Archive | October, 2023

Social media can be a great place to build your audience and your list. The trick, of course, is to be seen. Here’s how to make that happen…

Get in the game.

If you’re not posting, then you’re invisible. Increase your social media activity and your followers will grow.

To do this: Choose a posting schedule and stick to it. For example, 5 times a day on Twitter, 3 on Facebook and 3 on LinkedIn. Use a content curation app to schedule your posts. And know your audience so you can give them what they want.

Join the right communities.

From a business standpoint, communities are where the valuable conversations take place. Find your communities and join those groups to discuss your niche.

Don’t promote yourself or your products the moment you join. Instead, participate in the discussions and mention your product only when it’s the answer to someone’s question. Your goal here is to build relationships with your targeted audience.

Use great eye candy.

You already know that visuals attract eyeballs and make your content more shareable. No doubt you’re already using a visual on every post. But is your visual pulling its weight?

Instead of grabbing the first picture you see, think about what you want your visual to convey. What emotion should it evoke? Should it be playful? Happy? Heart-wrenching? Silly? Hopeful? Celebratory? If you’re not sure, think about your message.

Then choose something that really sings. HINT: You can’t go wrong with pictures of people’s faces – we’re wired to look at others.

Build your own advocacy group.

Studies show that social media advocates increase the credibility of your messages. It’s a form of social proof when other people Tweet your latest blog post or post a link to your latest podcast. Not to mention the extended reach of your advocates.

And did you know your message is more likely to go viral if others are promoting it rather than you? It just makes sense. So start building your own team of people who post for you. They could be happy customers, vendors, virtual assistants and so forth.

You might even have a reciprocal agreement with other marketers to promote each other’s content.

There you have it… 4 reliable ways to take your social media marketing to the next level. Post more often, join the right communities, make the very most of your photos and build your advocacy groups.

Write these down and choose one to do this week, one next week and so forth, until all four are an integral part of your social media marketing efforts.

There are times in our lives where we are compelled to stop and take a look at ourselves and ask the question: Who am I?

Obviously there are several follow up questions to that one, most often: Am I happy? Or What do I want now? But really all the follow-up questions we might ask are simply extensions of the first: Who am I?

We might ask that question on the eve of graduation from high school, or university, just before we start that first job, as we enter that first or last relationship, begin a family, buy a house, or start a business.

How do you answer that question? What would you identify yourself as?

Each of us is unique in the world, but we also each try to conform to a type. A mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a professional, an employee, an employer, an entrepreneur. You tell yourself that you are the role you are in.

Whatever you think fits you most comfortably is what you conform to. That is what you think you owe to yourself and others to be. And of course, you want to be that to the best of your ability.

In the case of building an online business, we are entrepreneurs.

So let us look at that word and honor what it really means to fit into that role. Our goal isn’t the financial gains, since for the entrepreneur that is simply a scorecard. Our role is to gain independence and freedom, to follow our passions and to dream bigger than a normal 9-5 job would allow you to.

It is to see gaps in the market that others don’t and to not be afraid to take risks and leaps in investment. Being an entrepreneur is often to follow your gut feelings and to want more: to see the bigger picture.

You have to be who you are in this world, in accordance with how you define yourself no matter what, and as always – remember that money is not the only goal – the journey is!

What happens when you combine the latest scientific evidence with everyday simple habits? You start to feel like you can do, be and accomplish anything.

First, a little background to set the stage…

According to Dr. Andrew Huberman, neuromodulators such as dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine and others modulate and enhance the activity of particular brain circuits and suppress the activity of others. For example, when dopamine is released, it makes certain brain areas work better and others work less. Dopamine improves energy and motivation and causes us to focus on things outside ourselves. It enhances our well-being inside while putting us in an outward, goal-orientated mode.

Dopamine works with epinephrine in the brain and adrenaline in the body. When dopamine is released, epinephrine tends to be released, too. And when epinephrine is released, dopamine may or may not be released. This is important because epinephrine is involved in generating a sense of agitation, urgency, desire and willingness to move. You’re feeling like, “Let’s get up and do this!”

