldn't use. Great sales copy got me to do it. And I will be using the stuff - just not right now. Which means I should NOT have bought!

  • Not being organized enough. I'm not very bad at it. But could do better. I'm starting to learn to think in 'systems-and-process' terms. Things should get better.

The TOP 5 things I intend doing in 2006

  • Building bigger teams to handle many tasks that bog me down. Have a skill and want to join my team? Drop me a line. I'd love to discuss it.

  • Automating and outsourcing as much as possible, so I'm free to do some other things - many of them more important.

  • Reading and reading. My bookshelf is full of books I need to read - soon. My hard drive has at least 30 ebooks not even opened up. It's a high priority.

  • Exploring new arenas I've not tried in a big way. Building massive content sites and blog networks. Offline marketing. Home study courses. Bigger and bolder stuff.

  • Waste less time. I've spent more time than wise on forums, blogs, reading email and non-critical stuff. Leaving less for serious work. That's about to change.


How To Profit From The Coming Email Marketing Crisis | Post Your Comments