You’ve got energy but you’ve also got agitation. If dopamine is present with epinephrine, you’ve got the perfect combination for getting things done. But if you’ve got epinephrine without dopamine, now you feel agitation and stress without motivation. Dopamine is released when something good happens and it’s also released in anticipation of things that make us excited such as reaching a milestone in our goal.

Then there are the serotonin and oxytocin systems that work together not for goal achievement, but to make you feel good for where you are and what you have in the moment. When the serotonin system is engaged, we feel rewards for what we have in our immediate environment or for what we already possess.

Think about when you hug your family members or your pet at the end of the day. You think about how much you love them and that hug and those thoughts release serotonin. Serotonin gives you ‘here and now’ rewards for what is good in your life right now, whereas dopamine makes you feel good about the rewards that are out there in the world waiting for you.

The serotonin system can be accessed anytime by feeling love and gratitude. It promotes quiescence and calm and gives the warm soothing feeling that you’re good with everything that you have. If you think in terms of primitive man, then dopamine sends people out to hunt, forage and take risks; while serotonin brings them back home again where they feel warm and safe with their family.

Serotonin and oxytocin, along with dopamine and epinephrine, have to be balanced. Certain “A” type personalities who run 24/7 on dopamine and epinephrine burn out. They become not just unhappy but miserable because they can no longer access serotonin and oxytocin. That’s why there has to be a balance.

The question is, how do you align your serotonin, dopamine and epinephrine reward mechanisms in a way that allows you to get as much work done as quickly as possible and with as little stress as possible? That’s where it gets tricky if you don’t know what I’m about to reveal.

These 17.5 simple habits you can perform every day will enable you to enhance the effect of these neuromodulators and become almost super-human in your ability to get things done. I know that 17.5 seems like a big number, but you’ll see that most of these things are simply little tweaks to your day that can make a big difference in how you feel and perform.

These are habits to incorporate into your everyday living that will make you not just more productive, but also happier, have less stress with more energy and generally feel better about yourself and life. Tall order for a few new habits, right? But this is scientifically proven, so let’s dive in:

1: Get enough sleep. If possible, be in bed no later than midnight. Get up at the same time every morning. Reduce or eliminate overhead lights in the evening before going to bed. Make your bedroom as dark as possible.

2: When you get up, move your body and get some sun in your eyes. You don’t have to do your full-blown exercise regimen, but at least do something like yoga, jumping rope or walking for 15 minutes right after getting out of bed.

If possible, get this movement outdoors where you can get some sunshine into your eyes, telling your body it’s a new day and time to release dopamine. Moving for fifteen minutes is going to get the norepinephrine system primed because you have the adrenal glands which sit above your kidneys and they kick out norepinephrine and cortisol and get your system awake.

3: Have real, tangible, written goals. Not, “I’m going to make more money.” That’s too vague. “I’m going to increase my income by $2,000 a month by June 12th” is a better goal.

4: Have a goal for what you will accomplish before noon. The dopamine system works best when you pick a goal and have a target you want to hit. This is why it’s so crucial to identify what you’re going to accomplish before noon or even in the first hour or two of your day.

5: When anything other than your goal leaps to mind in those first hours of the day, push it aside and stay focused on your goal. Why is it crucial that you not get distracted? Because if you stay focused, you’re going to get the dopamine reward.

Moving forward might feel a little tough if you didn’t get enough sleep but if you can reach that goal then you’re going to feel a dopamine release. This in turn will make it easier to accomplish your next goal of the day, as well as improving your ability to focus on singular goals.

6: Stay off of social media in the morning. You can also get your dopamine by flipping through Facebook or Instagram but this won’t help you to achieve your goals.

You want dopamine. You’re going to get dopamine. But the method you choose will determine if you get stuff done or if you waste your time. Identify what you want to accomplish in those first hours and then laser focus on that.

7: Make accomplishing an early morning goal a daily habit. By getting something done right after you wake up that NEEDS to be done, and by doing this nearly every single day, you are priming your dopamine system to work with you in goal achievement.

8: Exercise daily. Physical movement is a key component of achieving any large goal. Stress will stop you from moving forward on your goals, and the best way to combat stress is to exercise.

When there’s even a low level of stress in the system, exercise will quiet the activity of the threat detection center (amygdala) in the brain and allow you to be more creative and get more done.

9: Write out your daily goals the night before. When some people wake up, they are raring to go. But for others, they feel groggy and it takes them time to transition out of sleep and clear their head. That’s another reason why the fifteen minutes of movement is helpful when you first get out of bed. This amplifies the epinephrine and dopamine system.

And having your goals already written means you don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do that day; you simply get busy and do it.

10: Try morning fasting. Not eating when you first get up will stimulate the release of norepinephrine. It also slightly increases the amount of dopamine because it puts you in a kind of anticipation of a goal, which in this case is food.

There’s this ancient mechanism whereby when our blood glucose is low even though we might be a little hungry and a little bit agitated, it tends to focus us on things outside ourselves. And because we need something outside of ourselves, we’re less content to just sit on the couch.

Contrast this with how you feel after eating a big meal. All you want to do then is sit down and relax. This is why by not eating in the first hours you’re awake, you’ll likely get more done.

11: Overcome stress by focusing on an immediate goal. If stress is stopping you from acting, you can get focused by setting your sights on an immediate goal and a horizon that you know you can accomplish.

It can even be a trivial goal, like you’re going to make coffee, sit at the computer, open a file and read 3 pages. Fixating on the large goal can be paralyzing but focusing on what you can accomplish right now is incredibly freeing and helpful in releasing dopamine.

Even accomplishing a tiny goal couples the neural circuits for focus with the neural circuits for goal directed behavior with the neural circuits for energy and agitation. You’re getting those aligned and they’re coherent.

Conversely, when you look at the news and Instagram and your email and Reddit, your neurochemical systems are split. They’re incoherent. And it’s no wonder that by noon you haven’t accomplished much.

12: Chunk your efforts. You have something called ultradian cycles, not to be confused with circadian cycles, where the brain works well for a time and then needs a break. For many people this is 90 minutes.

You might set a timer for 90 minutes and then take a break to do something entirely different such as a bit of exercise, reading something unrelated or whatever you choose to rest your brain. Some people prefer the pomodoro technique which is bouts of just 20 minutes, but if you’re like most people you can effectively work longer than that.

13: Write down your pop-ups. When distractions pop into your mind “I should check email” or “I need to put soap on the shopping list” just write it down on a pad you keep next to your work. This frees your mind to continue focusing on the project at hand while training it that mind chatter can be dismissed rather than acted upon.

14: Get a second dose of sunlight. Cortisol and norepinephrine naturally start dropping through the afternoon, which is why it’s a good idea to get a little bit of sunlight towards the afternoon hours. This might also be a good time to get your exercise, too.

15: Abstain from caffeine later in the day. Unless you need to pull an all-nighter, it’s best to stay away from caffeine starting mid-afternoon. Caffeine later in the day will negatively impact your dopamine and norepinephrine system.

16: Eat complex carbs later in the day. There’s a naturally occurring amino acid called l-tryptophan that’s present in turkey and in complex carbohydrates like pasta, rice and things like that. L-tryptophan is a precursor to serotonin, which is why many people find it useful to eat the majority of their complex carbohydrates late in the day to promote the secretion of L-tryptophan and help them transition to more relaxation and sleep.

17: Eat low carb during the day. Since you can have complex carbs for your last meal, it’s a good idea skip them during the day to keep your energy levels and focus levels high.

17.5: If you want to, take a short afternoon nap. Many people (but not all) benefit from a short nap in the afternoon to recharge their batteries. If you find that a short nap is better for you than a long one, you might set an alarm or sleep in a semi-reclined position to prevent over-sleeping. This can also be a great time to do a little meditation, listening to something that puts you in a trance or even lulls you to sleep for a few minutes.

People who are truly effective in both their work and their home lives have found a way to toggle back and forth between these two systems and control their dopamine system rather than having it control them. If you can learn to go from full performance to full relaxation, you’ll get so much done it may shock you. Mastering the transitions between these systems gives you an outsized effect on performance and relationships in your life.

Try adding as many of these habits as you can and pretty soon when you get up in the morning you’ll find yourself automatically in forward motion and naturally and joyfully achieving more of your goals in life.